Are You Listening (sans vocals - track 2)

[Armistice]

Vocals - so fucking hard.

I agree. I'm also struggling for time to get them done. Weekends usually taken up with DIY. I did smash out some vocals last Friday, which I reckon I was happy with, but I haven't had chance to mix them yet! I am gradually inching through my songs replacing my shitty early attempts at vocals with slightly less shitty versions.

This one's killing me - I just spent another couple of hours on it, trying to get it to work and was thinking perhaps I need to have a 5th attempt at singing - but now I'm thinking there's just a couple of lines that really annoy me so maybe I can just sing them again instead. Tomorrow night, perhaps.

I don't know what it is, but I'm having trouble singing the same exact melody twice - too many notes quite close to each other, perhaps.

[JD01]

I don't know what it is, but I'm having trouble singing the same exact melody twice - too many notes quite close to each other, perhaps.

You could try "JD's crap singer technique"
Do a take, autotune the fuck out of it with ReaTune so that you know the exact melody, copy and paste the autotune onto a new track. Then do your additional takes on this track comparing them to the lines you've drawn when autotuning until you get it right.

This is my scratch take, then I just copied and pasted the ReaTune onto a new track:

Capture at 2.JPG

[Armistice]

I don't know what it is, but I'm having trouble singing the same exact melody twice - too many notes quite close to each other, perhaps.

You could try "JD's crap singer technique"
Do a take, autotune the fuck out of it with ReaTune so that you know the exact melody, copy and paste the autotune onto a new track. Then do your additional takes on this track comparing them to the lines you've drawn when autotuning until you get it right.

This is my scratch take, then I just copied and pasted the ReaTune onto a new track:
Capture at 2.JPG

I must be using ReaTune wrong because I don't find it to be that good at tuning things - here and there it seems to work but that's sort of not my problem - it's the short quick single syllable words that I'm singing different notes on - all in key - on different takes - and I don't even know I'm doing it until I listen later. I've sang this this a couple of hundred times and it still hasn't settled down into the same thing each time - the major melody is OK, but it's the little linking notes that seem to be problematic.

[JD01]

You need to shorten the tuning. It defaults to 250ms. Shorten it to about 30ms. Don’t go much shorter or even decent singing sounds like Cher.

[Armistice]

You need to shorten the tuning. It defaults to 250ms. Shorten it to about 30ms. Don’t go much shorter or even decent singing sounds like Cher.

Ah, that might explain it - I use it sometimes on wavery harmonies and the inevitable double track I have running about 10dB under the main track and I was trying to move this very short syllable's pitch to see if it would be detectable under the main and it wouldn't budge.

Maybe I should just sing the double in monotone and use ReaTune to pitch it correctly... I'll have a look to see if I can find that particular knob tonight...

[musicturtle]

Getting the perfect vocal take is hard. But I have heard you sing, and you are good at it. I doubt it's a pitch or rhythmic problem but more of a creative block type of thing.

It could be you are still just searching for the right take because you mentioned that the main melody is good to you.

Or maybe in the back of your mind you just know something is not right to you about the vocal.

Maybe try a radical change, like coming in a beat later and speeding up different words or starting the melody on a totally different pitch.

Anything to get you "un-stuck"

YMMV but these tricks have worked for me in the past.

[rayc]

I tried James' template method. I set the default to 50ms and it worked really well. Mind you I keep trying to learn against it and each take is worse!!! But that's me. Reatune is quite time consuming and hard on the eyeballs too.

[JD01]

How'd you get on with it?

[Armistice]

How'd you get on with it?

Much better - the 30ms tip on ReaTune is helping too - just the occasional syllable I'm singing a different note on. I've just spent the morning comping the main and double and I'll do a bit on the harmonies this arv - I'd hope to get it up today but I don't think I will without pushing it - plus the GF's having a dinner party this evening so I'm on duty over there from 5pm, cutting an hour or two off the day.

But who knows... the BVs are all there, just a matter of getting them together - I may surprise myself.. but I think there's a bit of drum stuff i'm not quite happy with too, yet.

[Armistice]

Getting the perfect vocal take is hard. But I have heard you sing, and you are good at it. I doubt it's a pitch or rhythmic problem but more of a creative block type of thing.

It could be you are still just searching for the right take because you mentioned that the main melody is good to you.

Or maybe in the back of your mind you just know something is not right to you about the vocal.

Maybe try a radical change, like coming in a beat later and speeding up different words or starting the melody on a totally different pitch.

Anything to get you "un-stuck"

YMMV but these tricks have worked for me in the past.

I finally sort of got the tone right, but there were a couple of lines where the rhythm and melody made it a bit "nursery rhyme" so I did some more takes - and then there was a line where I wanted to change a word, and some more harmonies because I didn't really like one of the lines in the first lot - so I have all the pieces, just assembling. Maybe in a few hours, more likely Monday night, I expect!