downtempo track - female vocals + acoustic violin + electronics - feedback welcome

[revo11]

Here's a downtempo track by me, recorded with a friend of mine - feedback is welcome:

http://soundcloud.com/revo11/demo-4-with-rose-joy

[Emerald Tablet]

felt this a lot. how does it sound without the autotune?
the composition is lovely
everything seems to fit together perfectly
thanks for the music

[revo11]

haha, not gonna get that past you, are I? What can I say, I was a younger producer back then and didn't understand the art of imperfection...

I don't know if I have the stems anymore, but here's two track we worked on later that are a lot more raw (and subtle in the processing department):

http://soundcloud.com/revo11/the-road-is-long-rose-joy

http://soundcloud.com/revo11/we-like-th ... h-rose-joy

[folderol]

Wow! This just totally blows me away. Where have you been hiding?

[revo11]

Thanks for the kind words, folderol

[TrekStar]

hey that's really a beautiful written song with a good vocalist. I like the quiet atmosphere of the song. you and vocalist seem to complement each other very well.

here just two proposals from my personal view: 1. I would cut away the breathing/mouth noises in the beginning 2. perhaps a dry vocal acoustix would fit better to the rest?

anyway, that's a matter of taste, beneath that, your stuff is really very pleasant to listen to. respect.

cheers


wolf

[satYatunes]

Try to lower the reverb on "We like the rain" and see how it sounds. It seems a little heavy on reverbs, hence the Guitar part is not very clear. "The road is long joy" is perfect though.

Apart from that little technical glitch all I can say is those are some very beautiful tracks and the vocals are really really good.

[revo11]

Thanks so much for sharing - it's good to hear other perspectives.

Relevant background - those two tracks were recorded in a whirlwind session when my friend was in town for 1 day. We made a conscious decision to make things as simple as possible at the recording stage to work as fast as possible in a short amount of time. The recording was pared down to a single SM57 which recorded both vocals and guitar simultaneously with no click track. So basically, the mix was done entirely by mic placement to capture the characteristics of that particular moment and of the room.

This left some exciting constraints to work with afterwards- basically I had a mono mix of vocal and guitar. The recordings were already pretty interesting in that form, but I wanted to sculpt certain aspects of it, both as an aesthetic, and to address some sonic issues (the room has a lot of brick, so the raw sound was a bit on the harsh side). I fed the mono signal through a processing network in audiomulch. There were different signal paths for sculpting different pieces of the signal - for example on "the road is long", there's a tiny bit of the mix going through an amp simulator. The violin in "we like the rain" was overdubbed later, but because the vocal/guitar mix was already set necessitated that the violin was very low in the mix. All-in-all it was a really fun process, and very different from my typical sequencing/multitrack workflow.

I can see the reverb not jiving with "dry"-er tastes. I tried to exploit the sparsity of the mix with a tuned reverb to accentuate certain key notes. I probably spent way too long tuning the resonance in the reverb path of the signal to be in the key of the song. The incidental noises (breathing, tapping the guitar) were also a conscious decision to capture the peculiar quirks of a moment in time, but I definitely understand those kind of imperfections don't appeal to everyone.

My tastes have changed since we did these too, so the next time we collaborate, I'll probably try a very different approach as well...