Hello everyone.
After two and a half years of on/off working on the 16 tracks, I have finally managed to get them to this stage. It’s the first of my retirement projects to tick off.
The link on this post will take you to the whole album which you are free to listen to at your leisure. If you can, though, listen to them all. There is a kind of narrative which runs through. Three sections of songs which, in my mind, describe three areas of loving – the yearning, the fulfilling and the working. These are not pop love songs, as such, but do express (I hope) the overwhelming nature of love in all of its beauty, pleasure and exasperation.
Over the next few weeks I will post links to individual songs to make it easier for comments and the like.
I liked this song. The composition itself is really nice and makes a lot of musical sense. It was well recorded too.
Guessing you’re happy with it as it is, but if you’re still looking for any suggestions I’ll weigh in with 2 very subjective impressions. One is that the drum part itself is fine, but the drumkit sound is pretty low-tech. As such, it’s not really in the same ball park as the other instrumentation that’s so beautifully moving the song along up to the point the drums enter. That said, if that’s a drum sound you wanted and are happy with, ignore my suggestion.
It takes a whole lot of courage to put ourselves out there vocally. Our voice is us in a very deep way. There are all kinds of voices and many different opinions of what’s pleasing and/or correct in a vocal performance. To my ear, there were just a few spots where you weren’t totally on pitch. Not sure I’m totally correct about that, and further listenings might mitigate this impression. If you’re happy with it, and it rings true to you, leave it all alone. By and large this is a good and soulful performance and you do obviously have your own style and comfort zone with what you did.
Nice work, and nice song overall.
By the way, congratulations on retiring. I did that myself at the end of June, 2021. Fun to have the time and energy to get to things like this now.
Thank you for such informed feedback. My ears are not as good as they could be – tinnitus is such a curse – so I tend to work on the feel of a song more than anything. If it has an energy to it, I tend to like it more. As a result, I’m less fussed by absolute correctness than others may be. Given that, though, I do appreciate when people point out flaws, especially if I can fix them. To be honest, though, I’ve tweaked and fixed and re-recorded so much that I got to the point of losing the soul (from my point of view). I spent weeks concentrating on the details and then spent other weeks ignoring everything (doing anything but) and coming back with fresher ears. On most occasions I returned with a pleasant feeling that I was on the right track. So, to me, this is as good as I can get it. Of course, if I had the wherewithall to take it further…
Jonathan, you made a great mix. And I love your compositions. This is really good. To my (tinnitus inflicted) ears, maybe you want to make the vocal a little bit less. But I wouldn’t tune it. I’m just loving the feeling I’m getting of the rich British folk tradition. I was thinking specifically of Martin Carthy, but I have also been a huge fan of Steeleye Span. I’m guessing you know them and love them as I do. Great job overall. Can’t wait to hear the rest when you post them.
Thanks Leon. Martin Carthy is in the mix, Steeleye to a lesser extent but I have always loved the British/Irish folk traditions. Clannad in particular are a favourite.
Moggs, don’t lose the soul… never…perhaps it’s only a few steps away. If you have the Pro version of Cubase, you can try VariAudio, I’m not an expert in its usage but i might be a kind of shortcut.
You may do the extra work for the beauty of love…
On the British/Irish thing, Pentangle is my favorite.
Thanks for your comments, much appreciated. I am a touch bemused, though, as I can’t fathom where the pitch issues are that seem so flagrant that I might need VariAudio. The inflections I use are meant to be - not necessarily deliberate but allowable in my opinion. Blue Sky, in particular, comes from a yearning perspective. There is an unrevealed pain involved. But, as I said to Swetch ( in a roundabout way), others have better ears than I and, likely, better skills.
I share my music from a writer’s perspective and, although I enjoy performing and recording they are not my reason for getting up everyday.
Again, thanks for your comments, I’m sure that with some thinking time I might just revisit the recording and one never knows…