http://www.cosmicdreamer.be/Cosmic%20Dr...ronize.mp3
I just slightly modified a C3 piano but not too much, it's all more in the mixing and compression.
The song could be viewed both as a refference to the outside world on a global scale, but also between 2 people
Hope you enjoy it.
Touchingly beautiful.
Are you working on any other songs you might post later on?
Best regards,
Robert
Not of this kind. This was kind of a promo tour for her in Belgium to showcase her voice. We made another song but it hasn't really anything to do with pianoteq because i use lots of other stuff in that but she doesn't feel right posting that song yet because of copyright issues.
I've got this particular song covered with my cp organisation, the other is not yet and is written by her.
Hey CosmicDreamer
sounds good - maybe the balance is off just a bit and the piano could be a bit softer to let her voice 'speak' a bit more..
The combination of her voice and your piano and type of music/melody has a sort of 'Within Temptation' mood and I am tempted to include heavy guitar riffs and synths on the second part
cheers
Hans
lol, cool that you mention it because the other song is more of a popsong and it has heavy powerchords in the chorus and sounds electronic in the couplets. She really has that kind of voice yes. It was a piano balad at origin and she wanted me to do something with it and i said "hey i made a within temptation esque conversion of your song". And she was enthousiastic about it.
The thing with this balad here is that I didn't record vocals before and I think I need a stronger setup for this, not just a behringer pre amp that she can clip very easily with that powerful voice of hers. That's why she sometimes stands back from the mic and I had to find an average powerlevel, because otherwise her voice would sound too close when she sings calmly and too far when she sings the higher notes.
I also didn't want her voice to reverbrate all over the place and have it too much dominating. It needed to be somehow fairly dry because I want to give this intimistic touch to the song.
I had a bit problems with mixing because of the room feedback that enhances some resonance in her timbre in a way that when you would filter it out, her S and SH sound would come out too harsh. Well , recording in a properly isolated room would have solved lots and I still have to grow in the voice recording and mixing area (also equipment-wise I think, not to mention isolating my room ).
I had a bit problems with mixing because of the room feedback that enhances some resonance in her timbre in a way that when you would filter it out, her S and SH sound would come out too harsh. Well , recording in a properly isolated room would have solved lots and I still have to grow in the voice recording and mixing area (also equipment-wise I think, not to mention isolating my room ).
Yeah, I just wanted to say - it is very evident in the chorus (?) section of the song, the voice just goes too nasal and it shouldn't.
Also, I'd add a touch more reverb for this, if I were you.
Otherwise, not bad at all.
ya - you can indeed hear her 'distance' to the mic.
you do use a 'pop' filter on your mic?
If so then just let her sing real close to the mic to get more of the 'proximity' effect and get rid of too many room influences.
She might need to use her diaphragm a bit more ('ademsteun via het middenrif gebruiken') to sound a little bit 'stronger'...
and if you need some heavy guitar riffs and solos I'd be willing to do that
cheers
Hans
hehe, thats the thing. She's doing heavy on classical training rightnow and from what I hear her teacher says NOT to do that on higher pitch. But that means she starts using her high registers (or how do you call that) and it's almost like shouting like an opera singer. While you can have this vibrant sound more in the chorus without the "loudness"... At least thats what I think, i'm not a professional singer I just hear the result.
She's good though, I never thought the song would come out this good as I had in my mind for a few years now.
and btw no I don't use a popcap but an anti pop shield in front of it.
But I didn't mean higher pitch but more 'power' from the diaphragm - that way a note can sound even more 'convincing' than it already does..
And I meant a pop shield actually... using that you can have her get as close to the mic as possible for this proximity effect (that can make a voice sound more powerful and close as well - it actually increases bass in the sound so you need to be aware to not let it distort, but by having her sing up close you can get rid of unwanted ambient sound - then use some reverb on the voice to make it blend a bit more with the piano sound and you're done
(if only it was that easy)....
cheers
Hans
Today i was in the music store and they have this new thing that seemed to have sold very well, it's called a reflection killer and it's kind of a half shell that you place on the microphone stand. If you talk inside it it absorbs your voice so it can't defleckt back.
Maybe this is something for me, it's certainly more practical than making an entire room verb free.
ok, never heard or seen it yet... who knows - might help...
further it is hard to get a room reflection free, but the easiest way is to 'break' up large possibly reflectant planes...
so put something in front of walls to break it up, get rid of mirrors - those are nightmares, put as much bookshelves etc in the room as possible
All different angles take care of hard reflections...
Thanks for posting this. I hope that we see more of these piano and vocal pieces from you and other people.
I do have a few qualms:
There seemed to be more reverb on the piano than the vocal, as though the piano was sitting in a different, bigger room, further away from us. I'm not sure I wanted more reverb on her, though. Maybe just a touch, with less room in the piano sound.
I agree that the piano is a little loud in the mix. Partly because it tends to reach climaxes at the same time as the vocal.
By the way--did you record both tracks at the same time, or did you do the piano first?
But it's great to hear what you're doing. Please do post more similar recordings.
Hi,
I first recorded the piano part long befor the vocal track was recorded. Both tracks use the same plugin but different settings yes. For the piano I wanted this long almost ambient like reverb, but I didn't want to satturated the voice too much with verb because that would be just overkill in my opinion.
It's just easy to play with the velocity of the keys a bit and I know somewhere I wanted it to be silent. I'm ofcourse refining this further before i'm gonna release this on an E.P.
I didn't nececerily wanted to create the illusion that the piano was in the same room than the vocalist, but maybe for a balad like this it's somehow requiered. I must think of this.
I wasn't thinking in terms of requirements, but just for creating the realistic impression of a singer either playing or being accompanied by a piano for the ballad. The usual stage arrangement is to have them near each other, so the room sounds similar for both. (Not always. Tori Amos, for one, often has a piano sound that seems odd, disconnected, to me, from the vocal in terms of placement, though I must admit that I haven't heard her work for some time.)
Is there some slight panning too? The piano sounds like it's a little more to the right, but that may be because the bass is "centered," coming from the entire sound board, in the C3. I might actually try panning the piano to the left just a little.
But these are just suggestions and notions. I do hope you'll post more, and that we hear more vocals with PianoTeq. Looking forward to hearing what you do.
It's no big deal really to take the piano reverb settings over for the vocals, it's the same plugin anyway. It would sure be a bit more "realistic".
I don't think I panned anything, the patch was just modified slightly in the spectrum ranges to avoid it sounding too flat (and further with a waves V-EQ. that slightly boosted around the 200 hz area, to provide a bit of bass.
I don't know if I'm going to make this type of song again with this singer, we might have other projects (more pop music) for the future. But there's another song that slightly uses pianoteq with a male singer.
I just liked to do this with pianoteq to promote the notion that one can make a piano/voice balad with a virtual piano these days without it sounding "cheap"
Good...
But I feel the sound to her voice needs jus more dynamic adjust.
I hope when I have this anti reflective shield and she will record it again (or new songs), I don't have to flatten the timbre so much to avoid resonanse spikes caused by the room reverb)
Maybe it's also good to use some compression on the voice...
btw all your links don't seem to work or outdated???
It has compression in order for waves vocal rider to do it's job better but the compression doesn't have a high input because I didn't want to risk room noise to spill trough when compressed.
and yes i have to change this lol, it has been a long time since I've been here and now there's facebook and twitter and stuff I don't have this blog on my site anymore and I'm no longer interested in mysapce.
you could try a combination with a noise gate so if there's any room noise it will be hidden in the voice and not show up unwanted...
I hope your DAW supports all those options
I had already found your 'standard' webadress but ehmm there was not much info there...
nope, i'm bad in making websites and it's not so much a priority at this moment as I can't really spend money for that as well now.
It's no big deal really to take the piano reverb settings over for the vocals, it's the same plugin anyway. It would sure be a bit more "realistic". )
No, no, no. I meant almost the opposite--reduce the reverb on the piano. You might give her a little reverb, but very little, and only if the piano reverb is reduced.
To me, and this gets subjective fast, she seemed to be singing in a booth, and not projecting much as a result. Get her out of the booth, if so, when you record again. Not all singers do well in a booth. Let the woman sing.
Please don't take this the wrong way--a piano and singer arrangement seems simple, but it's one of the most difficult recordings to make, since both instruments are so exposed. The ice-skating situation: it looks lovely partly because it seems so simple, but in reality, it's very hard. There are very, very few good recordings of Holiday or Armstrong or Sinatra or Fitzgerald or Julie London (had to get her in) with a solo piano backing, and with reason. (And lots of serious, more raw singers avoided the arrangement--Janis or Grace Slick singing solo with piano? Beth Gibbons?) There's Joni Mitchell, yes. There aren't many more with recent singers using recently developed equipment--Krall or for that matter McLachlan and Norah Jones, all of whom I often love, and they are playing the piano, and the vocal mics pick up some sound from the piano, so the situation differs--they can control the overall sound as they create it. And they've probably tried out every mic and micing setup possible using the best recording equipment that Sony et al can find...
(No, I don't know what "realistic" is. I love a good singer over almost anything. I really love Beth Gibbons mixed in with just about anything. But there's something about the exposed beauty of a voice and piano or any acoustic instrument together. Joni Mitchell on a good night with a good piano doing "River"? Nellie Mckay singing "If I Had You," backing herself with her ukelele? I don't know. Maybe not "realistic." Maybe just a convention, but I love it.)
Let us hear more, please. You're doing something very valuable but difficult. Constructive, I'm trying to be. To me, this is a peak to be achieved--piano and vocal using PianoTeq, and you've stepped forward with a good recording.
(Sorry for the lecture--once I started thinking about piano and voice , I couldn't stop. Ended up spending half the night listening to singers in exposed situations, so to speak.)
she'll have to do it again to get rid of the booth effect because that's the room reflection Hope that new stuff for my mic will work.
She doesn't have much time. This recording session was planned 5 months ahead. She does alot of classical stuff, school, etc... We will make other songs in the future but it will always be on a tight schedule so I better be a bit more prepared next time.
These songs are to showcase her voice a bit but we are making up plans for an Eimar Quinn like song and another popsong of my writing but I'll have to be ready with the songs so she can come and sing and leave like last time.
thx,
actually this topic can be closed as i'm taking away the file. It's going to be released on itunes the coming week... so . Thanks for all the comments too.
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