Christmas Song

[Kolstad]

Hey Joe! (I like how that rings )

I like the song. To me it sounds like something that could be on the Disney Channel, and the singer reminds me of "Cat" from the show Victorious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1iIIKfEfqo

The intro teach how the listener will hear the rest, and there's a Melodyne beef in the vocal, so edit that, and it's better already.
There are quite a few dynamics in this vocal track, and I would try to squeeze it quite a bit with compression, and then make it sit in the mix with a delay (no feedback, short delay time, and mix it in). It's too loud and uneven as is, imo.

To hide the pitchy'ness, maybe copy the track twice, pitch shift the copied tracks (one a little up, and one a little down), and pan them hard left and right. Mix the sides in to taste. Gives a lush stereo vocal, that might hide the pitch issues a bit.

I would go through each note on the vocal track one by one first, though. It's time consuming, but neccessary, and the track is worth it, right?

justanideaortwo

[nick.moxsom]

Joe,

To my ears the worst culprit is the line "in my arms" in the chorus, but I have to say, she's pitchy in lots of places. If this were mine, I would find another singer. If I couldn't do that, I'd try remixing the whole song with a lot more top end – kinda like a brash Phil Spector mix – and I'd drop her vocal in amongst it, see if that would work. Oh, and that ad lib line of hers late on would definitely be history – that just hurts. Sorry if that sounds brutal, dude, but this is simply a question of a really good song (take heart, congrats) with a poor execution. You did ask : )

It's your baby; give it its best chance.

Sincerely,
Nick

[jcapp88]

Hey Songcabinet! I'm actually reading this right after I fixed the intro riffing tuning, but thanks for pointing it out. I did compress the vocals pretty heavily, but I'll see what the delay does. I'll definitely check out your pitch idea, I've never thought about trying that. I actually did go through the vocal note by note, but I'm pretty new to Melodyne so it doesn't always come out like I go for.


Thanks Nick. I'll try to add some top end into the mix and see how her vocal sits. Which ad lib do you mean? I think i know which you're talking about , but want to make sure And not brutal at all, I need honest feedback to turn my songs into the best they can be. Thanks!


Joe

[andygabrys]

hey Joe,

wasn't able to find your TAXI page but listened to the soundcloud one.

I would lose the piano intro.

I would like Nick says yank anything extraneous that didn't make it.

re tuning with Melodyne. you have a few tools.

you have pitch center - you can select anything that doesn't drift too much and put it right on the chromatic grid.
you have pitch modulation (like vibrato) - you can pull some vibrato out of notes that waver too much.
you have pitch drift (like if the note sounds flat and drifts sharp) - you can even out notes that start flat and drift sharp
you can split notes - and tune the two notes separately, this works if the singer was way flat to begin with and brought the pitch up for the second half.

after you split, or adjust pitch drift or modulation, you should check how far out the pitch center is even if you have previously adjusted the pitch center. If you can do it by ear, that is best as it fits in more with the surroundings, but using the grid works too especially if you have split notes that would otherwise be problem spots.

you also have the Formants. - this is the alvin Chipmunk deal. you can do it globally using the controls in the upper right of the melodyne window, or note by note using the formant tool.

if you have a squeaky singer, you can make her a little more authoritative by dropping the Formants slightly.

good luck.

[jcapp88]

Hey Andy - Thanks! So you think it should start with the snare roll and go right into the verse? I'm also working on editing the ad libs.

I basically learned to use Melodyne through tutorials on youtube - My process that I used here is I selected all of the vocal at the beginning and hit "correct pitch" with the settings being "correct pitch drift " to 100% and the "correct pitch center" to 81-82% to avoid the auto-tune sound. From there I tried to manually tune by the Option+Click manual tuning .I also use the modulation for correcting vibrato. I just haven't been able to get a perfectly tuned vocal out of it yet.. Thanks for explaining though, it does clear a lot up. I'll upload a new version onto soundcloud.

Joe

[jcapp88]

Here is an updated version:

https://soundcloud.com/satellitesurviva ... ated-c2013


Let me know what you guys think as of now. All of your feedback has been very helpful.

Joe

[Kolstad]

I think you did a great job editing the vocal from yesterday. There was a LOT to do, and you got a whole bunch of them. However, the section from 15'-25'sec may still need some attention, especially the pitch drift.

After that, I'd work on some subtractive EQ, pulling out troubling frequencies. She sounds better in the choruses, but there's a lot in the high mids that sounds rough, especially in the verses. Maybe there are some artifacts too, if you had to hard edit with Melodyne, maybe there's also some issues from the microphone used, so subtractive EQ could help you.

After that I'd also work on making the vocal sit better in the mix as well. It sounds too dry as is, and you need to make this vocal sound smoother in some way, to compensate for the problematic issues in this take. After final pitch edits, subtractive EQing, a short delay and a touch of reverb could help this track sit better in the mix. You don't want to drench it, but just enough to create the illusion of the singer being in the same room as the band.

Vocals are everything in this type of song, so I think the song will rise or fall, depending on this vocal track.