Bash this one with vocals -- you'll be glad you did!

[Katress]

I NEED HELP!!

That's all I'm gonna say LOL

[garageband]

I haven't listened yet. I just wanted to look at your avatar (sigh).

[Katress]

um...thanks?

[garageband]

It's like a track or six is muted. An instrumental countermelody in the breaks is badly needed. Also more little percussive element. An EP jam? Twisty synth line? Cleared sample? Palm muted chorused gtr funk pattern? - anything. You can't give the listener just a pad to listen to in between every time, that's just boring. Just before 3:30, it all comes apart harmonically. Then there that insanely long spot of dead air. Huh? Is the song over? It doesn't build tension, the dancers will just leave the floor and all the energy built dissipates. The vocal at :54 leaps out. Needs volume automation. Up to that point, the vocals could be louder. The 808 bass is a bit loud and wooly for the breaks and could be tightened up. The 16ths in those breaks should be louder and could have some odd accents that come from the rest of the tune.

Good 50-60% start, but it needs a lot more production to sound finished. An ending would be good, too.

[Katress]

thanks for the advice. i posted this in a hurry, and a lot of the critque that you gave me are exporting mistakes. i actually had a percussion track muted LOL. the long spot of dead air after the bridge was a mistake; i removed something and didn't move the volume and panning settings accordingly, so everything was off, probably leading to the "coming apart harmonically"...

anyway, thanks for the input, and i'm sorry that the version i posted was so sloppy. i'm glad that you pointed out that its monotonous, because i thought it was too but my friends won't tell me anything, and have no idea what i'm talking about when i ask questions anyway. i'm working on a countermelody.

[aaron aardvark]

Quite often the vocals sound pitchy. You may want to try some sort of pitch correction. In my experience, if you record your vocal twice, singing the same exact thing, it will even out some of the pitchy-ness (which I know you did at least most of the time). I am not a huge fan of rap, but I think that usually your vocals sound best rapping (where pitch is much less of an issue).

[ryanoliver]

Vocal compression and auto-tune. Are you using either? If you are, you'll need more of both. There were some sour notes in there Katress, it was tuff to get through. The question is, do you know which ones they were? If you do, then there's hope! Everyone falls out of pitch sometime, we're human. So you sing it again or you do what hip hop artist do...you auto-tune it. The choruses really jumped out of the mix! Especially that first one. Compress those vox.

For 30 minutes a day dial up a piano. Play up and down a scale and sing a long, your voice is an instrument and it must be tuned like everything else. If you don't know your scales then you should, cuz artists who are singing for a living do.

Sorry for the negativity. You'll get there and remember we're here to help.

Good luck!

[Katress]

The more compression I add, the more awful it sounds. Ditto for auto-correct. It causes an awful distortion. I'm not T-Pain. LOL

You aren't being negative. If I didn't want constructive criticism, I wouldn't be here. This thread is actually really old; I have updated this song 2 more times. I am not working on recording a perfect vocal take for many reasons that I have addressed in other threads, but basically, I am a college student living in a cinder-block dorm room and I can't actually "sing out" and even if I did, the echoing would make it terrible. I just want advice on the technical end of recording. But I didn't make that clear in this thread.

Anyway, I've been singing for almost 20 years. One of my problems with this song is restraining my voice and staying in tune, b/c I'm used to being a "belter" (musical theatre, Nat'l Anthems, etc...) That has been one of the hardest things to get down, and I'm still working on it.

But thanks for the input. Don't worry about being negative; if I thought it was perfect, it wouldn't be here.

[ryanoliver]

OK then let's focus on the compression. Why is is sounding awful? Do you know what each of the settings are for; attack, release, threshold and ratio? " If " you're interested, you can up load an mp3 of just the raw vocal for us to download, doctor and re-post for you to hear.

*In fact, we need a section of the forum specifically for this*

Since this thread is old, you may have a better mix by now but that option is there for you.

[Katress]

no idea. that's what i'm here for help with. and tips on eq, if you have any.