Hi John!
You have quite a few interesting elements in this song - where ‘interesting’ = outside the norm or adding variety = good. However, it’s hard to clearly hear the relationship between the melody sung and the chords underneath. I think this is because the melody sounds like it would be tricky to sing, and also the timing is a little off in some places - maybe sounding a bit rushed? When I’ve been faced with this situation myself, here’s some of the things I do …
  • Punch in the sections that need timing amended and/or use stretch markers to align the vocal or one of those plugins that’ll do it for you
  • Put an instrument that is playing the melody underneath or alongside the vocal to reinforcement the melody, being careful that the type and volume of the instrument doesn’t make the melody disparity more prominent
  • Use Melodyne (or similar) to pitch adjust certain notes

The timbre of the vocal sounds good because it gives the impression of a young adult which suits your background given by your own trips when younger. I thought the long bus journey might also be emphasised by a fade out (I know - soooo 1980s) or an instrumental outro?

I hope you do make some refinements to this song - it’ll be worth it!

Andrew
PS This new technique you tried is one I use often. Half the time I start writing in BIAB with a style and input some chords and keep adding and subtracting until I have something appealing to me - same approach with the melody in the editable notation window. The other half usually start with a vocal line and melody that I quickly put into my iPad VoiceMemos app that I then set up in BIAB at another time.

Last edited by Andrew Dee; 02/04/26 12:44 PM. Reason: PS added
Regards,
Andrew D
Adelaide, Sth Aust
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