PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Norma Kelly BIAB Songs

Hi Folks.
A few months ago I posted a link to a song titled "If I Could Only Fly" generated in BIAB and sung by Norma Kelly from Perth, Western Australia.
Since then we have completed six more songs and have almost completed the project and I have uploaded all of them to a site called Sound Cloud.
For those who are interested I have included a link to the site where the songs can be played, however, they are not downloadable as this is a
commercial project. If you have any trouble with the link just go to soundcloud.com and search for "Norma Kelly". the songs are in .wav format
for best quality.
I would be very interested in your much valued comments as I am still on a fairly steep learning curve, however, BIAB has made the journey somewhat easier.
What a fantastic piece of software.

Best regards,

Paul Young

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=norma+kelly

Awesome job. I like the jazz stuff, that said I don't know many country tunes at all.

What was your workflow, ie Band in a Box to...then plug ins etc?

It's a really nice, full, sounding opus. Very nice level of compression I noticed. Not a lot of dynamics tho'. But clean as a whistle.

Wish some harmony had been done there Mate. Otherwise, good on ya.

Hi John and Russell

Thanks for taking the time to comment, it is much appreciated. This journey is about learning, learning and more learning!!!
To answer your question John, all the instruments are generated using Real Tracks however there are a couple of tricks I use before rendering to give me
more control over the final mix. Firstly I pan all the instruments to the middle and then remove all the reverb to give me completely dry tracks. The drum track is stereo by
default so panning within the kit is already done. I then render all the tracks to individual .wav files in stereo with the exception of the bass and solo tracks which are rendered
in mono. I find it's particularly important to have the bass in mono as this helps it sit comfortably with the kick drum in the final mix. Most bass guitars are played through a mono amp
in a live situation anyway. I then import all the tracks into my DAW, Nuendo 4, where all the tidying up is done and the vocals added. Nuendo comes bundled with a great
selection of VST"s however, after doing a bit of research on the net, I decided to invest in a VST package called Mercury Waves Bundle. It wasn't cheap but boy was it worth it.
This package is used by most professional studios around the world and the results speak for themselves. I probably will never use most of them, however, those I do use
have made the investment worthwhile. For guitar and bass I use a plugin called Amplitube X Gear. This allows you to build your own amp and speaker box combination to suit the song
as well as an array of effects pedals that guitarists use. Outboard hardware consists of a Phonic Helix Board 8 channel fire wire desk which has zero latency and a Samson CO1
condenser Mic....surprisingly inexpensive but it dose a great job. Once the final mix is done I then import it into Wave Lab for mastering. One thing I have learnt is that you
can have the best gear in the world but you have to learn how to get the best out of it.

Russell, your comment regarding vocal harmony is spot on. Norma, in spite of her obvious vocal ability, just don"t have an ear for harmony....something I consider a gift. In all her
years as a professional singer she has always had backup vocalists. Unfortunately my vocal ability leaves a lot to be desired so I have not been able to contribute in this area.
We have put the word out around town but so far we have not found anyone suitable, however, the search will go on. For this reason the mixes you have heard are
not set in concrete and are open to interpretation.

Once again thank you both for your comments they are much valued. We will keep on rockin' and see where the journey takes us.

Best regards,

Paul

A little carefull use of the TC harmony plug in in biab would be an option.

Nice work. I'd like a touch more reverb in spots, but that's personal preference. That's for both instruments and the vocals in spots.

There are a few spots (like at 2:08 on "Young At Heart" where Norma sings "extremes") that show up now and then where Norma gets a bit sloppy. You might want to have a close listen and clean them up. Or not.

The vocals on "Misty" sound a bit quieter than the instruments around it. I didn't notice that on any other song.

"If I Could Fly Away" could definitely use harmony! There are a couple approaches you could take. Perhaps simplest would be to add a backing of "oooh" and "aaaah" in back based on the current chord. For example, if the current chord is a "C" (C,E,G), multi-track her singing those notes. That wouldn't clever writing, but would fill things out and be pretty darned effective.

If you want to get a bit more clever, you could write a harmony part in thirds and sixths below the melody.

=== START OF REALLY BORING STUFF ===
I'm including this here because you sort of allude to coming up with a harmony part as being some special skill. It is, but with some effort just about anyone can come up with something good and usable.

The general rule to follow is to give good harmonic support. So if the melody note is a "basic tone" of the chord (root or 5th), use a "guide tone" (3rd or 7th of the chord) on the harmony, and vice versa, sticking with a note that's a 3rd or 6th below the melody. If the melody note doesn't belong to the chord, use the 3rd or 6th which creates the smoothest (i.e. shortest distance) motion. For the start and end of the phrase, you can use other intervals, like a unison, octave or fifth.

For example, if you've in the key of C and have a Cmaj7 chord (C,E,G,B), the "basic" tones are "C" (root of the chord) and "G" (5th of the chord), and the "guide" tones are "E" (3rd of the chord) and B (7th of the chord).

Continuing the example, if the melody note were an "E" (which is a "guide" tone, because it's the 3rd of the chord), you would use a "basic" tone on the harmony - either a "C" or a "G". You want to pick the note which forms an interval of a 3rd or 6th. The "C" is a 3rd under the "E", and the "G" is a 6th under the "E", so they both are good to use. So you'd pick the one which moves the smoothest (shortest distance) to the next note.

If you've got a note like "D" in the melody against a Cmaj7 chord, the note obviously isn't a chordal. So you'd pick either a "B" (a 3rd under the "D") or an "F" (a 6th under the "D") - whichever gives the smoothest voice leading.

These are jazz harmony rules, so it assumes there's a 7th in pretty much every chord, be it a Major 7th or a flattened 7th. As with all things musical, use your ear as the final judge, and you'll be able to work something out.

If you'd rather not go those routes, you could enter the melody into BiaB and have it generate a harmony for you.

=== BACK ON TRACK AGAIN ===

Recording a harmony part is pretty straight forward, once you work out what you're going to sing. Record the part onto a guide track. Set your multitrack on "loop" mode, and sing along with the guide track. Repeat a bazillion takes. Eventually you'll end up with something usable, and you can stack several takes to get a nice, fat chorus behind you.

Another option is to take the melody and slice it into parts (at each note). You can then manually pitch-shift the melody the a harmony part. But it's always better to have someone sing the part!

Anyway, nice work.