OK.. let's try again. My bad..

My first post http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1797463 I put info about a cover tune I laid down.. didn't even think about it. I understand this is "Songwriting". Just thought it'd be the place to put it.

I've got 3 originals on there... only the one cover. We don't fool with covertunes often; it was just the latest I laid down; thus on my mind.

Mods.. feel free to delete the other post.

Any opinions? Kinds Pop/Rock thing I've got going on.

Karma Unstable

I'm listening to "Me and You"...

There's a nice, earnest quality to your voice. I'm not crazy about the gauzy effect I hear on it, there's a slightly fuzzy, distant quality. It's such a starkly honest, intimate song I'd kind of like to feel the voice up front of the music rather than pushed back as it is. Production point, I guess. (See I even have to remind myself it's the songwriting forum. )

I'm listening to "Despondency of a Core" -- wow... big jump in production quality. Much more confident, cleaner (I like the acoustic guitars better than the electro-acoustic thing on the previous song). I'm liking the immediacy of the vocals more as I thought I would.

I always have problems following lyrics in songs the first time -- even when the lyrics are fairly easy to make out. I guess I get distracted by all the the other things I'm hearing. So if someone wants my comments on lyrics I usually wait 'til I can read them.

But I think, overall, this sounds pretty successful on a lot of levels. There are some relatively minor performance/timing issues (though much steadier and more confident than "Me and You") but we'll leave that for the performance forum. (Is there one? )

"Pseudo Contentment" -- nice, hooky, grungy kind of thing going on, showing a good pop sense, there. The sections seem a little unbalanced, perhaps, the more intimate solo voice and electric part too 'small' compared to the previous, hooky part with the bassier guitar and the multiple leayers of vocals.

Very promising stuff in a lot of ways, I hope we get to hear more!

You've clearly got a lot of good ideas... I hope you'll continue to share those with us both in your music as well as helping to give feedback to others on their songs.

Welcome!

PS -- Even though I've sworn off MySpace because of the recent and VERY SERIOUS MySpace SECURITY PROBLEMS there, I crossed my fingers, tightened up Firefox and headed over there. No problems but you might want to read this thread on the "drive by trojan" problem now increasingly widespread at MySpace. It's nothing to laugh off.

Despondency of a core- Pretty cool how it all kicks in with the drum. When the electric guitar solos and the vocals go "oooo" its pretty chilled out and nice. But then you start to strain your voice and it kinda turned me off to the cool feel it had. It seems you might be pushing your voice to hard and it begins to drop off the higher you go. I think with a little more production and maybe some more relaxed vocals and it'll be a sweet song. I understand you are probably trying to let the emotion out, but the strained voice takes away from the song more than it gives with raw emotion. Just my opinion

Pseudo Contentment- this one sort of has kurt cobain type chords. I didn't take this song in as much because it was a bit bland with its guitar, at least in comparison to Despondency of a core. I fancy me some sweet guitar riffs and this song relied more on the voice (i think)... moving on

Me and you- This one is pretty simple as well (sticks with alternating between two chords for two measures) and lacks a sort of hook or something to stick. Thats not a bad thing sometimes but after the song was over I had trouble remembering the melody.

I only review originals:p

Overall there's some good stuff in the making here. I think it needs some brushing up in terms of lyrics (i like lyrics that jump out and bite me in the ass) and more variation with the instumentals. Good work, I'm only 18 and might not offer as good advice as some of these old guys around here but I'm always glad to try and help.

Thanks for all the input so far guys... Glad the tunes have went over well; for the most part. A friend of mine offered his studio and experience (which are better than mine) on "Despondency"... thus the better production quality.

I just lay stuff down as I write it mostly... I've got much more in my head

so I'll get it out. I just wish you could upload more than 4 on MS.

How is the "Soundclick" site? What's the max on tunes you can U/L?

Soundclick not only offers better quality streaming audio than the MySpace player (128 kbps versus what sounds to most folks like 96 kbps) but has no limit on the number of songs you have on their site. (Non paying members are limited to 128 kbps files of 10 MB or less; paying members can use higher quality files and have more customizable pages.)

They also have a player widget you can embed in any page you can access the HTML on (your own web page, Myspace or other such pages -- take a look at my band's current home page -- www.onebluenine.com -- the player you see there is the Soundclick player.

Also, I don't know if you saw the thread on the ongoing security problem at MySpace -- but it's making the national news so you probably will hear more -- and more and more people will likely be unwilling to use MySpace because of it.

(For instance, though I went to your M/S page and a few other to check folks songs -- I haven't been to my own page there or anyone else's becaue of the threat. I pulled all the links to my page off my website and out of my signature line on BB's.)

Anyhow, there are other decent OMD's (online music distribitors), too. And some of them let free members upload higher quality files. Still Soundclick has been doing it a long time and has the infrastructure that allows them to serve up lots of pages and streams at once -- while some of the upstart newcomers look and work pretty well when traffic is low -- but during a traffic crunch can slow way down.

There is, of course, nothing to stop you from having your music on as many free OMD's as you like -- although you may get tired of maintaining a bunch of them. (I have a handful of songs on a number of sites but don't tend to update those pages with new songs -- counting on visitors to be able to follow links from the sites to my home page.)

Soundclick is currently just finishing up a site overhaul -- they had a pretty old fashioned look but it's now looking pretty sleek.

They also have many of the same social networking tools that became popular on MySpace -- but with much better programming and infrastructure. Pages tend to come up quickly, songs play right away -- unlike the long waits for pages to load and players to appear on MySpace pages.

Also, MySpace has always been one of the worst programmed and designed sites on the web (they have possibly the most primitive BB on the internet) and have never seemed to have any clue about how to do even basic security. (Their customizable pages started out pretty much by accident, as far as I can tell -- because they simply didn't realize that they hadn't blocked user CSSS style sheets -- the tool users use to "pimp" their MySpace pages. For instance, long after "page pimping" started, M/S finally got around to telling users that they shouldn't block out advertisements on their page using CSS... )