[LAU] Music made with Linux: "move along"

[Leigh Dyer]

On 30/04/11 19:12, Julien Claassen wrote:
> Hello Leigh!
> This is a beautiful little piece and certainly very different from the
> one other track I have of yours. :-) I like the composition as such, the
> harmonies.
> But I think you didn't do your voice good. Too much bass/treble
> emphesis. It sounds like this EQ-setup or perhaps it's part of an IR is
> much better suited for a bass.

I used just a plain EQ on the vocal, and did take some of the bass out, 
but I think you're right about having to take out more, and taking out 
some of the high frequencies, too. I did try taking out more bass, and 
that worked well on the verses, but it seemed to take too much away from 
the chorus. I might just have to stop being lazy and set up separate EQs 
for those different sections of the vocal :)

> The bass - especially after 1:min44-45s seems to be very loud, when it
> gets too high. When the first note happened directly after the end of
> your vocals, I thought it was you singing "mh".

Yep, this is a problem I never quite managed to solve; those higher 
notes ring out quite loud. I tried some EQ to fix this, and I think it 
helped, but not enough, so I'll have to look for another way to tackle this.

> One last thing, that doesn't sit well with my ears is the drum kit. It
> sounds a bit too low. Although if the toms really sound like, what I
> heard, then I can understand, that you moved them back that far. Still
> due to the soft drums, your voice, that sounds like it is coming from
> the wrong kind of - probably - good speakers and the bass mostly being
> nice and decent, the piano takes over too much.

I think I was worried about the drums overpowering the piano, but in 
hindsight that's probably exactly what they should do, to add a bit more 
dynamic variety.

> Another thing it did like, was the background choir at the end. And if I
> didn't mention it, the vocals themselves are very good. I didn't notice,
> where you used zita-at1. I have a suspicion for one note and one only
> and even there, I'm happy to accept that my ears are playing a trick on
> me. :-)

I can ruin the mystery for you if you like :) I applied the tuning at 
the end of the first verse (on "for me to go"), and on the first line of 
the chorus (on "many years"). I too dislike the sounds of auto-tuned 
vocals, so I was very impressed with zita-at1's ability to be set up in 
a way that lets you perform small, specific corrections without 
affecting the overall sound of the rest of the vocal at all.

> Good bit of music, pitty, you didn't do something like that earlier.

It was definitely a learning experience :) I'm not sure yet if I'll make 
more tracks quite like this one, but I hope I can take some of what I've 
learned and combine it with my more electronic ideas in future. Thanks 
for listening!

Thanks
Leigh