>> (I don't know if it's Cubase or Kontakt, but the first note on each instrument
seems to randomly get dropped or clipped... Very annoying!)
>
> Hint: have all partitions' lines start with a note, then padded with
> silence. It might be a problem of uninitialized variables, so everybody
> says BOO at the start and voilà!

Yeah, I may have to do that. (I wish I could say this is the first time...)

>> * Microphone hiss. Absurd levels of microphone hiss. The extreme
>> compressor settings only make things worse.
>
> You seems too near the microphone (saturating ?). The sensibility of it
> might also be a problem if you are to move away from it.
>
> The original was probably done about a meter away from the microphone,
> with enough volume to not hear breathing. And they stood up. Not sited.

I had the microphone far enough away that I was surprised it actually 
detected my voice. But yeah, it picks up so much background noise - 
which has nothing to do with how near or far I am.

I imagine the professional track was done in a recording studio with 
sound-proof walls, high-quality microphones, and a recording engineer 
who actually knows WTF he's doing.

>> * Breath control. I had real trouble not running out of air on... well,
>> basically ALL of those chords. But even the bits that aren't chords, I
>> was constantly breathless. Maybe it's because I'm so unfit, but I
>> suspect I'm probably just doing it wrong.
>
> Singing lessons might teach you how to breath silently, or even how to
> sing while taking air in!

Yeah, I keep toying with the idea of doing this. Not sure if I have the 
nerve though... we'll see.

>> * The headphones I was using make it difficult to hear both myself and
>> the backing track. I had to sing this with one ear in and one ear out.
>
> Real studio have a feed-back loop in the headphone. Or you need the
> opened-ones.

Yeah, these are cheap "gamer" headphones. (I.e., they're designed to 
deliver maximum bass power, rather than high fidelity.) Having said 
that, they're not as bad as you might imagine... But they're definitely 
designed to isolate external noise.

>> * I had serious difficulty mixing the final version. I wanted to *hear*
>> the vocals, but the signal keeps clipping. I turned the vocals down and
>> down and down until now they're barely audible, and still the signal is
>> only just out of the red. Compare my recording to The Senti-Mentals, and
>> their track is nowhere near the end of the meter, yet sounds
>> *drastically louder*. WTF?
>
> Working in mp3 is not the best thing.

I only transcoded to MP3 so the file download would be small. The 
original material is all uncompressed.

> Thanks for sharing a bit of music in this hard world.

No problem. I must admit, though, I was hoping for more of a reaction... 
It took me about 5 hours to record the vocals for this, and probably 
about 4 hours before-hand preparing the backing track. And another 4 
hours afterwards trying to make it sound good...

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