Shine Your Light - By Michee

PG Music Home

Hi All,

Here is a song I wrote.
It is called Shine Your Light
Take a listen and let me know what you think.
I don't mind critical comments as long as it is about my music.
Started out in Band in a Box then onto RealBand and finally Reaper.

****** Song Summary *************
Title: Shine Your Light

Key=A , Tempo 128, Length (m:s)=2:50
Style is _ROUNDUP.STY (Med Cty Sw w ResGuitar (120 RS))
Style Instruments are :
RealTracks in style: ~536:Bass, Acoustic, Pop Sw 120
RealTracks in style: ~372:Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming Hank Sw 120
RealTracks in style: 609:Guitar, Resonator, Background Roundup Sw 120
RealTracks in style: ~610:Mandolin, Rhythm Chop Sw 120
RealDrums in Style: NashvilleSwing8^1-Snare,Ride

LYRICS

Verse 1
Oh my Lord in my darkness will you walk with me
And shine your bright light on the way it should be
I will try every day to follow your way
Shine your light on me Lord this I pray

Verse 2
Oh my Lord will you walk down the path with me
And show me tonight how my life could be
I will try every day to walk the righteous way
Shine your light on me Lord this I pray

Chorus
Please stay by my side so I know where to go
Cause I am like a child and I need you to know
I may stumble and fall but if you’re there aglow
Shine your light on me Lord wherever I go

Verse 3
As I pass through this world with you by my side
No fear in my heart and no need for me to hide
As you walk now beside me and show me the way
Shine your light on me Lord this I pray

Chorus
You stayed by my side even though I went astray
You will be there tomorrow Just like you were there today
Your light shines on me Lord bright every single day
Shine your light on me Lord and show the way
Shine your light on me Lord and show the way

All the Best
Michee

Hi Michee,

Wow! I'm incredibly impressed. You've taken production to a whole new level with this song. I don't know what you've done but it sounds absolutely terrific. The harmony is excellent, too. I found this very very engaging.

Do you time the reverb to the beats of the music? I'm curious as this is something that I've recently discovered. In case you're not sure what I'm talking about, I'd better explain. There are 60,000 milliseconds in a minute. If a song has a tempo of 130 beats per min. this means each beat has a length of 60,000/130 = 460 ms. What I've been doing with this information is to have a delay set to around 1/8th of a beat (460/8 = 58 ms) and the decay set to 1 - 2 beats (i.e. between 460 - 920). The books tell me that a timed reverb is one of those things that makes a difference. I'm in the process of finding out if this is true or not

I'm on my third listen now, Michee. Love it!

Best regards,
Noel

Good Morning Michee,
I loved your song. Great writing and wonderful delivery. The words in the chorus were very touching and the harmony set it off. I noticed that you are using Reaper. Me to. Its a great editor. Keep up the good work. Good job.
Marty

Hi Noel,

Thanks for the good comments.
As far as the reverb/echo goes I used the Vallhallafreqecho plugin and set the delay sync to 1/16 then played around with the other settings (there are no presets) until it sounded too much then backed it off until I couldn't hear it anymore

If you have Reaper -: I have 3 plugins on my vocal
1. ReaComp with Modern Vocal as Preset.
2. M30 Reverb (TC Electronics) with Bright Vocal as Preset
3. Vallhallafreqecho set as above.

I back off all plugins until I can't hear them as per advice on this forum.
Well it seems to work.

Still learning and experimenting.

Best regards
Michee

Hi Marty,

Thanks for your good comments.

The lyrics just fell into place as a mirror of my life at that point.
I have moved on from that point now

I have only recently used Reaper as it allows most DX,DXI,VST,VSTI to function correctly.
I sometimes use EZmix plugin and it works great in Reaper.
It works to a lesser extent in RealBand hence my purchase of Reaper.

Learning is fun.

Best regards
Michee

Hey Michee,
I love those harmonies. Enjoyed this one very much. Nice sound and uplifting.

Quote:

If you have Reaper -: I have 3 plugins on my vocal
1. ReaComp with Modern Vocal as Preset.
2. M30 Reverb (TC Electronics) with Bright Vocal as Preset
3. Vallhallafreqecho set as above.

Thanks Michee. I don't use Reaper but I'm going to get it. It looks incredibly impressive and for the price, I can hardly go wrong. Thanks again for all the information.

Noel

Hi Josie,

Thanks for the nice comments.

I did the harmony in Biab with one up. Imported into RealBand and set the volume so that it was just audible.
Re-sang the vocal so that I could make that vocal the main one.
Then moved all tracks into Reaper to finalize using plugins to warm the vocals (I would not use Reaper if RealBand had the same things like f.ex. envelopes, VST, DX, etc etc.)

Best regards
Michee

Nice song, Michee. As always, I appreciate the message. It was reminiscent of Red Foley in places.

It’s all been said, great song, outstanding vocals and supreme lyrics.

Two thumbs up!

PS – did I mention that you have an outstanding voice?

Michee,

What a great tune - everything else has been said. There has been so much talk about Reaper - that I am giving it a try - still learning my way around it.

Take Care

Hi Michee,

I'm also tremendously impressed with this. I think it's yet another shining example of what can be achieved with our software. Keep up the good work.

Jim

Nice, work!

I like the short intro and jumping right into the vocal, and the choice on instrumentation is light and jaunty.

Only a couple of critical notes:

I think there's too much FX on your vocals, and it gives it a bit of a "karaoke" sound. It's particularly noticeable in the gaps between vocals, such as at 0:05 and 0:06.

If you want to keep it that wet, you might consider cutting it back a bit at the "empty" spots, so it's not apparent. The "right" way to do that in Reaper is probably to create an envelope to control the wet/dry level on the reverb. I prefer to create a separate track for the reverb, send the vocals to that track, and control the amount of reverb in the mix with a volume envelope.

But I don't think there's a need to cover your voice in reverb - it sounds better with less.

The slide guitar is a great sound, but at places like 0:12 it's sort of noodling around aimlessly under the vocal. At the gap in the vocals at 0:18 - where a fill probably should go - it stops playing. You probably want it doing the opposite, playing less under the vocal, and jumping it to add fills. That's exactly what it does at 0:25, and it sounds great there. There are a couple of other places where you could do that.

The harmony at 1:00 sounds nice, but it would be nice to hear a bit more of them, instead of being so far back in the mix.

At 2:09 the harmony timing is a bit off on the words "went" and "today". If that wasn't intentional, it's pretty easy to correct with a bit of cutting and pasting.

Again, nice work.

Hi Pat,

Thank you for your nice comments.

Best regards
Michee

Hi Mario,

Thank you for your nice comments.

Best regards
Michee

Hi Powderman,

Thank you for your nice comments.

Yes Reaper is a very cost effective DAW, and it works great (given the learning curve

)

I still think that a song recorded with BiaB is very very good without resorting to mixing as the folks at PG have vast experience with music.

Best regards
Michee

Hi Jim,

I agree with you about the software.
I would never,never have found the joy of music if it hadn't been for BiaB.
I would dearly love to be able to play licks on my guitar so that I could place them in my songs (but arthritis restricts that plan

)

Thank you for your nice comments.

Best regards
Michee

Hi dcuny,

Thank you for your nice and constructive comments.

Quote:

I think there's too much FX on your vocals, and it gives it a bit of a "karaoke" sound. It's particularly noticeable in the gaps between vocals, such as at 0:05 and 0:06.

I appreciate your bringing this to my attention.

Quote:

If you want to keep it that wet, you might consider cutting it back a bit at the "empty" spots, so it's not apparent. The "right" way to do that in Reaper is probably to create an envelope to control the wet/dry level on the reverb. I prefer to create a separate track for the reverb, send the vocals to that track, and control the amount of reverb in the mix with a volume envelope.

I never thought to create a new track and only place the reverb on that track so I could control the reverb on my vocals with the envelopes (good shout)
I will try that when I get the time.
Do I just send the vocal to the reverb or receive the reverb in the vocal (I'm taking baby steps here

)

Quote:

The slide guitar is a great sound, but at places like 0:12 it's sort of noodling around aimlessly under the vocal. At the gap in the vocals at 0:18 - where a fill probably should go - it stops playing. You probably want it doing the opposite, playing less under the vocal, and jumping it to add fills. That's exactly what it does at 0:25, and it sounds great there. There are a couple of other places where you could do that

Yes I have to agree with you that it is one failing that you can't get Biab to just play those notes where you want them (I'm talking RealTracks here)
I have yet to perfect the cutting and pasting method, but, hope to reach that lesson sometime soon.

Quote:

The harmony at 1:00 sounds nice, but it would be nice to hear a bit more of them, instead of being so far back in the mix.

At 2:09 the harmony timing is a bit off on the words "went" and "today". If that wasn't intentional, it's pretty easy to correct with a bit of cutting and pasting.

I deliberately left the harmonies set back because they sound too mechanical (done in TC Helicon in Biab) as I am hopeless with singing my own harmonies, tried it been there and it just doesn't work

As to the timing, yes I still have to do the cut and paste lesson but I will get there.

Once again thank you for helping me with your very helpful comments.

Best regards
Michee

Quote:

Do I just send the vocal to the reverb or receive the reverb in the vocal (I'm taking baby steps here )

Confusingly, they're the same thing in Reaper. You can either click the io button on the vocal track, and select the reverb track from the Sends dropdown, or click the io button on the reverb track and select the vocal from the Receives dropdown. Just make sure the reverb FX is sending out only the "wet" portion of the reverb, not the "dry" part, since the vocal track's got that covered.

Quote:

Yes I have to agree with you that it is one failing that you can't get Biab to just play those notes where you want them (I'm talking RealTracks here)

That's the really nice thing about RealTracks - you can generate a bazillion riffs, and then if it doesn't match what you wanted, assemble it yourself. I usually have BiaB generate a bunch of tracks, and then cut and paste my favorite into the target. I'm sure you've got something comparable in RealBand and PowerTracks.

In addition to cutting and pasting a solo together, you can also edit individual by slicing them at the start and end. Once you've isolated a single note you can use Alt+MouseDrag to stretch it to fit, or Shift+9 and Shift+0 to move the pitch up or down a half step. It's great for those RealTrack riffs that have the perfect contour, but you want them to hit a specific target note, or when the soloist plays an "outside" note that you want to change. (I'm looking at you, BossaNova Flute player!

)

Quote:

I deliberately left the harmonies set back because they sound too mechanical (done in TC Helicon in Biab) as I am hopeless with singing my own harmonies, tried it been there and it just doesn't work.

Singing harmonies is the same as singing the melody - it's just a matter of getting it "in your ear". Try singing it without the melody track, to make sure you're got it solid. I'm no good at memorizing stuff, so I just take things one phrase at a time.

Check out the Recording Multiple Alternative Takes option in the Reaper manual. Basically, you can loop a section of the song, and do dozens of takes in a row. Then you can cut and paste your vocal from your "best bits".

ReaTune is your friend here - turn on Track/Update pitch graph in the Manual Correction tab to see you what note you're singing. You can turn on the options in the Correction tab to snap the pitches to the scale, or manually draw in the fixed pitches in the Manual Correction tab.

It takes ReaTune some time to drag a note to the proper pitch - if the Attack Time parameter is too short, you sound too robotic. In some cases, it might make sense to isolate a single note and use Shift+9 and Shift+0 to shift it up/down a half step.

Seeing the notes that you're singing can be depressing, because you can see exactly what you're doing wrong. When I'm scooping pitches or going flat at the end of notes, it's all there on the graph. I've also found out that notes I'm singing aren't the notes I thought they were. But it's very helpful for making corrections, too!

So once you've cut and pasted and pitch corrected a version of yourself singing in tune, instead of using that as the final vocal, you might instead want to use it as a guide vocal and have another go at the harmony.

Hi dcuny,

I really appreciate your help in this forum.
I am only just skimming the surface with all this mixing magic (not yet dived below the surface - well sometimes, with confusing results)

So your help in explaining how and most importantly WHY you should try something is very welcome.
I have generated many riffs in RealBand as you say but, and it is a big but,
I am not a musician (in the sense I don't read music, I just feel music) and after listening to many different riffs I can't make my mind up what (musically) will enhance the song.
That said, I will endeavor to take what you say on board and try my very best to improve.

Once again, thank you for your help.

Best regards
Michee

Quote:

I am not a musician (in the sense I don't read music, I just feel music) and after listening to many different riffs I can't make my mind up what (musically) will enhance the song.

First, don't worry that much about being able to read music. Don't get me wrong - it's a great thing to have and learn. But it's a different skill set than being able to compose or even hear music. Reading music won't help you come up with musical ideas, or get you closer to that "feeling" the music, which really is most important thing.

If you're worried about making the "right" choice, there's only one rule in music:

If it sounds good, it is.

Opinions of "backseat drivers"

are based on our own expectations of what the song should be. Ask six people people what should be done, you'll get a dozen different answers. What's important is that your choices match your goals for the song.

Music theory won't give you "one true" choice, either. Most of the "rules" of music were written after a particular style was already dead, to make educated guesses at why composers made particular decisions. And if you go back and apply those "rules", you'll often find the composer "breaking" those rules because the composer's choice sounds better.

One reason you might be having trouble deciding is because often what will best enhance a song is to take stuff away. Less really is more. If you fill every single gap with a solo, it starts getting trite and predictable. So if you can't decide what will best enhance the song, consider leaving it out.

Now, if your problem is that RealTracks give too many choices... Well, you can talk to PG Music about that.