Originally Posted By: B.D.Thomas
Natalie reminds me indeed of Karen Carpenter, and Karen is one of my all-time favorite singers....

Hi, B.D.

Karen Carpenter is also one of my all-time favorite singers. smile

I was very happy with Natalie's voice. I've got all the native SynthV English singers, and she's now one of my favorites. There are a number of issues with her - for example, she drops a lot of final plosives like /b/ and /t/ from her words, but there are workarounds for that.

For example, I'll can stick a 16th note /d ah/ syllable to the end of a word and set the duration of the /ah/ to minimum, and that will add the missing /d/ sound. (I know that you use SynthV, which is why I'm adding this trivia).


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I like the song, a chorus would be nice, but it's not really necessary, the song works pretty well as it is now.

Thanks!

I considered writing a "real" chorus for it, but I really liked the melody, so I decided to keep it.

I was reading through a music theory text the other day, and it was talking about how melodies should have a climax point, and how beginning writers tend to repeat the climax so it loses impact.

It then went on to say that the exception to the rule is songs like lullabies, which is basically what I've written. wink


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Arrangement and production are also pretty good, nothing to complain about here.

Good to hear!

I'd initially considered adding some double reeds, but the cello filled in things nicely, so I went the lazy route. The demo song had a steel guitar on it, which I originally dropped from the song. But I wanted something that would give contrast to the cello on the second verse, so I brought it back there.


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I know this all too well... my workaround for this is to sing along with the verse, and sooner or later I find the melody for the chorus, and once I have that, the lyrics come automatically.

I create the backing track first, and then the melody. For me, that's the easy part.

Then I listen to the melody and try to figure out what it's singing. It sort of builds by accumulation, and a lot of rewriting.

Unfortunately, I rarely start with a strong idea, so it's a plodding process. If I instead began with a chorus and worked backwards, my writing process would likely be a lot more focused and much less painful.

Thanks for stopping by to listen and comment!

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?