musical theatre Fantasmagoriana; the title song of my musical

This is the title song from my musical by the same name, the second half of the video explains the context of the song. 

The song is meant to be a fifth lower, accompanied by string orchestra, and sung by a tenor. I'd appreciate feedback both on the video and the music- not the performance, I'm a professional violinist, not a singer! 

Cash

Hi Cash.

Impressive. The B&W filter fits with the music I would say, and the video looks really professional. However, a detail: the sound of the piano may have room for improvement. In terms of loudness I think it's mostly alright but the lower notes could benefit of some more volume.

I'm not sure if the explanation may be better at the beginning than after the song. I may be used to the reverse order, but probably this way works better for sharing it and it bring more focus to the song itself.

I recommend you to upload the sheet music here —or wherever you prefer, and then send a link here—. Some people may make use of it to give better & more precise feedback. I myself usually read the score I'm reviewing while doing so.

All in all, this was an intense & brief experience. I really look forward to listen to further works from you!

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

6 hours ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Hi Cash.

Impressive. The B&W filter fits with the music I would say, and the video looks really professional. However, a detail: the sound of the piano may have room for improvement. In terms of loudness I think it's mostly alright but the lower notes could benefit of some more volume.

I'm not sure if the explanation may be better at the beginning than after the song. I may be used to the reverse order, but probably this way works better for sharing it and it bring more focus to the song itself.

I recommend you to upload the sheet music here —or wherever you prefer, and then send a link here—. Some people may make use of it to give better & more precise feedback. I myself usually read the score I'm reviewing while doing so.

All in all, this was an intense & brief experience. I really look forward to listen to further works from you!

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

 

Thank you for the feedback! I just hesitate to post the score publicly, because I've had my music stolen before.

Hello @CashComposer,

Welcome to the forum!

I think you sing really well as a singer! I really love your articulation and intonation which fits well for a musical. I love the F minor you use to create the more mystical feeling! Thx for sharing your music and joining us!

Henry

7 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hello @CashComposer,

Welcome to the forum!

I think you sing really well as a singer! I really love your articulation and intonation which fits well for a musical. I love the F minor you use to create the more mystical feeling! Thx for sharing your music and joining us!

Henry

 

Thank you so much! I'm not trained as a singer, and I've played in the pits of so many operas that I'm very conscious of how not professional my voice is lol. I'm excited to join a forum of like minded individuals, it's always nice to make new friends!!

On 1/3/2024 at 10:13 PM, CashComposer said:

I'd appreciate feedback both on the video and the music- not the performance, I'm a professional violinist, not a singer! 

Oh stop it! As someone who says that more than you, you need to have more faith in yourself. Your voice is lovely, and you bring gobs of emotion to your execution. 

I admit, musicals are far from my inspirations and style, but I always like to stumble upon something that catches my ear when it's not my normal jam. I'm really happy to have heard this, and welcome to the forum. 

It's always refreshing to hear more music from female composers, and guess what...there are some great female composers here, check them out! They'd love to hear from you, and I'm sure you would them. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

@pateceramics

@Nadin

@Gwendolyn Przyjazna

Of course there's more, these just stick out to me. Thanks for sharing, and well done on a fantastic performance of your music 🙂

21 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Oh stop it! As someone who says that more than you, you need to have more faith in yourself. Your voice is lovely, and you bring gobs of emotion to your execution. 

I admit, musicals are far from my inspirations and style, but I always like to stumble upon something that catches my ear when it's not my normal jam. I'm really happy to have heard this, and welcome to the forum. 

It's always refreshing to hear more music from female composers, and guess what...there are some great female composers here, check them out! They'd love to hear from you, and I'm sure you would them. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

@pateceramics

@Nadin

@Gwendolyn Przyjazna

Of course there's more, these just stick out to me. Thanks for sharing, and well done on a fantastic performance of your music 🙂

 

Thank you so much for the kind words! For the record, I've composed a lot for non musical theatre purposes (still love that saxophone quartet I wrote when I was 16), but I just keep coming back to this genre- I love long form, word painting, song cycles, themes and variations, fugues... All sorts of things that are best explored in musical theatre, for me anyways.

Thank you for the recommendation! I always want to see more non male composers, most of my favorite contemporary composers happen to be women!

Powerful voice, and your vibrato is beautifully executed. Nice editing skills too! It looks like you and I have the same mic (a rode nt1?). Good choice!

I have to agree with @Omicronrg9 here that the piano sounds need to be enhanced, but your powerful voice is really the central focus, and it is really beautiful.

Let's talk about balancing your music now. Your loudest parts are too loud, while your lowest parts are too low. This meant that I had to raise and lower my volume throughout the video (as I am wearing headphones). Balancing music and sound production can be very tricky, but with practice, you will get the hang of it. An obvious example of incorrect balancing is when you introduce your musical to the audience. I had to raise the volume up significantly to hear you. However, once I raised the volume, I left it alone (I didn't have to raise and lower it). So while the db levels were very mismatched...they were level.

As a fellow YouTuber, you want to measure your audio in LUFS, and this roughly should be -14LUFS for YouTube. This means, your peak should not surpass this level.

Welcome to the forum!

30 minutes ago, chopin said:

Powerful voice, and your vibrato is beautifully executed. Nice editing skills too! It looks like you and I have the same mic (a rode nt1?). Good choice!

I have to agree with @Omicronrg9 here that the piano sounds need to be enhanced, but your powerful voice is really the central focus, and it is really beautiful.

Let's talk about balancing your music now. Your loudest parts are too loud, while your lowest parts are too low. This meant that I had to raise and lower my volume throughout the video (as I am wearing headphones). Balancing music and sound production can be very tricky, but with practice, you will get the hang of it. An obvious example of incorrect balancing is when you introduce your musical to the audience. I had to raise the volume up significantly to hear you. However, once I raised the volume, I left it alone (I didn't have to raise and lower it). So while the db levels were very mismatched...they were level.

As a fellow YouTuber, you want to measure your audio in LUFS, and this roughly should be -14LUFS for YouTube. This means, your peak should not surpass this level.

Welcome to the forum!

 

 

Thanks! I will be sure to take this to heart going forward with audio adjustment for future songs. I'm not used to having to combine multiple tracks, normally I just record everything live- I didn't have time to write a good piano reduction, or hire my pianist, so in the future I'll likely just make sure to have that prepared ahead of time so I don't have to deal with those issues of balance. 

I just spent the last 20 minutes or so since this comment going back and fixing stuff for my next video, and it made such a big difference! 

Yeah often as musicians we ignore the sound production / mastering part of our work. But I would say this is a critical aspect of music since this is what the audience is listening to. There's so many things to take into account, and I am by no means an expert at sound engineering, but these are the basics:

• Noise gates (these can help reduce your breaths in between words)
• Background music to vocal DB ratios (I don't know the ratio for singing against music, but for youtube, I set background music anywhere from -40db to -35db against my voice which is usually -3db to - 6db
• EQing your vocals or music (bringing up the bass and trebles make for a decent output, in my opinion. Your voice may require different types of eqing)
• limiter (making sure your peaks don't surpass a certain threshold (that red limit where you hear tearing, or distortion)
• normalization: For youtube, I normalize my voice. When I talk lightly or have a voice inflection, I want the same db levels. For music, this may not necessarily be the case though...this is a judgement call.

I'm sure there's a ton more but these are the basics for some good audio output.

Hello @CashComposer !

This is a very captivating number! I subscribed to your YouTube and will be eagerly awaiting more updates on the musical. 

I have admittedly minimal knowledge of production and sound engineering, and I see that others have offered many helpful points on your mixing here, so I will offer more about other elements. First of all, you have a very powerful and emotional voice. The verse at 2:25 really got me. 🙂 Overall, the triple feel and the key of F minor really work in the context of this song; they lend to the 19th Century feel for me, especially when paired with your video. Putting it in black and white was perfect. I liked your lyric imagery in the first verse, and "our passions overgrown" was also a great line. Hearing your inspiration for this work made it even better. 😁

If there was anything I could point out, it's more of a personal preference regarding the decrescendo after "once we've said goodbye" at ~2:57. I almost feel as if the dynamic in the piano is dropping down too soon and possibly diluting the power of your line -- I wonder if it would support your line better if you held onto the forte in the accompaniment for a little bit longer? This is completely subjective. 🙂 

And, I personally don't mind that the song comes before the explanation -- maybe because I found the song's beginning so arresting, but also because I have definitely seen similar things done before on YouTube and have never had a problem with it.  

By the way, I'm so sorry you've had the experience of having your music stolen; how awful!

Thank you for sharing this beautiful composition and performance here, and I see you're new to Young Composers -- welcome! And it's great to connect with another female composer.

On 1/4/2024 at 9:30 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Oh stop it! As someone who says that more than you, you need to have more faith in yourself. Your voice is lovely, and you bring gobs of emotion to your execution. 

I admit, musicals are far from my inspirations and style, but I always like to stumble upon something that catches my ear when it's not my normal jam. I'm really happy to have heard this, and welcome to the forum. 

It's always refreshing to hear more music from female composers, and guess what...there are some great female composers here, check them out! They'd love to hear from you, and I'm sure you would them. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

@pateceramics

@Nadin

@Gwendolyn Przyjazna

Of course there's more, these just stick out to me. Thanks for sharing, and well done on a fantastic performance of your music 🙂

 

I can't believe it; this made my absolute day! Thank you so much for mentioning me. I really can't express what a pleasant surprise this is.

I agree that's refreshing to stumble upon a female composer as I don't see terribly many here. I'm so glad I heard @CashComposer 's work today for the first time -- and I hope the other excellent composers you mentioned will see this and maybe add a word and cheer her on!

Thank you, again. I really should be on this forum more often. 🤭