We’re excited to have been asked to review Emma Elizabeth’s latest track. A World Away is a live acoustic version of a song to be released as a fully produced song on a forthcoming album.
A World Away is a beautiful and simple song. The track has excellent guitar playing and superb, vulnerable vocals.
There are some classy reverbs added to the guitar track to fill it out nicely and the sound of the acoustic guitar is present and clean. The transients are coming through very nicely on the guitar.
Emma has a calm gentleness about her performance. It sounds as though she is nice and close to the mic whilst recording, meaning that the breathiness and character have been picked up well. This leads to a strong and personal touch on the delivery. Emma’s head voice is really spot on with some great control and technique.
The chorus of the song is simple and catchy. I can see this developing well as a full production song, although I must note that this kind of gentle singer-songwriter style is very popular in TV sync right now.
Possibly not relevant as this track could be considered a demo for the fully produced song, but worthy mentioning that there’s a dominant resonance on B3 on the guitar (246Hz). I’d suggest just notching out in the EQ. There’s also a slightly dominant boxy/honky frequency around 500-600Hz in the vocal track (especially during the “oohs”) which could use a little attention. It’s not the voice, it’s the vocal track – perhaps caused by the reverb on it.
I am excited to hear this as a full production song. Emma should work with her producer to ensure that there’s development throughout the song to maintain interest; perhaps some high strings, perhaps a pedal steel solo. Do pay attention to ensuring good separation between sections in order to give some interesting rise and fall between verses and choruses.
We wish Emma Elizabeth the very best with her campaign to raise money for studio time. If you’ve enjoyed this song, please consider contributing to help Emma reach her goal; https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/emma-elizabeth-debut-album–3#/