Here at the Send Me Your Ears studio, we’ve been listening to the sounds of TerraTara’s single, Empty Apartment, released in November 2022.
Empty Apartment is a song that speaks of loneliness. It’s about losing a lover, going on the road and everything feeling the same, night in night out.
Empty Apartment truly is a beautiful acoustic singer-songwriter track which displays TerraTara’s vocals to perfection. Starting with some creative acoustic guitar and congas, the song quickly leads into the vocals. Some nice touches of incidental harmonica fill the gaps between the vocal lines, but it is the voice, as with all great singer-songwriter tracks, that is the focus.
TerraTara’s voice is absolutely charming to listen to. She has moments of Paula Cole (especially in the head voice) and at times she also reminded us of Alanis Morissette, Michelle Shocked or Thea Gilmore. There’s a confidence in her voice which shines through. TerraTara isn’t just singing these vocal lines: she’s living them through every word. You can hear the passion and character coming through and this song was a delight to listen to.
It is TerraTara’s delivery of the vocals that really makes this song stand out to us. We hit replay the second the track finished and thoroughly enjoyed it for several listens.
The timing of the harmonies in Empty Apartment is impeccable. We were particularly impressed by the harmony portamento moments in the track which gave us visible goosebumps. We also loved how the second voice wasn’t always just a harmony voice and sometimes offers up a contrasting rhythm.
Ideas from our ears
A boost around 70Hz would increase the warmth in the low end of the track. There are some boomy tones in the vocal and percussion tracks around 200-220Hz so a careful cut here would help balance out the low mids. A wider cut centred around 400-500Hz would also help balance out the mids. A fairly large boost centred around 8kHz would increase the brightness and presence in the track too. Finally, a little more stereo could be achieved with a basic ‘stereo spread’ plug-in. Most DAWs will have one of some kind. As always, these are just some ideas from our ears.
Final thoughts
If Alanis Morissette had teamed up with the Travelling Wilburys, we imagine the resulting music would sound a little like TerraTara’s Empty Apartment. This truly is a wonderful and engaging track and one which has put TerraTara firmly on our radar. One to watch!