Hi, Hans.

Originally Posted by Birchwood
It's always a pleasure to listen to your songs and read those incredible stories about how you conceived them and how they came to be.
This song is no exception, although the melody is almost the happiest song in your oeuvre.
It's a very sweet/sad song; the melody sounds cheerful, but the lyrics aren't (well... sort of).
Ha! And here I thought I was writing something mournful-sounding.

It just shows how little I know about my own song. laugh

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I recently saw a few videos on YouTube, all about Appalachia.
I've never really cared about that region, but in the videos, as you said, the people were stoic. I didn't detect any optimism; the videos were all about murders somewhere in the mountains, and no one seemed to care, except for one journalist.
Yeah, that "optimism" in the brief was probably misplaced. Historically, that Appalachian stoicism seems to have come from people with power pitting one group against another so they would see each other as the enemy. It's a script as old as mankind.

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Anyway, I really enjoyed the vocal harmonies (very good). I found the lead singer's voice a bit too sharp/harsh for my ears, but it did fit the story very well, especially in relation to those YouTube videos.
I'm glad that the final story didn't seem too displaced from reality.

The harshness in the vocal was also mentioned by someone else. I tried rolling off some of the high frequencies, but I probably need to do something a bit more surgical. It's not something that I've got much skill in, so I didn't go to deep. I tried using Vocoflex to the vocal to get a softer tone, but didn't like the results. I'm waiting for my copy of ReSing (another vocal replacement tool) to become available, and I'll see if I have better luck with that.

Thanks for listening, and your feedback! I appreciate it.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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