Critique Requested [UTAU] The Little Mermaid [Matsudappoiyo quiet]

hopeandjoy

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko


ikesoren discord: heeey! let's all do aus based off of fairy tales? me: *suddenly remembers this song again* (it old as heck but good)

i also want to thank my excellent friend ashikai for making the art for this video! she's an excellent artist and writer and cool dude and i linked her art tumblr in the credits check it out

Title: The Little Mermaid (人魚姫)
Music: 4124
Lyrics: 紅月 満
Singer: Matsudappoiyo quiet (松田っぽいよ quiet)
Art: ashikai (http://ashikaiinks.tumblr.com/)
UST: NeeMiSo & Macnspam
Translation: Motokokusanagi
 

Awaclus

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
The vocal sounds a bit dull and it clashes with a lot of the low mid frequency content in the instruments. I recommend cutting some of the low mid frequencies and boosting the highs from the vocal to make it sound more exciting and also sit in the mix better. Also a very short room ambience reverb would help it sound more natural (the point is not to sound like it has reverb in it, the point is to sound like any sound you hear IRL because everything always has those room reflections).

There are also a bunch of problems with the instruments themselves. The bass instrument (which sounds like a synth piano) is off center, which makes the whole thing sound very unsettling on headphones, but at the same time, the overall mix doesn't have all that much stereo width in general. Assuming that you're dealing with an instrumental track and you don't get to have control over each individual instrument, the best way to mitigate this is to use a multiband stereo imager and merge the lowest band as much as you can without making the bass disappear, and add a bit of stereo separation on the other bands.

A bit of multiband compression on the master would also help with all of the issues. You don't want to squash the dynamics too much in this song, but a little bit won't hurt.
 

Aurum79

Teto's Territory
@Awaclus Since this is a cover, I checked the original and things like the off center piano are present there too. If it's intentional, would you still recommend changing the song in this way?
 

Awaclus

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
@Aurum79 Absolutely. It might be a cover song, but it's still your own project so you can do whatever you want. As long as you have a reason why you're doing it and you're fairly confident that you're not making it worse in the process, why not. It doesn't have to mean you think the original is bad either.

In this case, for me it's a pretty easy decision to remove the stereo width from the low end. It's just a small detail, and it makes the experience that much more comfortable especially for headphone users.

I think that you have to process the instrumental in some way or another virtually every time, because it was designed to fit with the original vocal and your cover doesn't have the original vocal so it's rare for it to magically fit your vocal without having to do anything to it (and also because it's usually a low quality mp3 file and then you have to try to salvage it as much as possible).
 
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