I LOVE Lou Reed! You and I are clearly in the same situation vis a vis vocals. My advice is to just give it a try. My best results (which are still pretty bad) have been when I've taken more of an "acting" approach, putting on a particular character or "sound". Not sure if that makes sense. Like an actor putting on an accent. Nothing like my real speaking voice or even my real singing voice. Takes a bit of practice and experimentation. Also, I do a lot of comping of the vocals. Record multiple takes of short passages in Logic, which is really easy to do. Then comp the takes selecting the best parts (also very easy in logic). Trying to do a complete front to back vocal performance is hopeless for me and even the pros don't attempt that when recording, I think. Comping is very common.

Then processing. Obviously EQ and reverb and compression. I typically use double-tracking as well. Sometimes the Waves ADT plugin. Sometimes just copy parts of the audio track and offset the second track by couple of milliseconds.

My biggest challenge is pitch correction. I really haven't mastered that, although I have the tools to do it.

So, my advice is to give it ago. Your tracks are really good and it would be great to hear some vocals on top of them. Especially if you can do a Lou Reed thing.

Eric

Thanks, Paul. Definitely some Devo in there I think. Not so sure about Super Mario! :) Was kind of fun to create this track, testing out different "characters" for the vocals. I can't sing worth a damn, unlike you. But, I keep thinking that there must be some character voice that will be passable. I've been playing around with combining a vocoder track doubled with a heavily processed straight vocal track, plus auto-tune to mitigate the worst instances of my inability to keep any note on pitch. Still trying to find the magic combination. Would be better I think to just find some good vocalists to collab with. :).

Thanks, Larry. Sorry for the very very late response to your comment. I've been not so good about getting back into Looperman, I'm afraid. Life tends to get in the way. :)

Thanks for the comment, Jamieh. I apologize for not responding sooner. Just discovered that I had a bunch of comments that I'd missed somehow. Definitely interested in trying a collab some time.

Eric

Thanks for the comment, CitizenMofo. I'm sorry I didn't respond to your comment much earlier. Didn't mean to be rude. I didn't realize I had these comments on the trackI

I wholeheartedly agree with you that I need a better vocalist. I keep searching, but seems to be very hard to find anybody that is willing to work with me. But, I live in hope. :)

Will need to check that out, Steve. I really appreciate all the leads you give me. Very sorry that I didn't respond sooner. We DO need to reconnect and grab a coffee sometime soon, as you suggested. So nice to have a fellow Looperman members here in Ottawa.

Thanks for the positive and detailed comment on this track, Allochtune. It is really helpful to get detailed comments, particularly where improvements or alternative approaches are suggested. I will definitely check out the VST you suggested. I wasn't aware of it. Your comment on the melody at 2:17 was interesting to me. I might just revisit it with your suggestion in mind. '

Thanks again.

Eric

Thanks, Steve. I really wasn't sure if this did sound 80's at all. I'm actually a bit surprised at the vocals. Three very different vocal styles in the same song. Not quite sure what to make of that.

Anyway, yes I'd be very interested in having you enhance the stem. I'd like to see what you can do with it.

Should I output it entirely without any effects? And, would you want a stem of the instrument tracks all together (i.e., without the vocal) so you can work on the vocals in context?

There are actually about 5 separate vocal tracks I think, including the "echo" vocals at the end of the verses. I should be able to bounce them all down into one vocal stem, but you might want me to keep them separated if you think that you might be applying different effects to different parts of the vocal.

Let me know how you want the stems. In the meantime, I'll research how to produce stems in Logic Pro. (Have never done it before.)

Thank-you Eighteen. From the response so far, it looks like I'm heading in the right direction on this track. I really must try to write the lyrics for the other two verses. That's going to be the key to getting this one finished. :)

Eric

Thanks for the encouragement, square root of minus one! :) (I really need to look that up!) I had to go on Youtube to checkout the bass from Dr. Mario Fever theme. Learning every day here on Looperman! On reflection, I think I could drop 8 bars of the fadeout. I usually only have a total of 8 bars, but for some reason this time I used 12. Will experiment. Easily done. I can just change the automation on the volume and drop it down more quickly.

Eric

Hi, Spivkurl. I didn't know what SAW was either until a few days ago when Crucethus mentioned it in the forum. I figured it out. It is short for: Stock Aitken Waterman the songwriting/producing team behind Rick Ashley and probably a lot of others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Aitken_Waterman

Definitely not band saws! :)

I do think I should tone down the reverb a bit. Better still, get a decent vocalist do I don't have to disguise things with massive amounts of effects. The vocal track has EQ, compression, ADT vocal doubling, and reverb on it. I recorded probably a minimum of 6 takes for each section of the song and then learned how to comp the vocals in Logic Pro. Didn't have to use autotune this time, which is good because I'm not very proficient with it.

I'm not familiar at all with Tubeway Army. I will check that out immediately.

Thanks for the encouragement, NE. I have a bad habit of losing interest/patience with tracks before they are properly finished and just moving on to something new. I'll try to stick a bit longer with this one and get it completed. Then, I would like to try my hand at a SAW-type track.

Crucethus (also from Ottawa, so we can meet in person periodically) says they aren't all that difficult to make, but he's actually got a degree in music and is really knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. What's easy for him is going to be much more of a challenge for me, I think. But, I actually like SAW stuff and attempting to replicate tracks is a really good way to learn how stuff works.

At least on this track I managed to come up with a structure that included a verse, bridge, chorus, and outro. Also got a lot more experience comping vocal takes in Logic Pro. That's progress for me!

Thanks for inspiring/challenging me to attempt this. Has been fun so far.

Eric