Miguel Carzola

Thank you so much, Mark. Sent you an email here. Hope to hear from you on that 🙂

😂 I'm glad you like the lead guitar, Kurt.

Thanx Wookiee. I appreciate you.

Thanx Hidden. Glad you liked.

Gracias hermano. Claro. Te explico luego. Te mandé un mensaje

Buena canción, compadre!

Hi everyone. Found another old session that fully opens with Cakewalk by BandLab since all the effects I used in it were from the included Sonitus bundle. About the song: I liked this girl very much and I told her I'd write her a song of any style she wanted. She spoke in "Spanglish" a lot and she thought it would be funny if it were either gospel or disco (go figure). I chose to do something like a Maroon 5 song so it wouldn't be pure disco, and did the old Swedish “track and hook” songwriting trick as well as used minor-major tonality and key changes. Wrote it in Spanish but using some terms of endearment in English that are recognized by people around the world and that counted as "Spanglish", did one take of the lead vocal to an acoustic guitar recorded with a click track, and it came out with a good energy so I built the rest of the song around that.

Mark! Brilliant again. I checked out your SoundCloud. Great stuff. Thank you for sharing it here 👍🏼

Brilliant work, Mark. Full stop

Thank you so much, Treesha. I’ll keep looking and as soon as I change it or get it re-recorded by a guitar player I will re-post, as well as share suggestions for plug-ins and settings. Thank you so much for the encouragement and kindness. 😊

Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate the feedback, and thank you for the kind comments on the track and vocals. it means a lot to me. I’m just a guy with a plastic keyboard and a computer who likes to write songs, and I’m not a guitar player, or a bass player, or a drummer, or even a singer for that matter, so I’m always looking to learn from real musicians. …do you have any suggestions on how to achieve a tone you would prefer on the solos? What amps, pedals, speakers, mics, rooms, etc would you use? Any tricks you could share to achieving your sound? Any help would be appreciated 🤙🏼😊 Much thankful. M

Thank you for your generosity, noynekker. I am really glad you enjoyed all of it. Thanks also for the hack about streaming services. I’ll definitely take that into account when choosing what mixes to upload. Thank you from the heart 🙏🏼

Really well done, Bjorn! Enjoyed it 😊👍🏼

Hi Esther! Really enjoyed the song. It has a nice energy. It was mentioned here that the vocals may be a bit up front. Obviously these are matters of taste specific for whatever or target market and audience are. If you wanna explore some of the feedback of our fellow KWalkers here, there’s a fairly easy trick to keep vocals up front but more inside the mix. If you roll off the bottom end with a high pass and a -6db curb from about 300-400 Htz before compression, it takes away some of the proximity effect of the mic.. This normally helps the lead vocals sit in the mix without having to compete for dynamics. You can sweep the frequency higher or lower until you find the sweet spot in your specific mix. It’s all a matter of taste, of course. Great job already. Love your voice and your energy. The song is ready. Be well. 😊

Hi Treesha! Great job! I loved it. 😉👍🏼 Nice stew (of free stuff) Best of luck with the fires and I hope you and yours stay safe 🙏🏼

Thank you so much, Nigel! Especially about the vocals. I think they are the hardest thing to approach for a singer/songwriter since we have never heard the song sung by anyone else before we step up to the mic lol Bummer about the mastering in streaming services, huh? Thank you so much for listening 🙏🏼

Thanx Tom! That was a hard choice. It’s so tempting to cover up imperfections with pads lol. Thank you for getting in there Warm regards 😊

Found out on my own 🤙 BandLab mastering does the same as SoundCloud. Guess it's back to the drawing board-or rather the mixing board 😉

Thanx guys. Has anyone tried BabdLab mastering yet? I know the one from SoundCloud only crunches up the mix and then adds volume. How’s BandLab?

So true, Nigel! I loved it. I love also that you have a very consistent sound all across your recordings. Great job! 👍🏼

Thanx for the feedback Kurt! What would you have done differently??? 😊

Thank you so much, guys. It means a lot to me that you enjoyed it, especially without the lyrics for some of you. Thank you for your time and for not bouncing off in the first few seconds. Also, thanks for the brief explanation on streaming FJ. I’ll look into the new BandLab mastering tool for future posts. Again, thank you guys. 🙏🏼😊

Has anyone posted stems yet here, that you know of? Sounds super interesting. I'd love to see how that works 😃

Hello again, fellow KWalkers 😃. Quick question first. Does posting songs on Bandlab preserve their fidelity? I find that files lose quality in SoundCloud. It doesn't allow me to switch streaming from standard to high quality audio. Hoping to hear what your experience is with that. 🙏 So...about this song: This was the song I moved onto after I learned enough about programming guitars with MusicLab's RealGuitar and RealStrat on "For All We Know", as I mentioned in my last post, so all instruments here are also VST. The song is an original in Spanish that talks about missing someone and if Spanish is not one of your languages I would love it if you could show it to a friend. Yes, it's mine BTW and it's definitely not mastered either but I hope they get the idea. I didn't wanna bore you all with the translation here but I can add it later if anyone cares. 🤙 Meanwhile I hope you can listen to it and treat my voice in your minds just like another instrument. (I'd prefer to be a guitar in your minds if it's all the same to you LOL) At the time I wrote it I envisioned making it in the style of "Jesus To A Child" by George Michael, but that changed with the passage of time and under other influences. When I finally recorded the track as posted here, I had been listening a lot to John Mayer, so I ended up experimenting with some of his approaches to dynamics and arrangements. He doesn't have a powerful voice so they use a close mic-ing technique and they put kind of a flat EQ on his lead vocals (I hand held a Shure Beta 58 for this one) . They also put the lead vocals up front so the diction cuts through, and then they surround it with alternate vocal and instrumental melodies that become part of the chords in the arrangement. Maybe because of that they also don't mix the bass and drums as a typical rock mix. This is most often how they mix pop in other languages too, so to Spanish language listeners (me included) this approach feels natural. Though I can reach the higher notes in the backing vocals here, I used the available Melodyne and lowered the entire bounced track as needed to punch in some of the phrases and then moved those punches to the original song's key for mixing. The advantage I found to doing it this way is that the slight difference in texture (format) makes the harmonies more interesting. (Not feeling like the Castrati was another welcome benefit LOL) I hope you guys enjoy or at the very least can relate. Be well, KWalkers

Thanx Nigel. I'm humbled. 🙂