Originally Posted By: Icelander
[I mean, going from the floating, somber style of the original to the laid back 'bouncy' style in my rendition has to add to that whole 'upbeat'.. or maybe I'm just stating the obvious here, what say you? smile

Not necessarily.

Many "sad" songs in minor keys are perceived as more upbeat as their tempo increases - one of the things you did.

And by making the tempo regular instead of much more rubato, you changed the interpretation of phrases as distinct "gestures", putting the focus on staying on beat and a steady tempo, instead of looking at each bit as an expressive and independent gesture.

In perceiving music, there's a tendency to map the tempo and rate to physical motion. Thus the interpretation of "halting" or "hesitating". Having a steady tempo removes that from the music.

It's a bit like auto-tuning. The notes remain the same, but amount of pitch variation within the note is altered.

Similarly, the position of the events in you song remain the same, but rate of change - which contains a lot of emotive power - is removed. You haven't quantized the placement or tempo - you've made the rate of change a constant.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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