This left feels right is the best. . .

Yeah the ballads were dreadful. They should have done something properly different with them. Robbie Williams did a cover of Back For Good early on in his solo career. That's the type of thing Jovi should have looked to do with the ballads.

It's My Life sounds good but I don't buy it when Jon says "This version brings out some of the hurt". There was no hurt in writing that song. It's a big triumphant anthem. It just happens to sound good slowed down but it certainly doesn't bring out any hurt because it was never there.

Some great ideas on the album. Some of it works well (Faith, IML, Everyday) but a lot of it is terrible.

For me, the original LMS is their best post 2000 song.

Totally agree. Jon's voice in Last Man Standing is awesome. Touching when I hear his performance in the part "Step right up, he's the real thing".

The production is the overall saving grace for this album. It's not very dynamic, but sounds much more natural and organic. You can actually hear the different instruments as apposed to how smashed together the other 00's albums sound.

This version of "Everyday" absolutely owns the original!

Jon uses vocal compression for his voice since Bounce or something. Pretty much everybody uses these days but a great example how exaggerated it can be is Thorn In My Side.

What exactly does vocal compression do?

Well, in a practical way to explain is a post or pre process when everything you sing makes sound more smooth. Think Jon with his Donald duck days voice trying to sing always, he may hit the note but the way he hit sound awful, I mean, the sound. This process attenuates this kind of thing allowing Jon to sing the chorus in Thorn in my Side hitting the notes and trying to low down his Donald duck moments.

He used here and there but now its almost every song.

Well compared to rest of their albums.

Totally agree, Everyday is next to perfect on TLFR.

Vocal compression has been used by EVERYBODY since it was invented. EVERYTHING in compressed these days. And it doesn't make anything better or worse, all compression does is make the volume even. It makes the loudest parts less loud so you can increase the overall volume of the track. Ie. makes the track have less dynamic range.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynam...ge_compression

It has NOTHING to do with pitch correction, which is usually called "autotune" because Autotune was one of the first working pitch correctors.

I wish people with no knowledge on sound engineering would stop assuming shit.

And yes, Jon uses a lot of pitch correction on albums nowadays. That's what makes the vocals sound computerized, NOT compression.

Ice

Thanks for clarifying. Compression might not be the word I was looking for then, everything on WAN just sounds overly...loud and almost over the levels. It almost annoys me to listen to it.

That is compression, but not just vocal compression. Everything is compressed and has been for quite a while now. But if you go overboard with it, everything has the same volume (usually "as loud as it can be"), there's no dynamics. This is done usually to make the tracks sound louder in radio (in which the stations compress the songs even more) or as streaming audio. If your interested, read about the "loudness war".

But compression doesn't make anything sound computerized, it's used to make stuff "loud". Pitch correction is usually the thing that makes the vocal sound unnatural. The tone of the voice should change as the pitch changes, but the more you pitch correct the vocal, the stranger it sounds since the tone doesn't change, but the pitch does. Nowadays you have software than can change the pitch of any given note to almost anything you want, but if you abuse it or make it change the pitch too much, it will sound computerized. It's usually easy to spot "between" the notes, as a human voice will change smoothly between notes, computer softwares aren't too good at that. Also, no human can be absolutely on pitch all the time. If someone is, it's fixed on a computer.

And yes, you can use pitch correction live too, many performers do. It's easier to do if you have a backing track, since the pitch depends on the music (ie. if you're between a C and a C#, which will fit the scale better).

Ice