The Murky Waters Of Songwriting XIV

Hmm.

Alvin and myself have been planning to finish off the track 'No More Tears', which includes me on vocals, acoustic guitar and mandolin. Alvin contributes his vocals, banjo and even does a harmony mandolin solo (as in he does an overlapping mandolin solo over my initial mandolin solo).

The problem with that song is Alvin isn't satisfied with the mix because the instruments come in at the wrong time (which he, says makes him shudder whenever he hears the song) and I myself am not satisfied with the vocals (because the harmony goes off-key) and the guitar sound, which I feel sounds too sythesized.

We initially decided to re-record the guitar track, vocals and re-mix the mandolin solos.

Being the itchy-handed bugger I am, I completely re-did the guitar tracks, mandolin tracks and threw in new vocals. All that remains is Alvin's Banjo, mandolin harmony solo and vocals.

The resultant song which I finished yesterday, has better-sounding acoustic guitar and of course, better vocals (I improved my voice by double-tracking my vocals).

I think my voice sounds terrible, but when I double-track it, and compress the result, it sounds much better. Should I employ this method everytime I record? Even though it may make me sound better than I do in real life, I think the record deserves a good vocal sound.

Another good example of double-tracking my voice is included in the latest version of 'To You', in which I overlay new vocals over the old 'live' version.


Cheers,

Crawldaddy