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For those who have been keeping up, the process continues.

5 days ago we had an executive meeting with the producers, sound engineer, song writer and composer, as well as the singer and all musicians. It was an absolute blood bath which left much of the song on the cutting room floor. But a plan was decided upon. We would salvage all we could and rebuild from the ground up.

A detailed punch list of items to fix was agreed upon and it was back to the studio.

Pitch corrections:
• 1:00 "our" sounds like it's being pitched corrected into two different notes, when it should be a single note. - This is an artifact I can’t fix in Melodyn. I need to go back and substitute another take for this very small part. It took literally days to fix this 1 second glitch in my vocal. None of the prior takes could be used since. I simply was not able to swap a good one in since they just don’t match the tone of the current version. I may have inadvertently mixed down a track with FX on it at some point and now can’t reproduce it. I know not to do this, but I still mess up at times. I re-sang this and concluded an 80% improvement in the elimination of the gltch.
• 1:32 "the" sounds off. Perhaps use the prior pitch instead of going down? - This could go either way, so I left as is.
• 1:42 "leave" sounds flat, should be a higher note. - < Damn, good ears. I see this and hear it now and have fixed it.
• 2:24 "have" sounds flat, should be a higher note < Wow, right again. I have fixed it.

Intro Melody with Vibraphone.
• “… the notes on the vibraphone at the start (0:06) and the end (0:24) are too far after the beat.
• Yes notes are generally way behind the beat but still fall on an interval of the beat. I interpret this to mean it is still musical but very loose and free. I suspect the problem is that when I sing this melody I am more straight in time with the primary beat. This could have accounted for why I stopped playing the melody once my vocals start.
• However, with the drum playing a steady tick and the vibraphone missing the beat, it sounds like sloppy playing.
• I tried reworking the midi melody from the Vibraphone but was not able to get any thing I liked more than I got. So I remove the drums during this intro 8 bars and have the drums now coming in only after the melody. So hopefully the clash is less noticeable.
• I attribute this problem to trying to use the BB midi melodist directly (copy and paste) instead of replaying it. If fact the BB melody was actually the inspiration for the actual melody I sang, and not the note for note and same timing.

Simplify the Arrangement.
• It's best to have less in the first place. There are some things that people just won't hear, or aren't important - To simplify the arrangement, I separated the piano and guitar so they were not playing at the same time.
• The percussion at the end is unnecessary - Since it is such a very short ending. I decided to leave the crash as is.


Summary
Fact is, it has been a painful process. The amount of time and effort to get this to the current level greatly surprised me. Don’t get me wrong, the improvement is significant to my ears. But it was getting painful near the end. Not sure I have the love for the song I had weeks ago when I started the process. But I did learn a lot which will be helpful going forward. Time to put this to rest.

"No song is ever really done, we just run out of time or give up and stop working on it."

None of Us Are Getting Out Alive - 050523