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Leave Before I Fall in Love - my first production using Cakewalk


Justin Schaffer

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My daughter is an aspiring singer/songwriter, and this is the latest song I helped her record and then mixed for her.  Its the first song I mixed using Cakewalk, after hearing about it and switching from Vegas Pro.  I have used Vegas for a decade for video work, so I used it on her other songs because I knew it well.  It was an ok DAW (with roots as a DAW a long time ago), but once I learned the interface of cakewalk its obvious how much better CW is for the task!   One big improvement was memory management - my PC often choked playing Vegas mixes, but played smoothly in CW.

Also of note, the strings and drum hits were created using the TTS-1 included with CW. 

Soundcloud link: 

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/track/0nqq9UgGngwD6PfOPZMHtn?si=d26bc20f542442a7

 I'm not a pro at audio mixing, but rather an enthusiastic hobbyist, so go easy on me if you have any comments/suggestions!

-Justin

Edited by Justin S
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 Justin , Very Nice job. She has a Beautiful voice with a Really nice quality and overtones. I do think the quick passages had a little too much pitch correction , taking a little bit away from the performance. It sounded like it was auto tune as opposed to melodyne. The piano was Very well played. My biggest pet peave is not including a couple seconds of silence before a song begins. All that being said , I think it was a beautiful song and well done. Really looking forward to hearing more from you and your daughter.     Welcome to the forum ..    Enjoyed it ..   mark

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17 hours ago, mark skinner said:

She has a Beautiful voice with a Really nice quality and overtones.

Agreed. But, and maybe it’s my tired ears combined with the Bose wireless cans, the vocal is a bit “smeared” here (bad adjective, I know, but I could not come up with a better one), I had trouble understanding the lyrics. Mark mentioned the “quick passages”; my advice limit the vocal “runs”, I know it’s the “style”, but I find it distracting, and certainly didn’t help intelligibility. 
👍’s here on the songwriting. 
As to your mixing, I give it a B+. 
hope to hear more in the future. 

t

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Thanks all for the feedback!  Actually, there is no pitch correction on the lead vocal.  I used some ever so slightly on some doubles to make them stand apart from the lead but only at key phrases.   I will say our recording environment wasn't ideal for this one, and I did struggle for a while with the vocal EQ and saturation and noise reduction to get it to where it is.   And I have no say in the lyrics or composition...  not my area of expertise...  I'm just a drummer:)!

Her next song which we're just about done with had a much better raw vocal that took very minimal EQ and clean up.  Looking forward to posting it as soon as she figures out the cover art, which is always the longest hold up of each release!

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The smearing Tom (DeeringAmps) talks about might be mitigated by a high pass filter on the main vocal. Hard to say exactly without an EQ curve image view on her voice but I would suspect she has a boost at about (250 - 350).

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very nice....really enjoy the beauty of the songs elegant yet powerful simplicity....there is a Russian duo called iamthe morning that you guys may find interesting and, hopefully, inspiring and useful....here is link to one of my favorites by them:

 

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23 hours ago, Bapu said:

The smearing Tom (DeeringAmps) talks about might be mitigated by a high pass filter on the main vocal. Hard to say exactly without an EQ curve image view on her voice but I would suspect she has a boost at about (250 - 350).

Hi and welcome to the forum - agree with tom and Bapu re the vocals - perhaps you could try what Bapu suggested

Otherwise all good, enjoyed the listen

Nigel

 

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Beautiful song! Wonderfully written and heart-touching. The vocals are flawless - the fast passages (melismas) are not always to my liking, but here they're done very tastefully. Love the piano, love the subtle swells underneath as the song progresses. The only suggestion I have would be to minimize or clarify some of the stuff on the low end; it just sounds like a big rumble to me, doesn't seem to add anything to the song.  It first came to my notice around 2:47.

But a stellar piece of work! Ms. Lynn should have quite a future.

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