Moonlight Lace rev5 - from John JD1813

Hi John,

Nice tune.   Couple of thoughts.  I might have liked the drums up just a tad, and the ocean sound just a tad lower.   Is there a lot of limiting on this track?   The top stuff especially seemed pretty loud.

All that said, it's a really nice song, I like the overall vibe and playing.

Hey John, good to see you.
You have a generally nice vibe going on this.
I'd very much like to her an un-normalized version.
Normalize can tend to behave much like a limiter, and I think this is what Mathew is hearing.
There is a hardness to the final sound that is not entirely complimentary the soft vibe you seem to be trying to convey.
The ocean is a nice touch, but should be more ambient, I think.
And more gradual. Listen to the ocean. It's a nearly steady roar, with more subtle variations. Those little foaming waves tend to diminish rather slowly.
if you soften this up a bit, i think it will be more in keeping with the mood of the song.

John, I like the song.

I agree on the ocean. It comes and goes... so I'd leave it out totally, even in the beginning.

I know you want to set the image stage with the sound effect, but let the music do that. A successful song will have people commenting that they could envision walking on a beach, even without the sound effect.

I can't listen loud cause my daughter is asleep in the other room but I'll come back later..... maybe you can have V2 up by then. ( no ocean sounds)

RobertB


Hey John, good to see you.
You have a generally nice vibe going on this.
I'd very much like to her an un-normalized version.
Normalize can tend to behave much like a limiter, and I think this is what Mathew is hearing.
There is a hardness to the final sound that is not entirely complimentary the soft vibe you seem to be trying to convey.
The ocean is a nice touch, but should be more ambient, I think.
And more gradual. Listen to the ocean. It's a nearly steady roar, with more subtle variations. Those little foaming waves tend to diminish rather slowly.
if you soften this up a bit, i think it will be more in keeping with the mood of the song.

Herb, Vicente, Tony - thank you all very kindly for taking the time and for your comments.  I have no doubt I'll have a ver 2 of this very soon, possibly as early as tonight since it's one of the few days this week I have any free time left.   By the way, can someone tell me how you modify the Title/subject of a post on here, I always want to go in and change the title to "ver 2 of - Title..."  but drives me crazy finding how to do it?
 
RobertB, I'll address your comments separately because I honestly dont' have the gray matter to know some of what you're suggesting.  I definitely see the points you've all made and I fully agree - how to implement most of the changes is my current confusion.
 
Firsst, I have not had any success using gate/limiter/compression, when I have tried I seem to get odd and unnatural results, so I currently just leave it out.  It has only been very recently that I have begun to use normalize on most of my Audio tracks once bounced from the Synths - I do this because without it, I can't even see much of a waveform at all, and I often wind up cranking up gains much higher than what I want.  So this is a first-stage normalize which is at the Track level.  To not do this, was adding to the muddy/muffled sounds that Ii used to get.  Since I've started this (and Herb you once mentioned that you do this too), I have heard better, clearer audio tracks.  Am I bringing the waveform up TOO much?  I dunno.
 
Next when I do a final mixdown of the completed song (export all audio) and wind up with a 16-bit .wav and then I use 256K MP3 setting, I bring it up into a utility I have, and look at the waveform in a window.  I manually amplify it until it's esentially normalized, that is, I know where it needs to be in order for the website's Audio Player to be at about 60% volume, and with about the same on my Windows Media Player.  So that's what I refer to as a "final normalize" setting.   Are you saying I should not do this step or either normalize steps?
 
Regarding the drums:  I'm confused because not all comments were consistent; for my liking, drums in this song need to be subdued and not pronounced.  I even used a single EZDrummer brush beat as a scratch track intially, and it was just - there.  A slow steady beat was all I wanted, and it wasn't until nearly final review that I went in and varied beats, added fills, and fiddled with slight adjustment of gain on some phrases once it was bounced to audio. 
 
Ocean sounds:  listened again a few times late last night after Mathew's comments and I agree, and I wasn't able to express it as well as you Robert but you're right - as well as Herb's comment.  It's too much, it's too mechanical, and it's not needed in the song itself.  So I'll be seeing what I can do on that tonight for sure.  More ambient, and gradual - is what I am after.  Anyone know where to download any really good, varied and realistic ocean sounds?  What I'm using are only 2-3 clips of public domain .wav files.  And they are repetitive.
 
There is an observation of my own that I'm adding, and I think you've heard this too, Robert - you described it as a "hardness to the final sound" - I used quantize (I do not always do this, but lately I've tried to).   I took my drums, piano, strings, and 12-string guitar synths and quantized all to eighth note beat.   For me, it's become an important thing to help me, since I tend to miss beats here and there or they get out of sync when I key in the notes live from my piano. 
 
But, it's given a very mechanical feel to the song, and there are at a minimum, two places near the end that I'm planning on going back to the MIDI and varying certain note durations and timing so that it breaks out of that choppy mechanical feel.  Overall, I realize this is a certain skill, of quantizing yet adjusting afterwards to vary that precise mechanical rhythm.  Can anyone steer me to some tips or tricks that give best results?  There are a lot of areas here that I am still struggling with for sure.  While I'm relatively happy to have brought the song to life, I'd love to give it more feeling.  When I wrote this song back in 2004, it was just a piano solo and when I play it, it's not to any beat.  I think it's the hardest thing in the world to take a piano solo and force it into a metronome beat, and try to build orchestrations around it.  But, I see it as the only practical way. 
 
 I deeply appreciate all of your comments and the time you each took to listen!  Thank you!!   
 

Great to see you here again John! Very nice composition as always, soulful and emotional. Perhaps it needs a middle eight part where the piano rests? Perhaps a guitar solo? The mix needs some work as mentioned above. I don't want to sit on high horses but if you'd like to, I could give it a try?  

OK... I'm listening again, this time on the buds.... John, If I was you, and I had written this song, here's what I'd do

I'd delete it. ( don't freak on me...hear me out)


And start a new version... leave out the ocean and leave out the drums.... at least the "perky beat" I would slow this down considerably and give it more emotion.... more feeling in the song. Add the word "and" to the title.

Make us see and feel the lace in the moonlight in the music.... smell the perfume in the air.... the idea and melody is good, but to me the song is too fast and to upbeat.

Janet


Beautiful song, John. :)  I love the tune and the strings are a nice touch too.  I don't mind the ocean sounds so much, but they could be more subtle. 

I hear what you mean about the mechanical feel, but it doesn't have anything to do with quantizing it.  It's because all the piano notes are played with exactly the same velocity.  If you entered them by my mouse, of course it will sound that way.  If you played it, then I'm not sure why it's sounding that way, unless your keyboard isn't touch-sensitive. 

I see where Herb is coming from about making this slower.  But it could certainly work at this speed too.  The main problem I hear is the piano.  Unfortunately, I can't even imagine fixing this in prv,  (cause all I ever do in that regard is lower the velocities of the whole track).  But I imagine it can be done. 

It's certainly a beautiful tune. :)

Janet:  thanks for the kind words.  I am overwhelmed by the range of suggestions on this piece, everything from remove the drums/bring UP the drums, to delete the whole project?   And two of you offered to help redo it!    So instead of jumping into more edits last night right away, I sat awhile and gave it thought, listened and studied it a bit more.  By "gave it thought", I mean I reflected about the events that made me compose this in the first place.  And that was pure piano, it wasn't anything else at that time.
 
I value your comments about that, primarily, thank you.  It was all done via my piano keyboard, played live.  So unless I had accidently unchecked the "touch sensitive" setting on record, I am stumped.  Trust me, I do not play WELL enough to be that precise on velocity!  haha!  
 
OK, so I have only one initial goal right now and that is to re-record the piano part again; this time I'm going to slow the tempo just a bit and re-record the piano.  I am going to address this critical part first, since the whole song to me, is the piano anyway.  I am going to try to find/download a more smooth, more realistic ocean/wave sound and use it ONLY as a lead-in but for a couple seconds longer time and slowly bring it up in volume until the beat kicks in.... then no more waves in the song. 
 
When I hear that result with new piano, drums adjusted a bit, and no ocean sound, I'll see if I feel it needs to be deleted or, can continue to address some other comments.   Actually I still like it in spite of all the nits.   I believe I can make adjustments fairly easily because there are no vocals or live guitar, it's all MIDI therefore I can change a lot with minimal effort - tempo, pitch, etc.  But I fully agree that the piano needs the feeling put back in to it.  It must have been that the steadines of the beat made me play so mechanically.  Not at all to my liking.  Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on this with me, Janet!! 

very good tune John. mix isn't too bad at all! yes you could easily slow this down, but i also like it the tempo it is. maybe needs a middle 8 to add some dynamic interest.

I concur. Nice song!

Thanks for listening again, Janet!   There are still a couple notes here and there that bother me and I'll go back in on it soon.  But your comments about pedal thoroughly confuse me!   Listen for where it needs more pedal??  I don't HAVE a pedal on my synth, let alone know how to USE one!  hahaha     Are you saying that PRV can add a pedal sound where there is none?  If so, I would not even know where to add it. 
Curious about the left hand comment tho too, I'll listen close for that and see if I can adjust it.  This kind of detailed comment is really helpful, thanks so much!   I'm nearing the point I want to leave this one alone and get several others finished, I'm excited about a new piece I'm working on that's quite different from anything I've done before - pretty much a solid rock song with killer bass.  Coming soon! 

Janet thanks for the detail - I do recall that the synth came with a pedal and it obviously has a jack to plug it in..... the pedal is probably stuffed away in a closet somewhere.   Never knowing how to use it, it's kinda like a clutch on a car when all I can drive is automatic.      know what ah MEAN, Verne??    *lol*
That being said, I have serious doubts about my ability to add a "pedal event" to "some chords and not all?"  but will be glad to give it a try. Sounds like I'm missing out on a whole world of tedium there, and can't believe I want to move in that direction....!   but OK, we'll see...!   Thanks again!