Really wanted to participate in this, but the vocals are pretty much impossible to work with. I understand fully well the struggles of not having proper recording equipment and location, but while I can tweak and cheat when I record myself, it's pretty difficult deal with someone else's processed vocals if I find it unsatisfactory.
If you ever do more contests like this, (please do, love the initiative) I would suggest adding the raw, unprocessed vocals as well. I think it would be a good learning experience hearing how other people process your recording.
But again, I fully understand the struggles, and I'm no expert myself. Just think you would get a lot higher quality submissions this way. Really dig the song and the vocals, and I wish you good luck with the contest :).
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Ps. It doesn't really matter, but just thought I'd mention the problems I had with the recording:
-There's this wierd, low pitch slide when the singer transitions from a low to a high note. This often happens when Autotune pitches low glide notes.
- The microphone distorts a lot as soon as soon as the volume gets too high. Most budget microphones do this, and the best way to deal with it is just to avoid singing loudly or step a bit away from the mic. You really don't need that much volume, but since the singer sings the low notes loud instead of mellow, he ends singing even louder when he reaches the higher notes.
- And last, but not least, this is the main reason why I found the vocal difficult to use, It kinda sounds like you've done some eq'ing to try and fix the original recording, and thus removing most of the good frequencies where this kind of voice shines in. Due to this the vocals don't really cut through the mix, and I can't really eq back cut frequencies. If I'm wrong and you haven't done any eq'ing at all, I would highly recommend that whoever recorded this gets a new mic, or makes sure that he sings into the right side of the microphone. The recording overall is pretty much exactly what I get when I sing into the back part of my microphone, and while it sounds like a stupid mistake, you never know.
But again, I'm no expert. Just thought I'd give some tips for the future..
