As usual, stellar writing, performance and production.

I really liked what you did rhythmically with:

first time i saw you
you took my breath away
those emerald eyes
and a smile that seem to say

The word "emerald" was highly visual and unexpected, so it pulled me right into the song.

The high vocal at 2:38 was very pretty, loved it.

So as a song - excellent. laugh

As far as an experiment, I think that was successful as well.

I think the MIDI guitar was quite good. There were only a few places where it sounded MIDI to me - the intro, and the section you posted above. In most of the spots, it was when higher strings were plucked together - there's something about the sound on that didn't sound right to my ears.

I generally like to let my guitar notes ring past the chord change to the next "pluck", as if they were on open strings. It helps prevent that "sounds like a keyboard is playing it" sound, although I'm not sure that's what I was hearing.

The other thing is that any time the guitar is playing as exposed as it is, you're going to hear repetition of notes (and timbre) a lot more than you normally would. So doing something like adding a hammer-on, slide, or even a squeak so that the performance isn't exactly the same arpeggio is going to help distract the listener from hearing that repetition.

I really like what you did with the strings at 2:25. But I think the strings let you down there - they sound lovely as a pad, but in motion they sound like they're a keyboard patch. A gorgeous sound, just not entirely authentic.

Do I think any of these nits detract from the song, or would cause anyone other than me to care? Not at all. laugh

As an experiment on what you can attain with free MIDI, I'd call it a huge success. And a very nice song, to boot.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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