Always On My Mind - Hilary & Speed Demon

[andy casson]

Blimey guys this is oustanding! What a superb listen, Hilary you have a voice to die for, and what a superb track Gene, I am more and more impressed with your skills everytime I hear one of your tracks! Not my cup of tea normally but I could listen to this all day!

Bravo!
andy

[Speed Demon]

Thank you for your kind comments, everyone. It is greatly appreciated.

Hilary is the true star here. I sent this song to several musician friends, and family, and the immediate reaction was, "Wow! Who is that vocalist?" I feel the same way.

Hook, what you mentioned about introducing artifacts when transposing tracks is correct.
To counter that effect in this song, Hilary sent me a second vocal track done in the new key and I used it as-is and only needed to transpose the instrument tracks. Not so noticeable there.

I have a number of plugins that allow me to manipulate all aspects of music so its easy to deal with those demons.

I use a pitch correction plugin, in Audition, on each instrument track, after the transposition. I can affect single notes, sections or entire tracks. Any audible ghosted notes or sounds are also removed. Usually doesn't require much more than that.

[launched]

Beautiful collab! And a unique, powerful version, too.

The vocals are out of this world awesome!!

[Hilary]

Firstly thanks for all your kind comments. The vocals were driven by the beautiful track which Gene sent me and I was genuinely moved by, which hopefully comes through when I'm singing. Hand on heart I think the key issues have muddied the waters somewhat still and it's been a learning curve for me - sorry for the extra work Gene. In a perfect world I would honestly scrap the vocals and rerecord them as there are some timing issues and other blips but that should not take away the fact that there is a superb musician here - Gene. Thanks for the experience, it's been quite a ride!

[Speed Demon]

Hilary, if you wish to redo your vocal track please feel free to do so. I will be glad to remix it in for you. There is one rough spot I'd like to see corrected. Inflection is a bit off.

Mrs Demon thinks I'm obsessed with perfection in my music. She's right. I do nit-pick a song to death, then nit-pick it some more.

Someone once said, "A song is never finished. Its just abandoned for a period of time".
Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

Every song I've ever done I call a finished beta. Almost-but-not-quite complete.

[Hilary]

Hi Gene - I can be a tad overcritical of my efforts at times! It's of the moment as they say and I'm sure that's just fine.

[Mojo1961]

Tried to have a listen on this a few days ago, but for some reason it wouldn't play, glad I came back for another listen. Wonderful collab guys. Love the tempo on this Gene, it really made Hilary's beautiful voice shine on this!

Martin

[Speed Demon]

Thank you very much, Martin.

I think the first file I uploaded must have developed an error during the upload process, as I still have that file and it plays just fine. Not the first time I've had that happen. Just the nature of the beast.

[Speed Demon]

Regarding the transposition I did, the song was written down a whole step to accommodate Hilary's voice. Less of a strain for her to reach and sustain the higher notes.