Help Me Open Live For Coldplay Please *bites fingers*

[IneedYou23]

maya you never cease to amaze me!! Awesome song!

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

Seriously, get your band members together and very well practised and you may very well win. You''ll kick yourself if you fail at the interview stage because your toes slip and you drop the tambourine, trust me!!

 

Don't go and jinx me now :nice:

 

This would be so much easier if I could find bandmates. But I have feet that can keep time, and hands that can play guitars and pianos, and a microphone that keeps my voice above it all.

 

Who needs 'em.

 

:P I really appreciate the words of encouragement anyway (: It does help a lot. If I do ever get anywhere, I'll always remember coldplaying.com *wistful sigh*

[chuck kottke]

1,2,3,4

 

Hmm.. so you are going the KT Tunstall route?! Well, she does it, so hey, why not?! Anyhow, if you can get a hold of some electronica, and create the accompaniments ahead of time, and keep with them as you sing/jangle/drum etc., that might help. As far as song structure, I gave a good listen to U2's With or Without You, and listened to the structure, when different components and instruments are added, how they mix things - and the changes as the song progresses.. think of it as telling a tale, and building to a crescendo, then adding a twist near the end, maybe ending where you start. And of course, relax and get in the Zen Creative mode of thinking/feeling (which you seem pretty good at already!) - just practice, and play with it like you're doing. Maya, you've got the stuff it takes - all that's needed is the extra polish, and you'll be set.

One thing I know with myself - if I practice and build confidence, it all comes naturally. Rest well the night before, and you'll shine!

 

[King Payam]

You know I'm already a fan of your work. Amazing song, if you need any help with this contest, let me and others on here know. I'm sure if we all get together we can get you on stage with the guys.

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

:blush: this is the best thing ever you know.

aw wow (:

 

anyway. I was playing around with recording a video last night - many tech difficulties.. my bedroom wasn't quiite big enough to have more than 2/3 of me in the frame :P but I think I've got it worked out now, so that'll be around soon ish.

 

I've been having just the tinkly piano start the song, and then come in with my guitar at the first chorus. It creates a little bit of a build I think :thinking: I also wrote a little part to sing over the piano solo piece, and I think it might also give it some more punch before the song ends with that last quiet piano riff.

 

My camcorder doesn't pick up individual sound that well, so I think the more I add on to the song, the more muddy it'll start sounding. So I'm going to try it like this ^ I think. And then I'll take heart the comments you might have and change it around accordingly.

 

I really mean it though, I feel really welcomed around here all of a sudden :nice: Thanks (again, again) for helping me out with this. It means an awful lot to me.

 

(: M.

[Chavi]

this is really good ! a very beautiful song you have there ! :nice:

I hope you'll get picked !

 

it'd be cool if we could hear more songs from you. :)

[guyy]

Huh...I wish I'd tried this one the first time I saw it, because now I'm just joining the army of praisers. :P

 

It's very good, and should work well for the contest, too, because it does sound a lot like Coldplay; it reminds me of "The Scientist" (one of my favorites :D). And your voice isn't even slightly annoying (since I find 99% of all singers intolerable, you should interpret that as something like "your voice is amazing" ;)).

 

My only complaint is a geeky one: there must be a background noise, or a problem with your microphone, or something...because this song has the freakiest waveform I've ever seen (whole sections of the song are shifted way down below the center, and there's a lot of noise when it should be silent), and I think that's why it's making my cheap headphones pop and crackle. :P You might want to use better equipment for the final recording.

 

Edit: After a little too much inexperienced fiddling in Audacity, I think I got rid of the junk background noise without completely ruining the song; I can email it to you or post it somewhere if you want (looks like forum and PM attachments aren't working...). It sounds a little better and doesn't make so many annoying popping sounds.

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

Huh...I wish I'd tried this one the first time I saw it, because now I'm just joining the army of praisers. :P

 

It's very good, and should work well for the contest, too, because it does sound a lot like Coldplay; it reminds me of "The Scientist" (one of my favorites :D). And your voice isn't even slightly annoying (since I find 99% of all singers intolerable, you should interpret that as something like "your voice is amazing" ;)).

 

My only complaint is a geeky one: there must be a background noise, or a problem with your microphone, or something...because this song has the freakiest waveform I've ever seen (whole sections of the song are shifted way down below the center, and there's a lot of noise when it should be silent), and I think that's why it's making my cheap headphones pop and crackle. :P You might want to use better equipment for the final recording.

 

Edit: After a little too much inexperienced fiddling in Audacity, I think I got rid of the junk background noise without completely ruining the song; I can email it to you or post it somewhere if you want (looks like forum and PM attachments aren't working...). It sounds a little better and doesn't make so many annoying popping sounds.

 

 

There's unfortunately a lot of hissing and popping on anything I record. I have one mic plugged into my computer, and then I play/sing into that, and it does often record with really bad quality (sorry about that :P ) Its the only way I've got to record at the moment, but I completely agree.. the hissing and popping gets really annoying.

 

So I'd love to hear a clean version! Its really sweet that you'd take the time to do that :nice: Wow.

 

Any way most convenient for you is fine with me. I've been using sendspace a lot recently, and its been working well for everyone I guess. But I can pm you my e-mail too if that'd work better.

 

Thanks a lot (:

 

M.

[guyy]

Well, it's not exactly "clean"...but it doesn't have the background hiss (which is probably the microphone, since it seems to get louder as the music gets louder...) and I also cut off the funny clicks at the beginning and end. Hopefully the rest sounds about the same, because my first try came out pretty awful. :P (The file came out a bit bigger for some reason...that program must not do very good compression. :\)

 

And it's not like this took hours to do...I may not be an expert sound editor, but I'm still a computer nerd. ;)

 

I'll PM you the sendspace link, in case it actually came out awful and I can't tell, or something. :P

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

it was still a really nice thing to do.

it sounds good too, thanks a lot for that. i'll have to download audacity and start using it for everything I record.

 

(until hissing and popping becomes a really cool thing to have in your music anyway)

 

for now I'm worrying about how to make the sound quality of the video I've got to send in for the contest good enough. it seems everything I record has the worst quality :P hopefully the idea will still come across :confused:

 

anyway - thanks a lot for that again, was really cool of you :nice:

[PianoRocker]

To remove the clipping and popping there is a different and easyer way.

make the 'Sample Rate' lower and record 16 bit stereo, if your soundcard allow that.

It is not the 'highest' quality.

But this quality is the most used for cd quality and others.

Removing noise, Audacity isn't very good at lessen noise, but it help a bit.

 

To get rid of the most noise, try to lessen it while recording.

There are many ways for that.

You don't need special things for that.

Easy way: Do a sock around the microphone, it looks weird but it helps alot.

And if you have a mixer, lessen the gain on it.

The gain creates alot of noise.

 

And for the video you want.

 

Just record the video in the with the best settings you can do.

If it is still worse.

Just re-record the audio only and paste it on the video! :)

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

^ thanks for the tips! I'll have to try the sock thing.

And if anyone asks, i'll just say the mic was getting cold :thinking: :pleased:

 

I thought about overdubbing the audio onto the video.. but I'm playing it live.. it might end up looking funny. I might very well try it anyway though. I've got about a week before the contest closes, so that should still be ample time to figure things out.

 

Thanks!

 

M.

[chuck kottke]

I was just thinking - is there any way to record with the microphone on, and then record again, subtracting the noise of the microphone at a given frequency from the recording? Might not work if the sound frequency is too mid-range, though.. Just a thought!

[PianoRocker]

Is there a microphone input on your video camera?

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

chuck- I could try that. After all, I won't know if it works until I try it :nice:

 

stephan - there is (:

[PianoRocker]

Oky, do a cable from you PC to the Camera, and the microphone in the PC.

Then while recording the video.

Also record the audio in Audacity.

 

So the recorded audio, that should be better quality then, can be replaced with the audio recorded with the camera.

 

You have the same thing recorded then.. only better quality! :)

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

! aw that's brillaint :cheesy: i'll definitely do that. that's a great idea.

 

i'll just have to find a cable that'll connect pc to cam. i'm sure my dad's got one lying around :nice:

 

cheers (:

[PianoRocker]

Alot of stereo PC boxes does have such cables to connect them to the PC.

You can find those cables also in alot of audio stores.:)

[guyy]

anyway - thanks a lot for that again, was really cool of you :nice:

 

Well, it's always good to waste time doing something helpful. :P

 

That thing Chuck suggested is pretty much what I did in Audacity; it has a "noise removal" tool, so I used a bit from the beginning that should have been silent as the noise, which just had whatever ugly sound the microphone was making. You have to set the sensitivity pretty low, though, or it removes a lot of things besides the noise and messes up the song.

 

Anyway...good luck with it; it's got a better chance than you think! :D

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

(: thanks very much.

I've still got a lot of work to do, figuring things out, but you guys have all been ridiculously helpful, its great :nice:

 

i don't want to get my hopes up too high though.. there are some really amazing bands entering this contest. i haven't necessarily heard any from my region that I think are great (so that's a plus :smug2: ) but wow, philly must have a wonderful music scene.. every new band that I see enter into this contest is a) from philly and b) amazing.

 

so i'm glad i'm going for the san jose one :P

 

anyway, thanks (for the bazillionth time)

 

M.

[mjbk24]

Are you in the bay area? The smoke is finally clearing a bit here...

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

gah, the smoke's been really bad.

you're right though, its nice its finally clearing up (:

its funny, because even though its terrible to breathe in, it actually made everything kind of pretty.. like it was just foggy, all the time. and it made the sun pink, and it was so beautiful :nice:

 

its too bad its killing our lungs :P

[juanif94]

a few months ago happened the same here in uruguay...the smoke was in the coast side of the country and you could see to the sun without glasses and it lasted like 4 days long and all that smoke was produced by a fire in argentina (our neighbour country)

[girl_in_the_band_tshirt]

^ aw that's really weird.

its the same here, you can look right at the sun without it hurting. which is pretty dangerous actually.

 

I still think it makes everything look really beautiful... all the sunlight being filtered through everyday. but it does get hard to breathe sometimes.

 

Its been nearly a month now with all the fires and smoke around here.. I think I'm done with it now :P my family's been really lucky though.. our place isn't being threatened by fire, but both my aunt and grams had to be evacuated for some time (but their houses are fine too now - whew)

 

anyway. it is weird. like living in an ash tray :thinking:

[chuck kottke]

Well, that's California for you! National Geographic had a special on the west, and California's covered quite extensively - it's just a natural condition living with surrounding dry chaparral forest and brush - but yea, that would be a bit strange to us in the upper Midwest! We did have some smoke from fires burning out in the Dakotas once, but it was pretty mild by comparison..

But musically, you'll do fine! Just breath a little oxygen first, and you'll be good to go!:)