Hi! Although I'm new to posting MP3s, I've been on the Lyric boards for a few months. The attached link is to "Walk Away", a lyric I had posted in September.

I hope I'm doing the link properly:
http://www.songramp.com/view.ez?sampleid=2476

I apologize in advance for the canniness of the recording. I had to do it the ol' fashioned way from cassette to MusicMatch for lack of having the master tapes available.

Thank you in advance for any feedback! Lyrics are:

Walk Away

1.
Distance brings us closer,
Yet safety comes from miles apart
But when eyes meet and souls collide,
Please don’t touch my heart.

Chorus:
Seize my soul and melt my mind
Show me places I’d never find. . .without you.
Whisper that you want me
I know that you will need me
But tell me that you love me
And I’ll have to Walk Away.

2.
No regrets, no indecisions
Just pure passion to ignite.
Feed the fire and feel the flame
I’m begging, make love to me tonight.

Repeat Chorus

Bridge:
I need to touch, I need to feel you
Make my fantasy come alive
My reality ceases to exist until just the dream survives

3.
No commitments, no expectations
The only promise is just the hour
With dreams in hand I’ll come to you
I need to feel your power.

Chorus:
Seize my soul and melt my mind
Show me places I’d never find. . .without you.
Whisper that you want me
I know that you might need mes
But tell me that you love me
And I’ll have to Walk Away


[This message has been edited by Teri Foreman-Black (edited 11-07-2002).]

nice vocals backing vocals were great.

very soothing sounding. It sounds like there's a lot more going on in the recording that gets taken away because of the fact that it's compressed to 64kbps. I bet the CD quality wav file sounds much fuller. overall, cool beat. And the vocal layers are rather sweet as well.

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mp3.com/joearduini
soundclick.com/joearduini

Teri,

Kinda hard to make out with the production
quality. I think the vocals have a nice
R&B feel. I think using a more modern drum
sound with a more kicking snare might jazz it up a bit. I think its worth a remake with full production. I wish you had posted the
lyrics so I could follow the structure.

David
http://www.daviddouglaswright.com

Michael and Joe, Thanks for the listen and the comments. I'm glad you were able to pick up on the underlying vocals even through this poor copy.

David, thank you for the production advice and perhaps I should put the lyrics up on the song page... my apologies. I'm glad you heard enough to feel it's worth another retake; I'll make a note of your suggestion with the snare since I'd like to get the remake done soon.

Hi, Teri!
Cool, you got one uploaded!
Who is singing? I enjoyed her voice. Even though the MP3 buries the vocals and sounds, I think we can still get an idea of the quality of the piece.

How about editing the lyrics in up at the top. I thought this was pleasing overall. I do have some minor suggestions music wise and if I could see the lyrics I could indicate where some changes could be made, if you were so inclined.

JeanB

Hi Teri!

You can still get a decent sound from that process of starting with the cassette, as long as you don't go past peak in the digital file, which it must have. It distorts most of the time. I suggest re applying the cassette version to your hard drive at a lower level, then normalize to minus .50db or even up to minus .10db. It's the initial process of going to your hard drive that is most important,,,,,not to go near peak, (You don't want to see red at all on your wav file recorder). Once that happens, it will still distort, no matter what you do with the file after that.


Nice song!!!!!
John

Hi Jean! You must have made your reply post while I was adding in the lyrics <smile> Timing is everything, eh? I've been getting this subliminal message to cross over to more boards :: so I decided to upload and try critiquing on the MP3 board as well, despite the fact I'm not a musician at heart. The tips I've gotten here already on recording, uploading, etc., are phenomenal! The co-writer on this (music) sang this one and she does have a knock-out voice! Thanks for the listen, Jean.... we have to completely redo this one in the studio, so if you have any advice, I'll appreciate it. Everything was completely done on a synthesizer.

John, THANK YOU! Believe it or not (don't shudder!) I transferred this from a cassette tape experimenting for the first time and just held it up to my computer speaker. I'm off today to get an in-line which should make this a bit better. Most of my demos I have on discs but 3 are from Nashville on cassettes and I haven't reformatted from the master tapes yet. I've printed out your suggested levels and I'll give it another try once I figure how to use the in-line.

Teri,,,,I'm not shuddering at all,,,,In fact, I actually applaud your efforts to do what you had to do, with what you had to work with. We did similar things when trying to overdub for the first times, using two little cassette players, going back and forth! The FUN is the main thing. The rest will come in time, as you are planning to take the next step in the recording process anyway. It's all good,,,,any steps at all! I like the energy you must have had to be doing that technique! Cool! That explains the distortion too. It more or less couldn't be avoided!

John



[This message has been edited by dhsongs (edited 11-09-2002).]

Lol Terri. I should have checked here before asking on lyric forum one if you had music to any of your songs.
Best Of Luck,
Carl

Thanks for the listen, Carl! "Walk Away" was my first 3 years ago and I really didn't start doing anything else until 18 months ago. There are 10 more songs on www.songramp.com under "Teri"

Hi, Teri.

I'm going to be uploading some works in progress too, so thanks for being here with this.
Your chorus is a great payoff to the verses both melodically and lyrically. I was glad to see JeanB's post and so here's my thoughts before you do the final recording.
Musically, I liked everything about the chorus until the line:
"But tell me that you love me"
Melodically and chordally, that line should take us somewhere else and have tension because that is where the lyrical tension is. Musically, I liked the first 2 lines of the bridge. I would change your bridge to:
"I need your touch to survive
Make my fantasy come alive"
That third line sounded awkward to me.

Otherwise, no nits. This has a nice cool sound to it.

Vondelle

Vondelle, thanks for the time listening to this! (I've been reading your own posts with interest so I'll be sure to check in and listen on your MP3's!)

In addition to all of the recording assistance I've gotten on this one, I really do appreciate your (and Jean's) lyric inputs. I'm going to have to totally rethink that "But tell me that you love me" line in perspective with the totality of the theme.... and thank you for the bridge suggestions! I always figured a line with "ceases" would be tough to sing, although my co-writer pulled it off pretty decently! A huge thanks, Vondelle!

All right, Terri,

I'm feelin' like a dunce. Has anybody had any trouble with your link today, 'cause I wasn't able to play your song.

Ashleigh

I like it, love the way the final chorus builds, I love big finishes!!!!!!



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Ritt

Teri

The quality is more than enough to be able to tell that this is a very good song. The elements are all there. I especially liked the chorus although it could be shortened by a couple of lines and at 4:51 you'll need to cut it back some. I think this has definite commercial value and you should persue it further.

You have good musical separation between verses and chorus and the bridge does what it is suppose to musically as well. The lyric stands up very well.


WRMISS

Teri, very nice partnership of lyric and music. Good luck with it. Linda

Hey Teri!
Nice lyrical theme and excellent compositon by Peggy Salvatore. If I could get the original recording and/or tracks, I would be happy to produce a quality mix for you.

The vocals on this were very nicely done!
Was that Peggy singing or someone else?

This is just too good of a song to NOT have a great sounding demo, in my opinion; but I could be right!

Please contact me if I can do anything to help!
Michael

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Not perfect... just forgiven!

[This message has been edited by Michael Borges (edited 11-17-2002).]

Hi, okay, I think it is a great song. I agree with a few people in their replies. David Wright, a modern drum beat would bring this song to a new level entirely. There's a lot of potential in this one to be a very powerful song. I don't know if it is simply because of the way you recorded it, it sounds like you played the song through a tape recorder and then held a microphone as close as possible without distortion to the speaker. If this is the case, can I suggest simply running a lead from you headphone jack (stereo) to your computers sound card jack ie: the microphone jack. If you are using some sort of recording software, increase the volume settings as much as possible without 'CLIPPING' the signal. I think someone else mentioned this. If you see RED, start again with more conservative settings. A lot of us, including me, feel that the song needs a lot more production, however with this quality of MP3 it is hard to tell what instruments are really playing in the backround. It sounds like the vocals are washed in reverb, and given you said you have masters, I doubt a sound engineer would place that much effect on a song like this so I'm going to assume that its the lack of music behind the vocals which give this effect. If not, and their is that much reverb or lack of proximity effect. This means that the vocalist was far too far away from the microphone when recording. Giving the effect that the singer is a long way back in the mix. There are many many ways to record vocals, but with a song like this, with such powerful vocals, one would expect an engineer to record up close and then use reverb to push if necessary the vocals back in the mix. Again, at this stage until we get a better representation of what the song actually sounds like, best to assume all is well and the tune, well...ITS GREAT !


Regards
Adam McCarthy

http://home.iprimus.com.au/matese/content/index.htm

Thank you all... I've been MIA for the past ten days and remiss in checking in and doing my fair share of critiquing. My apologies.

A few answers to the posts:
1. Ashleigh: not sure why you can't get it? I've heard about this sporadically with SongRamp in general though.
2. Ritt, WRMiss, & Linda: thank you for the listen and review, especially considering the roughness of the demo. Boy, will this be hard to cut down to under 4 minutes!
3. Michael: Peggy Salvatore IS doing the vocals on this and she is amazing and very versatile. She composed the melody, I did the lyrics and we had someone synthesize the production. We have to get the master tape back and then we'll be able to clean it up a bit. You very well may be hearing from me! :: This was my first creation and probably to this day, my favorite.
4. Adam, you guessed it..... cassette recorder held up to the microphone. Based on your and others' comments, I've gone out and purchased the in-line jacks, etc., to do a better upload and conversion. Even the master on this is still productionally rough, but I'm sure I get a cleaner demo. Thank you for the listen, the review and the technical assistance. It has been invaluable.

Teri

Teri,
Thanks for the acknowledgements.
As far as the "mixdown", your on!
I'm ready when you are, so just send
me an "e" when your ready!

Michael