paxton - Mozart Meets a Smooth Criminal (The Piano Guys vs.

[wfpaxton]

paxton - Mozart Meets Michael

Vocals: Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal
Instrumental: The Piano Guys - Michael Meets Mozart

The Piano Guys put out a great instrumental track last year inspired by Michael Jackson that just seemed to be made to accompany the King-of-Pop's vocals.

First mashup, so helpful comments appreciated! Enjoy!

paxton

No Flash Installed

[DeeM]

Hello wfpaxton & Welcome to Mashstix

Very interesting idea of mash, unfortunatly vocal is OOK (Out Of Key) & OOT (Out Of Tempo) also.
Not everywhere, but lot's of time. M.J. vocal must be a little bit louder compared to the music.
When the music go louder, you have to level up MJ volume & the same when music goes down.

Pretty sure it can be a wonderfull one if you can fix it

Cheers,
DeeM.

[Mister Nono]

Hi Paxton, and welcome

I fully agree with DeeM... The idea is really quite good, I like it, but I think you should reconsider the vocal placement over the mental. As DeeM said just before, it might be really wonderful if you fix this small trouble !
I'll look forward from hearing a next version
Cheers...

[wfpaxton]

DeeM and Mister Nono: Thanks a ton for your feedback. Suppose it's better to find out I'm tone deaf sooner than later . This is why I like to come to MashStix!

Anyway, both songs are *supposed* to be in 'Am', so I never bothered to fine tune them (not that I even noticed they were out of key ). So I did what I shoulda done first and analyzed them (tONaRT). Wouldn't you know, (if tONaRT got it right) mental is Am, and the pella from acapellas4u is in A#m - not Am as in the original track!! Since the vocal now is chopped into a thousand pieces to overlay on the almost unaltered mental, I bumped up the mental 1 semitone and fine-tuned it as much as I know how. Any further suggestions on fixing the OOK problem would be greatly appreciated. Also, Piano Guys track tempo is a bit uneven and my timing was definitely off in a few spots, so I went back and tightened up some of the timing slop you were talking about. Also bumped up Michael's vocals.

Before I sink much more time into it, would you guys mind taking a second look here? Hopefully a bit easier on the ears.

And seriously, thanks for taking the time to help out the new kid

paxton

[DeeM]

Hey !

You're on the right way. OOK problem solved for me.
Now you have to fix the voice placement onto Mozart partition
Hope we can here these fix soon.

Cheers,
DeeM.

[rrodd]

wow! I was anxious to hear what you did when I came into the forum, it seemed interesting, and it is interesting, sounds good to me
I can't wait to come back if you'll do any changes to this and hear the final result

[Hifi Banjo Strings]

Yep, bring the vocals to their original position on the MJ track (don't sound too hot like this) and it'll be super. Also, while you're at it, have you considered adding an echo or reverb to the vocals? It would help them not seem so abruptly cut off before the gaps. Just a suggestion

And here at Mashstix - everyone's welcome, regardless of tenure or age

Oh and 2 things: Finally! Someone else who uses tONaRT! So far, I only know of you and me who use it! And also, what software (Digital Audio Workstation - DAW) are you using to make these? I can't imagine there isn't a 'select all' -> 'change pitch' or similar on yours..

[Colatron]

Hey paxton, and welcome to Mashstix! Yep, the guys have got you covered with their advice here. I didn't hear the first version, but the key issue seems ok now, the vocals sound good to go.

And with regards the timing issues, the chorus actually sounds pretty tight and close to being on the money! But the verses still have problems and need a bit of work - nothing too major though, a couple of hours work should sort them nicely.

Oli's got it right - you need to tidy up the endings to the vocal edits you've made (you should be able to zoom in to the end of each section within your DAW and apply small fades), and then I agree, some soft reverb or a little delay would take away the abruptness.

The other thing to note are your levels - everything sounds so quiet through my headphones at the moment; me personally, as a rule of thumb I try to have the instrumental running at between 2-4 dB (depending on bassy-ness of the track) louder than the vocals - you can still keep the vocals 'loud' in the mix by adding a little compression, but if you have them set to play louder than the instrumental, they can pop out too much and feel disconnected from a track.

So I'd recommend knocking everything up a little in volume (Hard Limiting is good for this if you have it on your DAW - you can make sure it still sits below the magic 0dB level, but make the sound more fuller), and then dial the vocals back down a touch, adding in your compression. I guess you have a graphical levels output in the DAW (the pretty flashing volume lights) so just watch them as you tweak the levels and make sure they don't overpower each other.

Hope this helps, but as a first mash, you've done really well so far, so keep up the good work!

All the best
A.

[RockstarBruski]

Welcome to Mashstix and I like this! Funny thing is I just made and played an all MJ 60 minute fitness mix at my wife's fitness class last week. Long live MJ in our memories

Anyway - the boys have pretty much covered what all need you to do to improve this. the only thing I would add is sometimes (example the first minute) when MJ is just whisper talking his voice is hitting a bit of the treble too much and I think it might sound a bit richer if you added a bit of mid and possibly a tudge of reverb to his voice in those sections to warm it up a bit / make him sound a bit fuller to match the full sounding mental.

Cheers.

[lloyd]

Well it seems everyone has said what needs to be said

I have a question though, you say it's your first mashup...? Now I've heard a lot of "first mashups" and they were all awful... but this isn't awful and even when you first presented it, it was "alright". So... I gotta ask, is it really your first or just the first you've been prepared to share..?

Anyway... welcome to MashStix