Homage (Piano/vocal ballad)

[stoman]

Grant D. McLeman, a poet from Scotland, had sent me a couple of free-form poems he had written. I found an old piano snippet in my scrapbook and tried to come up with a melody that matches both the words and the music.

Mimmo, an Italian singer who lives in Canada and who I had worked with before, liked the song and contributed the vocals.

The orchestral parts have not yet been edited (that's the time-consuming part I always hate to do). I hope you will still enjoy the song, as Mimmo's voice is (IMO) what carries it.

This is the direct download link for those who have troubles with the board's player (like myself):
Mimmo - Homage

Time:

0:00

Volume:

50

0

 Stop   Play   Pause   Vol   Vol   Mute   Repeat   Download

Lyrics: Grant D. McLeman
Vocals: Domenico Mercurio (Mimmo)
Composed, arranged & mixed by Steffen Offermann

Homage
(Grant D. McLeman)

She is the first candle
and the last candle
she is as feminine as April
and she cancels time with one look

With her all my future somethings
become my present all things
all my acts of faith
become acts of worship
all my days that were gray
become lands of rainbow

She is the first candle
and the last candle
the dark days vanish
when she is with me

She is the first candle
and the last candle
she is all the light
I'll ever need

Regards,
  Steffen

[stoman]

I hope it's just the completely broken "mix" that prevents you all from commenting. I'll replace the link with a decent mix tomorrow.

However, if it is the song itself, please tell me your opinions anyway. No response at all is so much worse than "bad" criticism. It's like saying: "The song is crap, but I won't tell you what's wrong with it."

I like the song though.

Regards,
  Steffen

[AndyR]

Woo!

Not sure why it hasn't gathered any comments at all - mebbe how it's linked? (At first I was not sure about clicking it, but no worries folks - just opens in your media player, give it a click)

Anyway, really enjoyed it. Mimmo's performance is good, but you're doing yourself down if you think he's carrying it on his own - I love the piano.

Also, the words are lovely on their own, but it's really tough taking words like that and making a listenable song out of them - I think you've pretty much nailed it

[64Guitars]

Steffen, you can link your offsite MP3 files to our player using the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags. The format is as follows:

    [singlemp3]URL_of_MP3_file[/singlemp3]

So, for this song, you would put the following in your message:

   [singlemp3]http://stoman.org/download/Mimmo_Homage.mp3[/singlemp3]

The button that inserts the singlemp3 tags looks like this:

[lg]

I just managed to listen.....
Awesome Vox!
Very nice song, beautifully produced.

LG

[stoman]

Thanks, folks!

That player feature does not work correctly for me. My browser does recognize the file and plays it, but without sound. So I can only stream it and listen offline.

But I will use the player tag additionally from now on as some people, like myself, may prefer direct download links. I usually listen when I'm in bed, and that *#&%$ iPad does not play audio files from web sites - and no Flash content at all. Thank you, Mister Jobs, what a great decision!

Regards,
  Steffen

[stoman]

Ok, I updated the mix. Still not quite there, but better IMO. I tried to soften the piano and get the lead vocal track under control (Mimmo's mic seems to be broken, so this was a real challenge).

I had spent the whole day cursing and trying to develop software on a Mac (if hell exists, this must be it!), so this was a pretty quick mix. But fortunately this is a small project with only 8 or 9 audio tracks.

I just noticed that there are still a couple of clicks on the vocal track. But I'm too tired to fix that today.

Can anybody please comment on the depth perception? Is there anything strange, or does it sound natural?

Regards,
  Steffen

[AndyR]

Like the new mix

At first, when you said "soften the piano" I thought "OH NO!" because I loved the clarity of it last night.

So I started to listen to the new mix, and I thought my fears were being realised at first. The piano intro sounds great still but doesn't have the bite it did before...

But then the vocals came in, and it's perfect!

You've done the right thing, to my tired ears anyway. The whole thing hangs together better now. On the original mix (which worked ok, by the way), the piano, vocals, and strings were all playing the same song but compared to this mix they didn't quite gel. Now they do, and the vocal sounds much more impressive than it did on the first mix.

I couldn't hear any problems - it sounds to me like the guy was stood next to the piano singing while you were playing the accompaniment. I can't see how it could get much more natural.

Lovely job

I've got a feeling though you're going to do something to the strings next. I think you could actually leave them as they stand, but I just have this feeling that you've got something up your sleeve that you can hear in your head and you're going to amaze me

[stoman]

Thanks for your detailed response, Andy!

That "biting" piano sound was actually what had bugged me most in the previous version. My ears did not like it and kept telling me "this is completely wrong and ruins the whole song".

The strings ... well ... I did not apply any key switches at all, so it's clear that they sound lifeless and synthetic. But I really hate such editing work because I'm not a trained orchestral arranger and have to do these things by ear and intuition. I've always wanted to buy a good book on orchestral playing styles but haven't found anything useful yet.

I'll put this song aside for a while now. I think the main parts (piano and vocals) are final. The orchestral parts can always be improved later.

Thanks again for listening!

Regards,
  Steffen

[fenderbender]

hey thats nice Steffen
what a brilliant voice and great piano work -
very 1910/20s sounding ( and I mean that as a compliment)

regards