Quote:
Originally Posted by Cap'nCrunch
Thanks Glenn. If you don't mind, can you tell me what I need to work on to improve?
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Hi Mark,
We all can improve, anything and everything can be made better with more time, more practice, more experience.
I like your song and the sentiments behind it. As a parent, I know very much where you are coming from.
The only area of improvement I might very carefully offer, is that I think the song presentation could be improved a little when you are singing by reducing the volume of your strummed guitar. You get really good tone from that guitar as you strum it, which I thought was appealing. But once you start singing, I thought that perhaps maybe your voice should be a little more up front compared to the guitar.
One way to do that is for you, as you play and once you start singing, to perhaps slightly palm mute your strumming. It would add a little percussive sound and mute the volume of your guitar to give you room to sneak your voice in there to be a little more prominent.
I struggle, as do many of us, with where to place the guitar level compared to the vocal level to get a full sound without burying the vocal part. And if the guitar volume level is too low, that's a problem, too, and the video loses energy, I think. There is a very fine line there.
I can't tell from your video how you are recording the sound of your guitar. It sounds like there is a separate mic on your guitar, but I cannot see that mic, assuming it's there. I am also assuming that you are recording the audio separately from the video and synching the two signals together later in a video editing program. So, if my assumptions are correct, you could ride the fader on your guitar level during playback to make your 2-track audio mixdown bring the vocal up and the guitar down a little while you are singing.
But it's good practice for you to learn to bring the guitar level down as you sing as part of how you perform this song.
As a good example of how to do this, check out Toby Walker's videos. He has learned over the years how to back off on the guitar as soon as he brings his voice in, and then to bring the guitar back up with his finger attack on the strings when he is not singing. I have mentioned this to him a time or two, because he is so good at it. Toby is modest about this, but he also has acknowledged how important this skill is.
And I would emphasize, particularly for strumming, that this is not an easy skill to learn. There are so many things to think about as you put a video like yours together, especially when you have just finished composing a song.
I hope my thoughts might be a little helpful. Really, I liked what you did, but as I noted in the beginning of this response, everything in this world can be improved; nothing is ever perfect.
Good job Mark!
- Glenn