VOCR3: Mercury Meltdown [RESULTS]

[Hale-Bopp]

VOCR: Vocal Remixing Competition (Rock Edition)

Hello, and welcome to ocremix's 3rd vocal remixing competition! This time around we’re switching things up a bit and introducing a rock song for those of you out there who have always dreamed of being a rock star. Fame, glitter and glamour awaits…

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RESULTS

1st Place - "Rock The World" by Phillip Spear & David Guillot (22 Points)

2nd Place - "Solid Liquid Separation" by Noah & Kroze (15 Points)

3rd Place - "Text Message" by DragonAvenger (12 Points)

4th - "Ode to Medical Student" by Swordbreaker (5 Points)

5th - "Why Is It?" by CN (0 Points)

Lyrics: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Congrats to all for participating and to Phillip and David for their winning entry!

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Voting: Once the competition closes and the tracks have been hosted, voting shall commence! All entrants must participate as well, in the spirit of comradery, and cannot vote on their own mix (duh). Everyone will choose their top three entries, listing them in order from most favorite to least favorite, and PM their votes to me. Only OCR members with at least 20 forum posts may vote, in order to avoid spam voting. #1 choices will receive three points, #2 choices two, and #3 choices one. Make sense? We won't actually be rating the mixes on each of the following criteria, but I ask that you keep these things in mind while you vote:

• Creativity (personal flair, interesting harmonies, original lyrics, etc)
  
• Vocal execution (pitch, rhythm, confidence, etc)
  
• Production (bad/hissy recordings, dry mixing, mastering, etc)

Also, feel free to write a review to go along with your top 3 votes. At the end of voting and once the results are displayed, each contestant will receive, by PM, any reviews that may have been written for their entry.

We want to reward people for getting out there, even if they think their singing could use some improvement. Please don't be afraid to enter. Everyone is welcome to join in on the fun. Now...LET'S ROCK!

Round 3: Mercury Meltdown arrangement by Hale-Bopp Track info: (BPM = 106)

Here are the rules:

• You must use my instrumental track for the background. The track may not be changed— only added upon with your vocals and effects, or spliced if you're going for an a cappella section.
  
• Create your own melodies. Original melodies and harmonies are applauded. Show everyone what you got!
  
• You can write original lyrics or sing without words. It’s up to you! Additionally, if you'd like to sing with lyrics but can't think of any, you may collaborate with someone else so long as you give them credit. No borrowing from other sources unless you run it by me first.
  
• Texts for songs with lyrics must be included in the email to me. And if your song is in a foreign language, an English translation is required.
  
• Effects are more than welcome, but the main vocals may not be vocoded.
  
• Auto-pitch correction will be allowed for the time being; nobody's perfect, and we don't want this compo to focus too much on raw singing talent, when there are plenty of other factors that contribute to a good vocal mix. Just don’t overdo it!

Entries: All entries are due by 9:00 pm EST on Tuesday, September 2nd. That's about a month from now. Plenty of time for you and plenty of time for me to go to PAX and come back just in time to host the entries. MP3 submissions should be tagged with an original song title of your choice and sent to - email deleted - and may be hosted online or included as an attachment. Please include “VOCR” somewhere in the subject. If you send me your track well before the deadline and then decide you wanna make some changes, that's totally cool. It's never too late to send again before the round closes. DO NOT post your track in this thread, however! We don't want anyone to "draw inspiration" from your original ideas, and plus... more suspense. . All entrants are to remain anonymous until voting has ended and the results have been posted. At the end of the month, I will host all of the tracks on my website and edit the first post for everyone to see.

[SwordBreaker]

Thanks for the heads up, Hale! Going to download that track now and prepare myself. Luckily, there's some free time on my hands. Man, it's been so long since the last one. I hope we get more entrants this time around.

EDIT: Just listened to the track. Not familiar with the source but awesome work as usual, man. It's going to be really hard to come up with a decent melody that fits the track. Any tips to make it easier for me?

[Sinewav]

I am so on this.

Though I agree that it's going to be tough to come up with an interesting melody just based on source.

[DjSammyG]

I totally disagree. This song, given my glam/hair metal tendencies, really gets me thinking. It's nice to have a track like this, you know, one that leaves a spot for the vocalist to do his or her thing, not you know, feeding the singer his or her melody line. You may or may not be hearing from me.

[Hale-Bopp]

It's going to be really hard to come up with a decent melody that fits the track. Any tips to make it easier for me?

If I ever feel like I can't come up with a melody in my head or just by improvising with my voice, then I'll mess around on a keyboard and try and come up with something. Just play one note at a time and don't worry about harmonies just yet. Sometimes looping a verse or chorus over and over helps while I play along.

Glad to see some responses, you guys!

[SwordBreaker]

If I ever feel like I can't come up with a melody in my head or just by improvising with my voice, then I'll mess around on a keyboard and try and come up with something. Just play one note at a time and don't worry about harmonies just yet. Sometimes looping a verse or chorus over and over helps while I play along.

Glad to see some responses, you guys!

Wish I had a keyboard. But I've been trying to "not worry about harmonies" and "looping some parts over and over" while improvising with my voice and it worked. Came up with all the main melodies and tried out a lot of stuff...yet some parts fit better than others in my view so far. The verses were the first melodies I came up with and the best...yet I just can't seem to find a chorus melody that's as good as the verses, you know what I mean?

[Hale-Bopp]

I understand. I knew it'd be a bit more of a challenge, so I wasn't sure how everyone would react to it. Personally, I'm the type of person that prefers to create my own melodies whenever possible not only because it's more fun, but allows me to be more flexible, as the possibilities seem nearly infinite when given free reign...but I realize that's not everyone's cup of tea and can sometimes even have the opposite effect when one has too much freedom. Though in this case, since the progressions of the song are laid out for you, hopefully that will narrow down your train of thought as you try and come up with something to put on top of it.

I thought about coming up with a melody to offer up to anyone participating who prefers to work that way, but then I thought that might not be such a good idea because a) it would be more fun to challenge you guys and give you something new to try out and getting something out of that and I don't want to create your ideas for you because you know what ideas work for you better than I do, plus then your creation would lean more towards judging my creative thought process rather than your own. Also, I think that I'd be prone to writing it for myself because that's how I think when I write (I know my own voice so well that it's easy to write for), which wouldn't make much sense for what I think might be obvious reasons.

Anyways, I understand the challenge you're facing. Hopefully you'll look at it as something you want to conquer, so at the end of the month you can say to yourself "I did it!" and feel good about it. That's what I'd like to see anyways.

Also, I know none of us here are made of money, but when you are able and willing to get a keyboard, I highly recommend getting one, especially if you think or know you're gonna be doing this sort of thing a lot. I think you'll find it indispensable in your creative workflow, regardless of how you normally go about things.

I enjoy ranting about this stuff, so I hope nobody minds too much.

[Escariot]

I'm in...

Current status: (EDIT)

Work out melody/harmonies [X]

Work out lyrics [iN PROGRESS NOW]

Record [iN PROGRESS NOW]

Submit [_]

EDIT: Question: Are we allowed to add any sort of synthing to the backing track?

[SwordBreaker]

By all means, Hale. The more you rant, the better. Good stuff, good stuff.

I'm really interested everyone's progress and thought flow, 'cause there's no right or exact way to approach this. However, I've decided not to be as simple as my previous VOCR entry. In my case, I got the lyrics out of the way as well as the main melodies...yet as I said the chorus is a work-in-progress because I think it's not as good as the verses but still fits. I made up a lot of outlines with the chorus melody by simply improvising with my voice and most likely forgot most of them because I'm sticking with the current one for now. lol. In my case, it was easier for me to write out the lyrics and think of the main melodies in the same time.

I'm thinking about starting on recording the main melodies of all the sections. Then once that's done, delve into the harmonies.

Speaking of recording, I'd like to discuss this element with you guys. Currently, I have a SHURE SM57 mic recommended by OCR. Been using that for quite sometime. My equipment is simply a laptop and plugging the mic into the laptop jack directly...I have this adapter so that the mic fits into the jack. Nothing too fancy. Although when I record it sounds clear and good. Going to use Sony Sound Forge. I learned some of the basics from LuIzA. What I do is use the default "Wave Hammer" compressor first. There's a default "voice" option I can pick. Then, specific settings with parametric EQ that LuIzA told me to use (band notch/boost filter style, 3500Hz center frequency). Finally, give the voice "medium room reverb". What I'm not sure of is the order of doing all this and the volume of my singing compared to the track itself. Any suggestions on those or additional things I need to do overall?

If you need an example of a recent recording of mine (not related to this contest) just to give you an idea of the quality, let me know. Not sure if it's breaking the "anonymity rules" and whatnot.

[Hale-Bopp]

I'm in...

Awesome.

EDIT: Question: Are we allowed to add any sort of synthing to the backing track?

I'd say in the interest of fairness, no, because there might be those people entering who don't have the capabilities of creating their own instrumental tracks for one reason or another, plus I think it might take some people's focus off of the vocals when it comes time for judging. I don't want voting to be in any way swayed by that.

What I do is use the default "Wave Hammer" compressor first. There's a default "voice" option I can pick. Then, specific settings with parametric EQ that LuIzA told me to use (band notch/boost filter style, 3500Hz center frequency). Finally, give the voice "medium room reverb". What I'm not sure of is the order of doing all this and the volume of my singing compared to the track itself. Any suggestions on those or additional things I need to do overall?

I'm curious. Do you run all of these effects live as you record vocals? In a typical setup (and anyone with more experience can correct me if I'm wrong) you'd run your mic to an outboard compressor, then from the compressor to your recording medium, then once you have your vocal tracks recorded, then you mess with EQ and reverb in the mixing process to get them to settle into the mix how you want.

I haven't had a working hardware compressor for some time, so I've been mixing all my previous songs with vocals just by riding the faders, which I really loathe doing. I'd love to hear from anyone who has a better solution to that issue.

[SwordBreaker]

I'm curious. Do you run all of these effects live as you record vocals? In a typical setup (and anyone with more experience can correct me if I'm wrong) you'd run your mic to an outboard compressor, then from the compressor to your recording medium, then once you have your vocal tracks recorded, then you mess with EQ and reverb in the mixing process to get them to settle into the mix how you want.

No. I modify all these after I record my voice. I have no idea to do it live. Does it make a difference?

[Hale-Bopp]

I'm guessing it doesn't make too much of a difference as long as either way you have your peak limit set before hitting the record button. You obviously don't want clipping/distorted vocals for your initial dry tracks. A hardware compressor will help you with that while you're recording in though.

[DragonAvenger]

I'm definately going to try to do something this time around, but I'm starting a new position as well as moving to a new school (the high school is new, so the middle school is moving to the old high school, etc), so things are going to be tough. It's definately a nice track though.

[SwordBreaker]

I'm guessing it doesn't make too much of a difference as long as either way you have your peak limit set before hitting the record button. You obviously don't want clipping/distorted vocals for your initial dry tracks. A hardware compressor will help you with that while you're recording in though.

Dumb question; how do you set your peak limit? lol. You mean just mentally be careful not to go be too loud or is there some sort of setting you need to do?

Also, do you have any recommendations of the volume of the vocals compared to the track when mixing, Hale?

[Hale-Bopp]

Dumb question; how do you set your peak limit? lol. You mean just mentally be careful not to go be too loud or is there some sort of setting you need to do?

Your peak limit is something you should have a visual of in your recording software or whatever hardware is handling your microphone input. To do this step by step, you first wanna make sure your input gain is set to zero before you start. Then you wanna place yourself where you wanna be when it comes time to record your voice. Make sure the mic is where you want it to be in relation to yourself. This can be tricky, because if you move around at all while recording vocals, the levels can change dramatically, so try and keep yourself planted in one spot. Then start singing as loud as you plan on singing and while you're doing this, slowly raise your input gain until you see the level just barely hit the yellow and stop right there. That's your peak limit, generally speaking. If you're in the red, bring it back down to green and start over. Anything in the red will give you distortion/clipping. Just mess with it until you have a comfortable level that just barely touches the yellow. If possible, kinda keep an eye on it while you record to make sure you don't hit the red. I think that's about it. If I missed anything, hopefully others can chime in. Hope that helps. Let me know if I need to clarify anything.

Also, check out this page for some more detailed, juicy info: http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_record_vocals.htm

Also, do you have any recommendations of the volume of the vocals compared to the track when mixing, Hale?

I guess it sometimes depends on a number of factors, including personal preference. I don't have a perfectly set way of doing things myself, since I'm still trying to figure out all this mixing business. I find though that I usually have to make the vocals louder than I think they're supposed to be, cuz I get a lot of comments from people saying they can't hear them in my tracks. It pays to get lots of feedback. The more ears the better.

[SwordBreaker]

Thanks for that page, man. Going to read that later. And yes, now I know what you're talking about. I see those bars there. All I know is don't go in red like you said. I really didn't give the mic or my own position much though before...just the simple thing of the mic being not too close yet not too far away in the same time. I'm gonna experiment with that more just to get as comfortable as possible.

Thanks again, Hale. You're being extremely helpful here. I can be such a noob in these things. lol.

[prophetik music]

probably going to do something for this. thanks for the pm, hale-bopp.

[Escariot]

Bump........

[atmuh]

motion to move this to community because seriously when it was there you got more than one post a week

things like this need more attention

[SwordBreaker]

Still haven't recorded anything yet. But I've got the lyrics and melodies done long ago.

[Hale-Bopp]

motion to move this to community because seriously when it was there you got more than one post a week

things like this need more attention

Well, I'd PM The_Orichalcon about it, but he never replied to my previous PM from a few weeks ago, so I'm guessing he's not around for me to ask him about it.

Though I don't think it would make sense to move the thread out of the competition board, it would be nice if perhaps there was a mirrored link. But then I wonder, if that gets done for this competition thread, is it fair to all the other competitions who don't have topics in the community board, or does it really matter if those are already established and aren't in need of the extra exposure? I don't know the answer to that, but just throwing that in there w/respect to the other competitions going on. But yeah, it would be nice to be able to do that. Not sure who I'd ask about it though.

Hope everyone's doing well on their entries so far! Halfway point is coming up soon, but plenty of time left, even if nobody's started yet.

[atmuh]

ask bahamut

ive had the fanart compo thread in community for 3 months now and no ones saying anything about it and as long as that keeps up im keeping it there

this is really how i personally think it should go but hey its just me and who gives a crap what i think i know

i think there should be another subforum of community called EVENTS for meetups/cons/anything like that and THAT should take competitions' spot on the front page

then all CURRENT competitions could start in community and then moved to this forum as kind of an archive when they are done

then there should be a sticky somewhere outlining rules for starting a competition (imo if someone wants to start a new one they should first ask a mod or smth) this way we dont get a buncha people making silly competitions that no one cares about

there are at the absolute MOST 6 or 7 compos going on at once and if the events get moved to their own private place (which im sure would get plenty of views because lots of people care about events) then community wouldnt be cluttered

please mods/djp think about this i think itd be good for everyone especially the part about having all events in one place as well

i mean in theory if all compos should go here those silly ourstage threads should be here too but WE'LL NEVER SEE THAT WILL WE

ok i said what i wanna say please no one discuss this in this thread hale bopp has requested that this thread not go off topic and hes definitely right with that

[DragonAvenger]

Surpisingly, I am almost done with my lyrics and melody at this point. I'm unsure of how I want to end it. Hopefully I can finish it up and record it soon.

[Escariot]

Kroze and I are collab'ing now.

BUMP!

[suzumebachi]

Oh man, I can't believe I missed the beginning of this. This stuff really needs to be posted in GenDisc.

Anyways, I have a question. You say effects are fine, but vocoders are not. Where do you draw the line? Would a simple filter effect with perhaps some delay and reverb be fine?