Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

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irthlingz
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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by irthlingz » Sat Sep 04, 2021 6:29 pm

funsongs wrote:
Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:49 pm
For what it's worth/just an Old Guy's ears' opinion - basic ideas for mix volumes:
1) set the level of your drums so that the snare is close to matching the level of the lead vocal;
2) then lock the kick & bass volume - so they sound like one.

If you're not gonna hire a proper Country demo singer, are you reluctant to use a pitch-correction device?

I think the track does fit in the New Country/Southern Rock genre.
The uptempo vibe seems to be working well.

Good luck refining up to the bar, and "broadcast quality".
HTH, Cheers.
Thank you, Peter. We're not at all reluctant to use pitch correction. A bit embarrassed to say that we actually did use it - and still got the "out of tune" feedback. We used "ReaTune" which is a plugin that comes with Reaper. We had read good things about it. We have actually read comments of people who found it produced fewer artefacts than Autotune!

"On the vocals I work with now, in the automatic mode, Autotune bring more unnatural artefacts, while Reatune sounds more natural." https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=188555

Not sure where we're going wrong, but we will figure it all out!

Anyway, we appreciate the listen, the thoughts, your time and expertise, etc. etc.

===
Michael & Sharon

Thank you!

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by cosmicdolphin » Sun Sep 05, 2021 4:52 am

irthlingz wrote:
Sat Sep 04, 2021 6:29 pm
Not sure where we're going wrong, but we will figure it all out!
The simple answer is you're competing with professional singers. That's where the bar is.

Intonation is just one element of what makes a vocal sound palatable to us or not. Breath support, vocal tone, pronunciation, range, lyrical interpretation & emotion, etc. are some of the others

Most people that haven't studied singing tend to hone in on whether a singer is' 'in tune' or not and think that if this can be fixed then a vocal will sound more professional - in reality it's only helping with one small part of the equation. You could tune it to perfection and it still wouldn't sound very appealing if other elements were not up to scratch.

For example in this song I hear a lot of vocal strain , there's not much range or expression in it , ends of phrases drop off/droop in pitch which is probably a breath support issue. A good singing teacher would analyze this properly as you sang it live to them and give you exercises to help remedy the faults.

The voice like any other instrument can take years to master even if you're blessed with some natural talent. My advice would be if you're serious about getting into Film & TV libraries then do what the other songwriters do who don't have the vocal chops required and hire a pro singer for the final product.

Mark

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by irthlingz » Sun Sep 05, 2021 4:30 pm

Thank you, Mark. Really appreciate your feedback.

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by funsongs » Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:25 am

If you are in the market to HIRE a male vocalist, I can pass along a few names that were recommended to me -
who, in turn, I hired for a few songs of my own.
You can search for them on the Internet, or contact me via PM for more info:
Ron Wallace, Tim Angsten (samples here) then there's Matt Dame, and Mike Lusk: the only one of those 4 I've not yet used.



HTH - Good luck getting your songs UP TO THE HIGH BAR... it aint easy.
Peter Rahill - aka "funsongs"
NOW, back on YouTube (2022)
https://www.youtube.com/@peterrahill9263/featured
https://soundcloud.com/funsongs-1
https://peterrahill.bandcamp.com/

“The future aint what it use to be.” - Yogi Berra

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by irthlingz » Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:46 am

We PM'd you, thanks, Peter!
funsongs wrote:
Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:25 am
HTH - Good luck getting your songs UP TO THE HIGH BAR... it aint easy.
"Focus on progress, not perfection."

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by cosmicdolphin » Mon Sep 06, 2021 1:16 pm

funsongs wrote:
Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:25 am
HTH - Good luck getting your songs UP TO THE HIGH BAR... it aint easy.
The difference in quality when you A/B with something like this is huge. I hope it doesn't put Irthlingz off but this is the quality they are competing with.

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by irthlingz » Mon Sep 06, 2021 3:27 pm

We are not put off. We are grateful to all you folks. Not much chance of hitting a target if you're not even willing to look at it (or, in this case, listen to it) ...

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Re: Ears please! "A Good Combine" (Contemporary Country)

Post by funsongs » Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:35 am

irthlingz wrote:
Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:46 am
We PM'd you, thanks, Peter!
Really? No notification received yet.
I sent a PM to you - but you've not retrieved it, as it's still in my OUTBOX.
Maybe try again?
Peter Rahill - aka "funsongs"
NOW, back on YouTube (2022)
https://www.youtube.com/@peterrahill9263/featured
https://soundcloud.com/funsongs-1
https://peterrahill.bandcamp.com/

“The future aint what it use to be.” - Yogi Berra

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