(FP) Happy Firefly (Owl city vs Zedd & Elley Duhé)

[Dj-Legato]

Hi! I was listening to the radio yesterday and heard this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfXvjxbRhZk
And thought it sounded familiar some how, came to this conclusion;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psuRGfAaju4
But it was in another key and 9bpm slower.. Still gave it a go!
This is what i came up with. Ive could have used a better Pella, but this was all i found
(anyone got a good pella to spare?)

sources:
Owl City - Fireflies (Instrumental)
Zedd & Elley Duhé - Happy now (Acapella???)
Owl City - Fireflies (Studio Acapella)

Draft:

No Flash Installed

V1:

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V2:

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Download: (same edit, different master)
Master1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jm17tcylsqto3mg/Happy%20Firefly%20draft2%20V2.mp3?dl=0
Master2. https://www.dropbox.com/s/4tw346j9kadmenp/Happy%20Firefly%20draft2%20V2%28alt%20master%29.mp3?dl=0

Hope you all like it..
(Ps! Please help me with a better vocal)

[CVS]

Like the combo, it fits well, both voices combine good.
The Owl city original vocal always sounded 'nasal' (NASA? spacey) / husky-but-high-pitched to me, but you mean the other vocal (obviously...)
Maybe a solution is to exagerate the effect on the girl's voice, and put like a telephone voice on her, or change formants (in the pitch correction) with Vocalsynth or some VST like that, to make her sound husky, whispered, "out of this world" as well.

With Gsnap VST for autotune, I had the effect that the acapella became narrower (in stereo) as well. Maybe this is in your girl-source as well? The parts where the man sings seem a tiny bit wider now, but this can be a problem of my headphones.

[Warezio]

Maybe you can find a better Elley-pella. However the tremolo and thin-ness is mostly noticeable only at the very beginning (and I mean only the first 22 seconds). Adding some more verb with pre-delay can sometimes smooth the tremolo. The thin-ness might be addressable via equalization. Once you get to the wide vocoded parts it sounds just fine to me.

[Happy Cat Disco]

So I only have a mono listening source at the moment but from what I can tell the combo is good. If you wait a while I bet the Happy now Acapella (without BG vocals) will show up eventually. That said I still think it works as is. I would just recommend turning the vocals down a dB or the instrumental up a dB.

[Dj-Legato]

Thanks for your feedback you all

Ive tried to fix the acapella from Elley Duhé by adding a tube compressor, some more reverb with more pre-delay and lowering the De-esser and gating a bit.
I also tried increasing the lows on the Eq just a touch.
It now seems warmer and a little wider, but the bad extracted pella still have some artifacts..
I tried to camouflage the worst parts with snippets of the instrumental in reverse
And of course as HCD suggested, i lowered the vocals by applying an envelope on the volume from(0,9 - 1,6 Db) on both vocals

Anyway, V1 is up

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[SMASH]

A very nice combo here

Did you try the pella from MS Project (just in case you don't use it )?
https://msprojectsound.com/song/22266/Zedd+Elley+Duh+Happy+now+Acapella+Instrumental

[satis5d]

I didn't find the source material on the 'pella to be an issue. Your masking skills must be better than mine.

I did find that the vocals seem to come in early quite often. I'm not sure how much you cut this up, but I found that Elley tends to come in rushed but then the issue gets resolved by the end of every phrase.

I'm very close to a recommend on this.

[Dj-Legato]

Thank you guys!

Did you try the pella from MS Project (just in case you don't use it )?

Jepp! Thats the one Ive used

Your masking skills must be better than mine.

That i doubt Why do you say this, did you try that pella yourself ? or..

I did find that the vocals seem to come in early quite often. I'm not sure how much you cut this up, but I found that Elley tends to come in rushed but then the issue gets resolved by the end of every phrase

I rechecked the timing by putting the original Zedd track in my DAW, aligning it with the instrumental of Owl city, then muted the mental and turned on the vocals again. And yes there was a slight reverb going on there, some places up to 0.012Bpm.
Then i used a plugin called transient master to slow down the attack just a nudge on the Elly vocals. I guess the timing is fixed now

V2 is up

[SMASH]

I like version 2

I say...

[Dj-Legato]

Thanks for the recommend Smash! I do appreciate it