Be My Mistake - The 1975 (Cover)

Community Recordings Audio-Video Of You Playing
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Hey Everyone!

I’m bringing you a cover of a band that I did not like at all until their last album, I highly recommend it!
This is a really soft song and one that I’ve used to try to sing more relaxed, and play around with EQ, and Compression most of all in Ableton Live.

The thing that I couldn’t work out was how to get a good sound out of the guitar plugging it into my AI directly, that’s the reason that I went with the condenser mic to capture everything and then try to balance things out in the mix.

Hope everyone is doing fine, I hope your ears don’t explode because of cringe listening to this :sweat_smile:
and I’d really appreciate tips on how to record “Live” performances, I really wouln’t like to record track after track with the 1 mic I’ve got, although I suspect the solution would be to just get another microphone.

Cheers. Oh here’s the video

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Hey Kevin, lovely cover. I was looking at this myself some months ago and shelved it, your version might get me to pull it off the shelf and give it another go!

On the recording front I’m no expert at all but, if you are going to play and sing at the same time and use a condenser mic for vocals then you will always get a fair bit of guitar bleeding into the vocal track, there’s no real way around that. I’ve plugged my acoustic directly into the AI and sang with a condenser and that worked, but I got a lot of guitar on both channels, there was no way to separate the vocals entirely. I’ve also used a dynamic mic for vocals, you get much less guitar bleeding on that, although still some. If you want complete separation then you really will need to record vox and guitar on different takes.
What don’t you like about the acoustic plugged directly into the AI? What pickup system are you using? You’ll never get as good a sound as you would with a good mic though, whatever you do.
All that said, I think this recording sounds pretty well balanced.

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Hi Kevin :grin:
Great cover.
A mellow and laidback guitar, backed up with a great vocal.
Dont know the original, not sure if inever heard about The 1975 before. But i liked youre version never the less.
Well done as always :+1:

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Beautiful and emotional performance, Kevin! :clap:

I kind of really felt it, very delciate singing and playing. Never heard the song before, but your version made me like it in a sec. :slight_smile:

Mix sounded well balanced to me, so mic position and post production were done well. :+1:

Myself being a complete rookie with recording and production, take the next as some guessing rather than profund advice. :sweat_smile: I assume your guitar has a piezo pick-up? These tend to sound quite unnatural and neutral as the “normal” sounds and “noises” from playing an acoustic guitar are being cut off, i.e. pick noise, string noise, the warm sound the guitar body creates. This is why it tends to sounds so odd to our ears after recording with piezo only. I’m not sure, how post recording effects might help to get a little more natural, warmer tone. Probably there are some, but I am not that far on my journey, yet. :sweat_smile:

What Paul @mathsjunky mentioned towards guitar bleeding in to the mic is definitely true. There is no total separation between guitar and vocals when being recorded simultaneously. It can be reduced by positioning and using dynamic mics with certain directionality, though. If you don’t want to record separate tracks after each other, that might be a way to go. Using the condensor mic for guitar and get another dynamic mic for vocals. Disclaimer: My knowledge on this is only theoretical in nature, so far. So maybe folks with true hands on experience can offer more profund advice. :slight_smile:

Sorry for the lengthy reply. Thank you for sharing that one, I thoroughly enjoyed the listen.

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Very nicely done Kevin. I do like an acoustic guitar better with a microphone than a piezo or magnetic pickup. I am not in a position to give any advice on alternative solutions though.

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Cracking work Kevin, and genuinely a superb vocal performance, full of so much feeling, I’ve had my eyes closed since the first line was delivered.

I agree with my namesake @TheCluelessLuthier on much preferring the sound of an acoustic through a mic rather than plugged in, it loses so much of the natural warmth. I thought the balance was pretty much spot on. Are you really not happy with it?

Anyway, thank you for sharing that, I loved it. :clap::clap::heart::heart:

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Kevin

Thanks for your rendition of a song I’ve never heard before: the words and melody are well sung, with feeling and meaning. No cringe. Admiration for a job well done.

I thought the balance was exactly that - balanced! Your guitar sounded good and you’ve got a a fine voice…

Brian

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Hi Kev,

I don’t know this one but I agree with Trond, great work really nice guitar work and sounds like a really strong vocal mate, well done. :clap:

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Very good Kevin. Vocals complemented the solid playing very well. I’ll need to listen to the original now. Well done :clap::clap::clap:

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Sounded great to my ears Kevin!

I watched the video before I read your post and, listening to it, there wasn’t anything I noticed about the guitar/vocal mix that I would change.

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That was fantastic Kevin. Guitar & vocal performances top notch. You’ve come so far, I swear each recording your voice gets better. Your singing actually improved from the beginning of this performance to the end of it as well.

I’m sure I’d heard this song before btw, but not sure from where.

On the recording - to me, sounded great. I listened on my PC with studio monitors. With recording live style performances, I use a dynamic mic for voice and I plug my guitar in, but the guitar’s pickup has mic + piezo (AP5 Pro). So if it’s something you’re planning on doing a lot of, you could look into upgrading your guitar’s pickup. But there for sure wasn’t anything wrong with the sound from this one, sounded great.

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I liked this a lot, Kevin. I’ve not heard it before, nor am I familiar with the band. Like @mathsjunky said, your performance sounded well balanced. I could hear every word. Great vocals and great playing.

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@KevinKevan
Brilliant performance, Kevin!
The guitar sound, in my opinion, is a little flat and lacks low frequencies, but I think it is impossible to achieve a better result when recording with a single condenser microphone.
As for the vocals, they are absolutely top-notch, powerful and clean :+1:
Bravo, my friend!
Thanks for sharing!
Leo

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Hi Kevin, it’s beyond me to give any technical advice, what I can say is that you performance is just awesome and sooo beautiful! Anything about it!

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I think this is great, I wouldn’t worry about trying to make the recoding process better, just keep working on the songs, and you will always sound better anyway. Chasing a perfect recording is a sure fire way to send to into a tailspin. Just my opinion.

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@mathsjunky thanks Paul, my guitar has a Fishman pickup, sounds pretty good to me to play live but couldn’t get a sound that I was happy with while recording, maybe some more playing around with it will get me somewhere, or I’ll have to give in and get another mic. I did a lot of testing and this setup was the one that convinced me the most, lots still to learn on the recording area but you do learn a lot just trying stuff.

@tRONd cheers Trond! Glad you enjoyed it, I saw the band just yesterday live and their sound is amazing, a really soft/poppy act but I would really recommend it!

@Lisa_S thanks so much Lisa, it is a piezo. Sounds too “trebly” and weird to my ear, so in the future more experimenting will take place, although I believe I will stick to this setup for acoustic songs like these, at least until I have a second mic available. Cheers!

@TheCluelessLuthier thank you Mark, it did sound quite artificial to me with the pickup. Still worth trying it out though.

@Notter appreciate it a lot Mark. I am pretty happy with it at the moment, after some twitching with the EQ and most of all compression, it got quite “full” and a lot more balanced than the raw recording. Still on the very early stages of recording/producing but learnt a bunch from this song.

@beejay56 thank you Brian, glad you enjoyed this :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

@CD02 cheers Craig!

@MadModMcd thanks Ian, glad you got to listen to this before the original, free of comparisons! haha

@twistor59 cheers Phil, I’m quite okay with it after listening back a bunch of times.

@jkahn appreciate it JK, I wish I did more videos like this more often but life gets in the way, maybe more time between videos helps the “improving effect” :rofl:
That’s a great tip, I’ll have to check it out and try to resist the GAS!

Thanks everyone for listening and all the recording/mixing tips, this community blows my mind everytime I share something

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@pkboo3 thanks Pamela, I’m glad you got to enjoy my little strumming cover

@crocodile1 thanks Leo, I have to agree with you on the guitar, but it sounded a bit too “muddy” to my ears before adjusting the low freq. Still, I’m quite happy with it and will try to work on it on the next one, always exciting to try different things out!

@Silvia80 thank you very much Silvia, for your kind words!

@mikemycroft thanks Michael, I think you’re kinda right. To do this as a hobby you have to choose wisely how you spend your practice time. I usually record/work on songs on the “day time” and try to do the mixing etc at night when I wouldn’t be able to play anyway without disturbing anyone.