Kara-Moon Forum

Hi Folks,

    I am new to this Forum, however I remember many of you from the old Auditorium. This is my first post on this forum and I am posting a collaboration that I did fairly recently with a female vocalist (Lisa) that I met last year (through a musicians wanted add online). We have been working on stuff for a while now and have 2 completed songs so far. Some of you may have even heard this tune on the old forum without the vocals (and of course the mix and arrangement are different as well).

I am playing Bass & Guitars, keys and MIDI drums, while Lisa adds all the voices. All comments are welcome although I would especially like to hear peoples general impressions of the song as well as any critique of sounds, mixing and arragement.

Enjoy!

Hi Mad,

I really don't have any criticism for you,as this song is seemless & executed so well.
I love the jazz/funk style of this piece and the bass & guitar work are fascinating to me,as one can shake their *ss to this song and also relax to it.

All this coupled with the vocals,adds a nice,coffee-house atmosphere.Your singer has a lovely voice and she meshes very well with your music.

This uniquely crafted music encompasses the theme of the lyrics so eloquently...I'm just really enchanted by the immense creativity behind this production...a 5 star,top flight production-as also,the mixing is perfectly balanced.

What a nice entrance into this forum...nice to have you here. 8)

Cheers,

Thom

Wow what an entry here, 5 *  8)
Great groove and I noticed the great bassline.
Top production and mixing.

I hope we will hear more of this in the future.
This is top quality.

k

MAD,

Your drum/bass thing is outstanding! Some of the best synthetic drum programming(or is it live with an electronic kit?) I've ever heard. And great bass chops....
It gets especially tasty when you throw in those distorted little chords. Big mojo.

Oren.

 :o Great bassline ! it works great around drums.
Excellent production : as I always experiment, if you use real instruments you can get more realism and more playing expressiveness, but you usually take the risk to do a dirtier mix. This is not the case
Great vocals
Well done

Cheers

Well I think everyone else has already said it - Good work!

+1

Outstanding first post!

Hi Thom,
   thanks for the compliments on the song.Lisa (the vocalist) and I spent quite a bit of time getting this one right (especially as it was our first collaboration). I also spent a lot of post time working on the mix and mastering. It's really interesting to hear your impression of the feel of the music "shake *ss and relax". I had never thought of it that way, but I guess I also like music (hwne I'm listening to music) that is like that.


Thanks for listening and I'm glad you enjoyed it  :)

I will be posting the second finished song that we did soon.

Thanks for the compliments Kara (or was it Rony?). Bass is my main instrument, so you will pretty much always get some prominent live bass in my stuff.

Thanks for the welcome ;D

Hi Oren,

Thanks for listening, and the nice compliments on the song. The drums are midi, played mostly from groove libraries (with a few tweaks and modifications in the editor). I actually can't play drums at all, but I know what I like and can usually find the right beats to put together.
 ;D

Hi Laguna Rising I remember you from the old Auditorium. Glad to see some old friends  :-
I did spend a really long time experimenting with the mix and sounds on this song as I was looking to develop a sound of my own. I am also really into HiFi and great sounding recordings from the music that I listen to, so I felt I had to get something pretty good (or I would have never been satisfied).

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the compliments ;D

Hi MAD (I am mad too  ;D )

Cool tune here. Excellent.

I liked the vocal, the girl have a "presence", like the girl from "Everything but the girl" duet.
The sound is good, not that clean but cleaner is not always better  ;)

Anyway I think that maybe using more different reverb on each instrument would help to have a better separation. Sometimes all the sounds are a bit too melted, giving a kind of heavy brightness. I dont know how to explain it better sorry.

A bit smoother and warmer can be a good idea I think.

But as I said before, this is really a superb song, soulful and with a lot of feeling.
Thanks to share!

bye

mag

Hi Magma,
    thanks for the compliments and the great suggestions. I think I know what you mean about the brightness of the song (i was going for quite an "in your face" sound with this one), and there is almost no reverb on the voice.

I will be posting my second song (Torus) that I completed in collaboration with Lisa, later today. You will be able to see how that one was mixed (I tried for a bit warmer sound with less presence). See what you think of that one too, to see if that is what you were thinking. As you can see I am still trying to find just the right balance of clarity and warmth (which is not easy).


Thanks again  ;D

This song is a great entry to our forum.
Some first class sounds here with a superb singer and great production.
It certainly puts us amateurs to shame!  :'(

Looking forward to hearing some more like this.
 ;)
James

Good song and great singing.

I like the vocal sound as it is. Very upfront. I wish I could say the same for the bass sound. The part itself is great but in my opinion the basssound is too raw for this type of music ( did you eq or compress it at all?) and it seems to muddy the mix and cloud the drum part. Maybe that's what Mag meant as well with "smoother".

Thnaks for the nice compliments James  ;D

Thanks for the comments Martin. I did go back and listen to the sounds again several times, as I wanted to hear what you were hearing. I would agree that the bass in general is a bit aggressive (but that is mostly my style, especially on the fretless). I did do slight hardware compression during recording the bass and a bit in the mix, so I don't think that would be it.

I think it may have something to do with the conversion to MP3 format. I flipped back and forth between the original and the MP3 and noticed a definite shift in the tonal quality and muddiness. This is part of the reason that I kind of dislike the whole MP3 thing, as I find people these days are satisfied with far poorer sound quality than was even available on CD 15 years ago (can't even imagine paying 0.99 to download an MP3).

Anyway it looks like I have to do some more experimenting with the CD to MP3 coverting process (as I usually just do a basic conversion from the WAV file), as I have read that this can be tweaked and fiddled with.

Thanks for the great comments...this gives me something new to read up on and try to learn  ;D

Hey MAD! Nice to see you round here. I always thought most of the music you posted at the Auditorium would work well with vocals.

This sounds great. The vocals do make it work.

I'm heading over to your second tune now with anticipation!!

Thanks for the comments Fred. Nice to see you again as well  ;D