Summer Breeze (Seals & Crofts cover by des0free)

[StephenM]

first off I love this song a ton and that group quite a lot....
your cover is impressive...the music is good enough to say it's a different version of Seals and Crofts...
good job on the vocals...very good...to be fair not even the group sang it that well...what I mean is they had some incredible engineering and production in the studio... I know this because some their live versions I heard of songs vocally did not hold a candle to their studio stuff...never the less they are an excellent group and I am in no way diminishing their talent...
cool that you used your software...impressive...I have been following your posts on that a fair amount...keep up the good work!

[Geir]

That is an impressive cover!

Both the performance and the production.

Everything just sounds so good. 

The song is new for me, but it sure was a great fit for your voice.

Well done des

[Mike_S]

I always loved this song, such a chilled out feeling of summer. You did it proud Des, everything sounds great in headphones, definitely worth the work put in.

Mike

[des0free]

very nice realization how did you do the voice? by dubbing the track and very slightly off or a second take?

Hi JP, thanks for your comment.  The vocals in the chorus and bridge parts were two separate takes both recorded by AT4040 mic into Onyx Blackjack USB interface.  EQ, compressors, and reverb (freeverb) were applied in my home made software.

[des0free]

Oh, this was great. I'd be keen to hear about the homemade software of which you speak because the mix is very fine. Lovely instrumentation and a great vocal.

I think Seals & Crofts get lumped in with a lot of lesser bands, but they have some great stuff. Having said that, the ascending vocal line that peaks a little after the one minute mark in "Hummingbird" is still one of the funniest testicle-clutching musical moments I've stumbled upon. If you folks aren't hip to it, it's worth a quick search. They redeem themselves with a nice acoustic solo over a vocal outro.

Really great post.

Blooby

Thanks for your comments!   I do computer data analysis in my work as a physicist, so I got the idea to try to see if I could write code to analyze and process audio signals.  I use the scientific language "Matlab", and found out it has a lot of built in audio processing functions.  I wrote code for signal normalization and can do "loudness" analysis.  My code reads in WAV files for each track and applies EQ, compressors, reverb and then attempts to auto determine appropriate levels before producing a mix.  Then I listen and make manual adjustments to code parameters (hopefully small) and remix. My current "mastering" algorithm in my code is normalize > apply "soft" compressor > normalize > apply "hard compressor" > normalize > apply limiter > normalize.

An example applied to one of my original songs is here: https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=31480.0

[Hilary]

I'm really glad I got to hear this - a fantastic cover!

[Ferryman_1957]

Very nice work, great cover and the mix sounds pretty good to me. Great musicianship and programming all in one song!

[Hook]

Oooo yeah.
Rock on!