Like Cinderella

Female:
The night is calling
I hear the wind that whispers through the trees
Somebody's out there
Somebody who's a dreamer just for me

I will appear
Like in some fairy tale
Waiting to be
Swept off my feet

Like Cinderella
But no fairy godmother
And no glass slipper
Well, maybe
Not much like her at all

Every night
I chase the same siren call
Looking forever for that damned ball

Male:
The night is falling
I hear the wind that's calling out to me (Where can he be?)

Guiding me somewhere
Somewhere that I'm supposed to be (How should I know?)
Will she appear like in the fairy tale? (I'm no princess)
Wish I could sweep her off her feet (My aching feet)

Like Cinderella
And I'll be her Prince Charming (My poor feet)
In shining armor
Not really,
I'm not like that at all (I hate these heels)

Every night
I chase the same siren call
I bet I'll never find that ball
I bet I'll never find that ball


Instruments
1569:Bass, Electric, Soul60sA-B Ev 110
1578:Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm Soul60sA-B Ev 110
1572:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Soul60sHighA-B Ev 110
1575:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Soul60sLowA-B Ev 110
3773:Guitar, Electric, Background FunkyGroove60sSoulRiff Ev16 095
~425:Organ, B3, Background Blues Sw 120
Soul60sEv^3-a:Snare, HiHat , b:Snare, Bass Drum, Ride

Signal Chain
Master: Lurssen Mastering Console, Finsher Retro (Vinyl History)
Female Vocal: Greg Wells VoiceCentric
Female Alt Vocal: Sunset Sound Studio Reverb (Plate 2)
Male Vocal: Greg Wells VoiceCentric
Male Alt Vocal: Sunset Sound Studio Reverb (Chamber/Studio 2)
Drums: Finisher Retro (Too Old Tube), Vulf Compressor (Old School Crunch)
Bass: RBass Mono
Piano: EZMix (Piano 2)
Rhythm Guitar 1: TrackSpacer, Retro Finisher (Soul Signal Chain), EZ Mix (Bright Spring Reverb)
Rhythm Guitar 2: TrackSpacer, Retro Finisher (Duo Vibe)
Rhythm Guitar 3: TrackSpacer, Retro Finisher (CEO Chorus)
Organ: EZMix (Organ 1)



The Back Story
For those unfamiliar, Eleanor Forte is a synthetic voice for the program Synthesizer V. The "AI" refers to the use of neural networks to generate the vocal. The harmonic resolution isn't as good as their concatenative synthesis method they have for some of the voices, but I think the synthetic vocal is quite good in other respects.

Fortunately, you don't actually have to understand how any of that works to use the software - you just type words in onto the piano roll notes, and it's sung back in the voice you choose. wink

I'd pre-ordered the Eleanor Forte AI voice when it was announced back in July, and the vendor sent a download link for people who had pre-ordered this week. I haven't done much songwriting lately, so I figured it was time to have a go at it.

The style _SOL60S2 is the backbone of the song, with rewrite of the chords and the addition of two more guitars. The style of the track reminded me a lot of The Eagles, although the song doesn't. I wanted to keep it short, so I kept it to two verses. I really like putting holds in songs, so I added a couple of those, along with a long hold to end the song. BiaB added an ending tag with an organ glissando, so I knew I had to work that in somewhere. (I ended up using it twice).

I've been intending to write something completely frivolous for a while, so I started with the idea of dancing, with the singer comparing herself to Cinderella, only to realize she had nothing in common. That got the first verse written, but having blown my only idea on the first verse, I wasn't sure where to go. I didn't want to extend the song with a third verse, so having the second verse echo the first verse from the male perspective seemed like a good way to solve the problem.

I don't have a male English voice for SynthV, so I pitched the voice down an octave and adjusted a number of parameters. I wasn't thrilled with the results, so I ended up doubling the vocal with a "Lite" version of Eleanor Forte (the non-AI version). I ended up doing that with the female vocal as well.

I had written the melody so that a counter-line could be added, which I did on the second verse.

A bunch of rewrites later, and the vocals were done. Everything went into my DAW, where I removed chunks of instruments so everything didn't happen at once. I also used TrackSpacer to perform ducking on the guitars so the vocals would be more clear.

Normally, I spend a lot of time manually balancing the vocal, but I wanted to get the first version done quickly, so I didn't sweat it that much.

Since I was going for a '70s sort of vibe, I chose a number of low-fi effects from UJAM's Retro Finisher so I could justify having purchased it.

I'm likely to go back and adjust the mix and even the vocals, so as usual, feedback of any sort is appreciated.

I hope you enjoy it! laugh

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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