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You And I

you and i don't want the same things
i can see it in your eyes
the night falls
our shadows stalk the halls
we've nowhere left to hide

   love should last forever
   but we both know something's changed
   like a fire when fire has lost the flame

you don't want to hear me say it
you would rather hear me lie
our cold bed
the things we leave unsaid
the feeling we hide deep inside

   nothing lasts forever
   nothing stays the same
   did we try
   or only try to place the blame

you and i don't want the same things
but i don't want to say goodbye
i can't accept that
there's really nothing left
two strangers
both choosing losing sides

   love can last forever
   but only if we really try
   in the end
   it's for you and me to decide

The Background

TL;DR: All comments are welcome!

I started with the EMPOWER demo, and made a bunch of changes. Then I exported a backing track into SynthesizerV and worked out a melody. While working on the lyric, I did something I do far too infrequently: I changed the key from C to G to better fit the voice.

For me, writing songs is a slog and then lots of rewrites, and this was no different. You might notice each verse re-uses much material from the prior verse. This is a convenient poetic device that minimizes the amount of new material I need to write.

Still, it took days before I dropped my "Ode to Summer" song idea, and eventually came up with something workable.

Although I loved the drums in the demo song, the handclaps seemed out of place for the lyric, so the RealDrums were replaced by UJAM drums, mostly because it was easier to build a drum track with UJAM than with EZ Drummer. Then I kept the MIDI, replaced the UJAM drums with an Addictive Drums drumkit.

As usual, I added a bunch of instruments. I had bought an 80's sounding keyboard library called Rhodes Affair 2, and decided to try adding that, along with the Fret Affair 80's guitar sound. Unsurprisingly, it made it very 80's sounding.

The BiaB GrungePopGritty Guitar soloist apparently has no idea what a Maj7th chord is, and plays Dom7th chords instead. Replacing "Cmaj7" and "Gmaj7" with "Em" and "Bm" mostly fixed that, but the guitar parts required a lot of editing.

I eventually generated a bunch of sustained chords so I could simplify the guitar parts even more.

I wasn't going to have a guitar solo in the song, but after listening, my daughter said "I like it, but it needs a guitar solo" like I feared she might, so... I carved out room and added a MIDI guitar solo after a couple hours work. Spoiler: the guitar solo you hear is not that MIDI, see next paragraph.

The same daughter said "I'm not feeling it" when she heard the solo, so I ended up building it in BiaB anyway. I'm not thrilled with the effects on it, but I don't have a digital guitar pedalboard, so it'll stay like that until I get better FX.

This was a real bear to mix. It started out as a "wall of sound", and became more so as I added more instruments. Less really is more!

I'm pretty happy with the mix, but feel free to tell me where I went wrong.

Edit 1: I replaced the snare with a more genre-appropriate snare, slightly altered the guitar solo notes/FX/raised the volume, and modified the guitar solo at the end.


Edit 2: My son did some tweaking to get the bass, kick and snare to play nice. There's also a huge reverb tail after the guitar solo, which I think is too much, but be says that's what the kids are into these days it's super-dope*.

[*] I doubt anyone used the phrase "super-dope", ever. Then again, as I was leaving the mall the other day, I passed someone who said "I'd like to see the Haunted Mansion [film]", so stranger things have happened.


The Instruments
Lead Vocal: SynthesizerV (Natalie)
Backing Vocal: SynthesizerV (Qing Su)
Bass: 1010:Bass, Electric, BritInvasion Ev 140
Ac Gtr1: 406:Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming Ev 136
Ac Gtr2: 691:Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming AcRockBright Ev 120
El. Gtr1: 2535:Guitar, Electric, HeldChords Gritty
El. Gtr2: Indiginus Generation Electric Guitar
Keyboard: Rhodes Affair 2 (LA 85)
80's El. Gtr: Fret Affair
Ac. Gtr 3: Indiginus Renegade Acoustic
Drums: Addictive Drums (United Pop/Acoustic Pop)
Bg. Lead Gtr 1: 3729:Guitar, Electric, Soloist GrungePopGritty Ev 110
Bg. Lead Gtr 2: 3729:Guitar, Electric, Soloist GrungePopGritty Ev 110
Solo Guitar: 3729:Guitar, Electric, Soloist GrungePopGritty Ev 110


The FX Chain
Master Track: HoRNet ThirtyOneMK2, HoRNet MasterTool, GregWells MixCentric.(Mix Fairydust)
Lead Vocal: SynthesizerV (Natalie), GregWells VoiceCentric (Lead Vocal), Panagement2 (Heaven)
Vocal Buss: Raum (Grounded), Panagement2 (Heaven)
Backing Vocal: SynthesizerV (Qing Su), GregWells VoiceCentric (Backing Vocal), Panagement2 (Heaven)
Backing Vocal Buss: Raum (Grounded), Panagement 2 (Heaven)
Bass: TrackSpacer (ducking vocal)
Ac Gtr1: TrackSpacer (ducking vocal), Panagement 2 (Heaven)
Ac Gtr2: TrackSpacer (ducking vocal), Panagement 2 (Heaven)
El. Gtr1: Panagement 2 (Heaven)
El. Gtr2: Indiginus Generation Electric Guitar, Panagement 2 (Heaven)
Keyboard: Rhodes Affair 2 (LA 85), Panagement2 (Heaven)
El. Gtr: Fret Affair, Panagement2 (Heaven)
Ac. Gtr 3: Indiginus Renegade Acoustic, Panagement2 (Heaven)
Drums: Addictive Drums (United Pop/Acoustic Pop)
Bg. Lead Gtr 1: Raum (Airy), Panagement 2 (Concrete)
Bg. Lead Gtr 2: Raum (Airy), Panagement 2 (Concrete)
Solo Guitar: EZ Mix 2 (Guitar Solo), JS Delay w/Tempo Ping-Pong, Panagement 2 (Concrete)

David,

Love it!

You have a really nice big sound here - great mix. Natalie sound excellent.

Awesome work!

Bob

A pop song to my taste: nice melody and pleasant chording (clever way to start using something else than the base chord and the transition to the chorus is also very nice), 80's feel and Natalie is the perfect voice for it. The electric piano has nice sound, reminds me of some 80's movie soundtrack. Lyrically would be a good one for a teenage movie, although I can find deeper "read between the lines" levels fitting for AOR. The arrangement and mix are very well done. On the first listening, I didn't like the background lead guitar, but it seems that I got used to it on further listenings. Maybe the title is bit too generic, otherwise I wouldn't change a thing

Janne

Sounds Great. Natalie sounds natural, SynthV is getting to be the vocal tool of choice. I found she sounds best in her low-mid register, which works on this song. Lowering the key worked well. Excellent use of Real Tracks, Mix and Production is spot on. Excellent Job on this one.

David,
Solid tune. A bit sad, but glimpse of hope at the end. Nice vocal structure at choruses. Fun instrumentation. Mix is very clear. This is only an opinion, but I think the drums are a bit strange for this particular tune. Me thinks that jazzy or perhaps even completely different, something of old school 808 drum sound might give it another facet. Fun listen and thank you for sharing.

Misha.

David

Nice easy listen. The guitar solo sounds fine to me.

Vocals are nicely programmed and mixed.

A good tune.

Peter

Hi, Bob.

Thanks! I appreciate your positive comments.

Hi, Janne.

Thanks for the detailed comments!

I wasn't sure what to do about the title, because even once the song was done, I didn't have an idea what the title should be - not a good sign for a pop song, because it's a
failure to deliver a strong hook.

I was thinking about "Two Decide", but thought that was a bit too clever for its own good.

Thanks again for listening and posting!

Hi, Elliott.

Natalie is fast becoming one of my favorite SynthV voices. As you said, the low/mid register is where she works best.

Thanks for the kind words on the song and production, I appreciate it!

Hi, Misha.

Thanks for mentioning the ending. There's a songwriting "rule" that each verse should bring something new and change things a bit, and once I hit on that ending, it felt like I'd finally gotten to the heart of the song.

You're probably right about the drums - I didn't look too hard for a replacement. I was looking for something that had punch rather than being genre specific.

After reading your comment, I played around with putting in a LinnDrum sort of sound, but I'm not thrilled with the kits that I've got. I'll give it some more thought, though. There are some 80's kits that are available from Audiolounge (the same company that created the Rhodes Affair) that I may consider getting at some point.

I'm glad you enjoyed the listen. Thanks for stopping by!

Hi, Peter.

Cool, I'll stop worrying about it (but may eventually change the FX anyway).


Good to hear!

Thanks for listening and commenting!

I liked the drum sound per say, David. Maybe you could try something lighter for this but you're maybe already looking.
The vocal is good apart from I detected a high pitch flutter here and there but no big issue.

All in all, clever stuff.

Vic

David you are the master of the Synth V!

Natalie sounds very organic.
I liked that guitar solo, great work on that.
This must have been a bear to mix with all those instruments and effects!
Regardless you did one heck of a job on it as it sounds like it was mixed in a pro studio.
I liked the drums also.

Great job on this one David.

The guitar intro made me think of The Eagles for some reason...
The snare is very up front which suggests the bass guitar could do with being a little closer to it in level but the bass sounds like a very busy, synthy bass so maybe not.
Misha has the goods on the narrative flow...it works.
Really cool mix other than the upfront snare.

Sounds good to me, David! Vocal sounds excellent, love hearing that vibrato!

Guitar solo also sounds good. I read your note about doing it in midi, do you mean you composed it using a midi editor? Very impressive if that's the case.

Good one, enjoyed.

Hi, Vic.


I've got back and substituted a genre-specific Linn-style snare. I'm on the fence about it, as I really liked the smack of the prior snare, but I'll see.


Yep, I should go back and correct some of that.



Thanks!

Hi, Mario.



I suspect that it's just that SynthV keeps improving, but thanks!


I've gone back and update my initial comments.

After my daughter panned my MIDI solo, I went back and found something in BiaB to replace it. So I can't take any credit for the solo.


Yeah, there was just too much going on. There still is, in places, but I need to rest my ears a bit before making any more drastic cuts.


Thanks, I appreciate it!

Hi, Ray.


The snare is very up front which suggests the bass guitar could do with being a little closer to it in level but the bass sounds like a very busy, synthy bass so maybe not.[/quote]
Well, I've brought in a different snare. I should probably EQ the bass so it sits a bit better.



Good to hear. It was one of those things where I wasn't sure where the song was taking me, but I wasn't there yet. And when I finally got the right lyrics, it finally felt like it had arrived at where it was headed.


I've replaced the snare with a Linn-style snare (but still have a bit of reverb on it, so it's not quite as in your face.

Since that's one of the things I liked about that drum kit, I might put it back in, but I'll give it a chance.

Thanks for listening and the feedback - positive and negative!

Hi, Dave.


Good to hear!


Unfortunately (for me) I jettisoned the MIDI version and replaced it with something from BiaB.

It's obviously tweaked so it flows the way I want, but I can't take credit for it. I've changed the description to make that more clear.


Great, thanks for listening and posting!

David,

Love the sound of this. Fresh is the word that comes to mind. And it moves - propels you along with it.
I like the write. Especially the melody.
Won't even mention how good you make those virtual singers sound. That's a given.
I like the guitar.
The drums are interesting. The snare was...different. Good to experiment (many producers are using "different" snares these days).

I kept expecting the chorus to "soar". The verse melody seemed to indicate it would.
The chorus sounded like a bridge to me - the melody and where it went. That happened each time.
Each time, I expected that chorus to "rise".
I like when my ear is challenged with new things. This does that. Could be that repeated listens would "train" my ear and teach me something new...

You obviously put a lot of thought into each aspect of the creation of a song. I applaud you.

fj