[Music] Where Are You? - FINAL

Re-recording of a song I wrote back in 2003. It’s about the search for the mythical “perfect woman” that mankind only dreams about.

It seems my life has taken me in some unusual directions
And every day bring something different and something new
But though I’ve traveled a million miles and seen a thousand faces
The one I haven’t yet seen is you.

I thought I found my true love once, or maybe that was twice
But destiny was something they were not though they were quite nice.
Still my eyes go searching through the throngs in hopes of finding her
The one that I have loved throughout the years.

Why haven’t you yet sprung forth from out of my dreams?
Like some proverbial Athena to give my life meaning.
And doomed I am to wander until it’s you I find.
Until then I will love you in my mind.

(Guitar solo)

Until then I will love you in my mind.
Until the day I hold you, never to let go,
My heart will remain empty, I know.

Where Are You?

Thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc. are definitely welcome so that I can make any necessary changes before posting it on BandCamp.

Edit (4/22): added a low-pass filter to the vocals with a cutoff at 7 kHz to dial down the brightness in the upper harmonics.

Tweaked the stir fry on the drums so that it’s not so distracting and made other, miscellaneous, changes to the drum line that probably won’t be noticeable unless you’re doing a direct A-B comparison.

Dropped the vocal and solo tracks by 1 dB so that it doesn’t crowd out the other tracks but doesn’t get lost in the mix either.

Edit (4/27): incorporated new piano track provided by Doug (twilightsong) and releveled the result. Done!

Hi Larry,

Nice song, great performance and mix (though not a stlye of music I would normally listen to im sorry to say)

Just a couple of small things, the delay on the guitar solo is not quite working for me, im not sure it suites or fits in with room vibe/feel you got going on in the mix.

The stir effect on the brushes (again, not sure on this stlye of music so I could be wrong) seemed to distract me a little, im listening to this on my cans but wonder if that could do with coming down a couple of db, maybe?
Other than that, sounds smooth to me! :slight_smile:

Cheers
Sav

Yeah, I just mixed this during the afternoon today so I didn’t yet get a chance to audition it in my car until after I posted. I think the stir fry, the vocals and the solo all need to come down by 1 or 2 dBs.

As far as the frequency distribution, I’m happy with it. It sounds a bit bright in my car, but my car’s stereo doesn’t have a great bass response so I take that into consideration. When I replayed the MP3 on my near field monitors the bass comes through nicely.

Good to hear someone doing some vocal Jazz. For me, the vocal is a tad too bright. The piano could be more active/reactive to the singing/melody, too.

What are those room/crowd noises? :laughing:

It’s dinner jazz. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: That’s a restaurant ambiance. Heh.

The vocals were recorded on a Neumann TLM103, which is bright normally. I use it to counter the high-mids in my voice since I have nasal polyps. However, I can see why you may think it’s bright - I’ll tweak the EQ and see how it sounds.

Jazz keys are not my strength. I’m happy I made it through the song, even though this is the same MIDI source that I used when I first recorded the song almost 8 years ago. Perhaps I should ask you or Peter to give it a shot…if I gave you the chart, would you be willing to give it a shot? I don’t know if you’re a jazz player at all though.

Jazz is my forte. I believe Peter (desert, right?) could handle it, but I think he’s more Contemporary Jazz and I’m more Traditional. I don’t think I’d really need the chart

I’d be glad to do it

I’ll send you the WAV, the chart, and a bottle of scotch. :smiley: Look for a PM tonight after I get home from work.

Uploading the 44.1 / 24-bit WAVs now. I’ll send you an email to your Black Sands address.

Edit: twilight = Doug, right? These new names confuse me. I’m too old for this crap. :laughing:

Hi Larry

Good job I checked back before posting, I listened earlier this morning but didn’t have time to post. The vocal sounds much, much better now. You sound like a genuine crooner. :sunglasses: The guitar solo also fits much better.

Excellent work

Cheers

:laughing: Thanks! But it’s easy to sound like a crooner when it takes you 7 years to get a song right. :stuck_out_tongue:

V2 is sounding much better (to me anyway :smiley: )

Can’t judge levels very well on my canz, but i’ll stick my neck out at this early hour of morning and say
its sounds okey-dokey!
No distractions and guitar solo without the delay now sounds much better I think :wink:

Cheers
Sav

Heh. I didn’t think the delay was that prominent in the first place, but I saw your point about the inconsistency so I removed it. :wink:

Nice standard-y sounding song. Made me hungry, actually. Where’s that waiter?

Hi Larry,

How are you enabling the streaming? My Windows machine is loading Apple’s QuickTime which is not working for me. :confused:

Made ME thirsty. Where’s the bar? :laughing:

It’s not me. I strongly suspect it’s my ISP, which is hosted by a friend of mine for free (read: beggars can’t be choosers). If QT plays the song then it never works properly, but if Firefox’s FoxyTunes plug-in plays it in browser then it’s ok.

Download the song first. Then you can play it in its entirety from your desktop.

Larry,

Couldn’t get it to stream via google chrome of firefox ('cept the first 2 secs as you point out.) So downloaded as you suggested…

And glad I did.

A smoooooth one. :sunglasses:

Great vibe and recording. I really like that laid back shuffle. Nicccce guitar solo. Got nothing really to say about the mix, or the production. Just sounds a classy job to me.

But… at 2:24 there’s a wobble in the vocal ( on “mind”) which you might wanna listen to.

Cheers!

My singing sucks. But I’ll have a listen to it anyway. :smiley:

Thanks for the listen and the compliments. It’s only going to get better after I get the piano track from Doug.

He shoots! He scores! They win the game!

OMG Doug knocked the piano track out of the park. Release Candidate 1 is now available at the link in the first post. I had to relevel everything to accommodate the dynamics in the piano so maybe things are off a bit. Do let me know if so.

I also corrected the warble in my voice at 2:24 and adjusted the timing in “like some proverbial Athena”.

Edit: after listening to this mix in the car, I realize that there are a few issues after the beginning of the guitar solo. So I will need to make adjustments first.

Edit 2: done.

I agree, Doug’s work on the piano sound brilliant, the little run at 2.25…Sweeeet!!! :smiley:

ive said before, not the type of style i would normally listen to, but that didnt stop me enjoying
what you’ve done here! Great work Larry!

Cheers
Sav