All Of Space: Systole (acoustic song)

Hi guys,
Here’s a new acoustic song and video that I did: Systole - YouTube

Recorded with Cubase Essential 5.

Free download here: All Of Space

All feedback greatly appreciated - happy listening!

Enjoyed the song and was quite intrigued by the vocal mix. Very nice. :slight_smile: Sorry… but I didn’t really get the video …

:sunglasses:

fantastic guitar playing on this. I too loved the vocals…their placement in stereo field was great and so was reverb setting, gave it real warmth without being to much.Cool ending!

Just superb my friend…very pro sound and more importantly a very good song, well done…Kevin

Really nice. Thanks for sharing it. Good song, well played and sung. I liked the way you used google maps in the video.

I don’t usually like the extremes of zero vibrato and very wide opera vibrato but your vocal performance is really nice and calming. For me a good voice isn’t simply hitting the correct pitches but the enunciation and expression both of which I thought were great here. Whatever effects are on the vocals they work great too. Actually if you could say what kind of effects/values are used on the vocal that’d be great.

My big criticism is that the guitars are simply too flat dynamically. There are parts where I think accents for a more distinct pulse would really heighten the song. I really love the guitar parts and they are performed well too, but the lack of dynamics changing just a bit and some accents don’t give me the right sense of expression. The harp harmonics at the beginning add a nice touch though. Not enough people use that technique, so kudos on that. :smiley:

The outro idea is very nice and works really well. Though after each pause it seems to come in just slightly too late, maybe a 16th or 8th note too late, it isn’t much anyway. Idk, it makes it sound unsettling to my ears because of that tiny delay.

Other than that I enjoyed listening a lot, thanks for posting.

Hey thanks so much for all the feedback guys, greatly appreciated.

Jonathan5456 - thanks for the detailed reply! I didn’t do tons to the vocal - the main thing I did was two separate lead vocals panned hard left and right. I was inspired by Alesund by Sun Kil Moon for that (Sun Kil Moon - Alesund - YouTube - absurdly beautiful song). There’s also a lightly tuned vocal blended in underneath to give a slight doubling effect.

I think you’re right about the dynamics of my playing - I’m not a great guitarist and this song was really at the limit of what I can play. Ultimately I was just happy to get relatively clean takes. A better guitarist could undoubtedly bring more out in terms of expression.

The outro part is interesting because I used a click but wanted the song to slow down as it faded out - so at every point where there’s that thunk on the low E the tempo drops by about 6bpm. So the next section does come in on time, but it’s maybe not where you’d expect it because the tempo has dropped.

Anyway thanks again for all the kind words, this is an important song to me so it’s great to hear and genuinely appreciated.

Yeah, that Alesund piece is really very nice, though the vocals are spread a bit too far there to me… It’s unsettling listening on earphones. ;D I think the position that you’ve placed your vocals is just perfect. Listening on in-ear earphones btw, I don’t own any speakers. I think your song is every bit as beautiful anyway and you should feel proud of your effort and results. Although I say big criticism, my criticisms are minor really.

Hmm, interesting thing about the tempo click thing. Not sure how it’d be best to do it. The idea works brilliantly anyway. In orchestra if the song had an outro like this then the musicians would be just following the conductors sense of gradually slowing it down. Perhaps a free take following your instincts might also work.