I recently shared the first two finished songs from my cinematic folk metal project Wuldorwudu. The third song from my concept album The Path of the Seven Stars is now finished as well:
III. Mystical Alchemy
The song enters the living mystery of nature — where the turning seasons reveal a sacred cycle, each phase carrying its own gifts, trials and transformations.
Like the previous songs, Synthesizer V plays an important role in the vocal production, combining lead vocals, harsh vocals and larger vocal layers within a heavier cinematic folk metal arrangement.
The song has been professionally mixed and mastered, so this is the final release version. If you prefer, you can also listen on spotify etc.
I’d be very interested to hear what you think, especially about how the Synthesizer V vocals work together with the heavier and more atmospheric parts of the arrangement. With each new song, I’m exploring the capabilities of the vocals more and more.
For anyone who wants to follow the album journey from the beginning, the first two finished songs are here (also Synthesizer V Vocals):
Great mix, love the guitars in particular. Vocals are well mixed, but in several places I was surprised by some of the timings sounding a bit awkward – I see the lyrics scrolling up and imagine how they’re going to fit, and find that it’s not done that way at all! An example at 2:54: “…glistens with heat / …lush ripened wheat”. At 4:47 I’m really expecting “subdues without force” to follow the pattern of the previous line “back to its source” (i.e. a shorter “without”), but it sounds a bit “default” on the timing. I’m not sure what’s going on in “er-ustwhile strong yearnings” – needs a phoneme tweak? I also think it would really benefit from more automation of vocal modes – each voice stays pretty much the same for its whole section even though the backing may vary enormously.
Anyway, it’s far better than any of my metal efforts! I’m sure @MattiS will like this!
I like it very much! Professional indeed, while I only can contribute the thougths of an amateur after listening once. Three long songs …, so I will go through them one by one.
Mystical Alchemy: Similar folk or more or less medieval elements all to often become a bit stereotype in my ears when I listen to other bands. But you are mingling them with prog elements, which makes them “fresh” for my ears. Very fine. You’re using contrasting parts for delivering variety and keeping things interesting. I myself would have given the last part a little bit more the character of a climax and then also make it a little bit longer. A listener who bears 8:04 surely bears also 9.04 By the way, isn’t it an unusual pronunciation to sing “REturn” instead of “reTURN”? It would be a petitesse, but these are the very last words of the whole song.
You’re asking for the vocals: the different vocal styles that you name fit with building the song using contrasting parts. But within each of these sections I had the impression - like Synchro, if I have understood him right -, that there could be a bit more of flexibility, variability, motion for the respective voices.
These are my spontaneous thoughts after first listening, I hope that I don’t get a completely different impression when I will listen to it a second time, which I surely will. It’s really good music.
I’d be glad if my stuff would sound like this!
Call of the stars: beautiful Intro, great riffs. After a while, though, I got the impression that the song is too long. It is too often for me that I hear the same melody and the same chords. And the melody is a bit stereotype - last year I have uploaded a song here in the forum named “Spread the disease” with a bagpipe melody that has basically the same sequence of tones - and the VI-VII-i of the two main harmonic progressions is very common, too. Well, these are the thoughts of someone who writes and likes strange prog metal music. I understand that folk metal has other conventions.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to listen and for the valuable feedback!
Regarding the vocal timing, I experimented quite a bit with phrasing and dynamics to keep things interesting while still staying close to the German original pre-production. The lyrics were originally written in German and then adapted into English through a professional poetry translation, in close collaboration with me. Since I’m not a native English speaker, pronunciation and phrasing are always a bit of a risk for me — especially when it comes to judging how far I can bend words musically before they start sounding unnatural to native English speakers.
For lines like “glistens with heat / lush ripened wheat,” I actually tried a straighter rhythm first, but found the more dynamic phrasing more interesting. Still, that is exactly where I’m sometimes unsure how much rhythmic freedom works in English before it starts sounding odd rather than intentionally expressive. A feature in Synthesizer V that could automatically “straighten out” a verse back toward more natural spoken pronunciation would actually be really useful for this kind of situation. On the other hand, the final verse with “return” was deliberately stretched out more evenly and placed slightly further back to give it a more atmospheric feel.
That’s the difficult part for me: judging whether something still comes across as intentional musical phrasing to native English speakers or simply sounds unusual. So feedback like this is genuinely very helpful. Thanks again!
By the way, German pronunciation has recently become available for the voicebanks as well. What I’ve heard so far hasn’t fully convinced me yet, though, as it still sounded a bit like an English speaker singing in German. But I hope this will improve over time to the point where the voicebanks can sound genuinely native in German. If that happens, there will definitely be a German version with the original lyrics as well.
By the way, isn’t it an unusual pronunciation to sing “REturn” instead of “reTURN”? It would be a petitesse, but these are the very last words of the whole song.