Mark Danger

Welcome! Don't let that ear stop you! Beethoven hammered out some of his best work when he was almost totally deaf. While grammatical issues can be distracting, you can absolutely use your accent to your advantage. Can you imagine Bjork without the accent? It lends her work a particular je ne sais quoi that's, i think, necessary. Embrace it!

Just keep writing. They say that to learn to draw you should take a six foot stack of plain white paper and fill the whole thing - by the time you're done you'll have some idea what you're doing. Writing - as does any skill - operates under the same principle. When you're not writing, read. Read as wide a variety of works as you can muster. See a word you don't know? Look it up. Exposure to words is the only surefire way to not only expand your vocabulary, but to give you a good idea of what's already been done. Lastly, allow yourself to write crap. Be okay with it. Trudging through your own sub-par work is the only way to get to the good stuff.

Line in is really not a bad way to go at all. Guitar Rig is great, for example, though I find it gets finicky with too many instances running simultaneously. Record it a few times in a few ways while playing when the panning and you can get some very nice, full tones. I've had good luck recording acoustic guitars with a direct line and microphone at the same time. If you have to choose on or the other, using a microphone is the only way to go.

Welcome, Space. In my brief tenure here and limited interaction, I've already found it terribly useful. A lot of good feedback here. Enjoy!

Welcome! This is a solid place to do those things. Stick around!

Welcome aboard, sir! Only loosely related: There was an REM reference on the Daily Show the other day I thought was hilarious - I laughed, at least. The audience was dead quiet. Damn kids.

I suspect there's a threshold at which a song ceases being easily memorable and that the average listener has a natural aversion to complexity for that very reason. That's likely why musicians tend to gravitate toward more complex music - they've been trained to remember longer sequences of chords or notes. Something to that effect, anyway.

Welcome!

Truly, this is horror. Does anybody do Deacon Blues on ice? That's a thing I'd watch.

<--- That's me. Hello. I've been writing songs off and on for the last 15 years. Along the way I've learned to play a variety of instruments, wield a small but formidable arsenal of audio software, and to never get too attached to a drummer. I'm here for feedback. I'm here to listen to songs I've never heard. I'm here in an earnest effort to quit being such a hermit and engage a community for a change. That's about it. I look forward to being around.