Acoustic Music

[NCI]

Found my old myspace music page with some recordings on it. I seem to only like the 2nd song after listening years later to these recordings. Lemme know what you think! I've been recording on and off and some personal advice would really help me out.

 

http://www.myspace.com/nickisaac1108

[renips]

Hey man,

 

Nice collection of guitar progressions. You should continue to develop your style.

[stickboymusic]

Hey man

 

Bittersweet was my favourite..... you have a good voice and you should use it, lyrics were good too.... a little more work and you are on to something

 

Instrumentals were nice.... not the best recording (lots of amp buzz) but yeh it sounds like you have ideas

 

Do some more lyric writing ..... you are doing well

 

 

x

[blue2blue]

We try to keep the emphasis on works in progress here -- otherwise the place quickly gets overrun with people simply trying to get someone to listen to their music -- which is understandable, but quickly results in a forum filled with one-post-no-reply check-out-my-tunes threads.

 

Having said that, I think encouraging someone who hasn't written in a while is a noble thing and I found that the MySpace page you sent us to seems to be devoted to works in progress (I'm guessing from the username). So, that's enough of a fig leaf, I guess. (I'm this forum's moderator, so I have to pay some attention to the rules. )

 

I'm listening to the oddly titled, "Those Without a Name May Feel Free to Si," which I strongly suspect had a longer title before it ran into MySpace's peculiarly short-sighted title length limits. The (mostly) amplified acoustic guitar piece (with a few synth sounfs and textures) has a nicely aggressive edge and vibe.

 

While I was writing, "Samus Stardrive" came on. Despite the sci fi feel of the title, it's a mostly fingerpicked, gentle little piece.

 

And just as I was about to leave, "Bittersweet" was coming on, with its sleepy vocals. It has a nice vibe and the muscular guitars bring a nice support to the softly voiced vocals.

 

 

I'd definitely encourage you to get yourself back in harness and get back to writing. You've clearly got the skills and talent to do some nice work, I think. When we're younger, it's easy to get burned out by our own efforts, particularly if we're not really sure why we're pursuing them.

 

One of the burdens of being "young and talented" is the potential for getting confused about why you are pursuing your efforts. People can fill your head up with a lot of making it big nonsense.

 

It's usually put there by both well-meaning folks who don't get it and, all too often, by 'music biz pros' intent on exploiting the artist's ambitions and dreams -- often for the short term goals of simply extracting money for various production an promotional services -- it's a dirty little secret that that is considerably more than a cottage industry within the larger music business, and that it is also a steady ancillary source of revenue for 'legit' service providers in the industry, too -- as a former studio engineer at the low end of the food chain, I can tell you that the attitude of "If they're stupid enough to spend the money, I'm smart enough to take it" is a highly prevalent one.

 

That can really get in the way of having a clear relationship with your music and your writing -- and then the burn-out from that and from all the usual lilttle unpleasant brushes with the user/loser denizens of the music biz can sometimes drive a wedge between an artist and his work.

 

Which is a damn shame, because the problem is not with music. The problem is often with people. Both ourselves, if we're unclear about why we're pursuing music and writing, and, of course, with those who would, knowingly or not, lead us down the garden path to "big dreams" of success, a life of glamor, wealth, and no day jobs...

 

If musicians keep their heads straight about their relationship with music and love of it, they can survive with their love of music intact. But I've known far too many people who, one day, sometimes in their late 20s, sometimes in their 30s, just put the guitar in a closet and forget to pull it back out for, sometimes, years... And that is a very sad.