Vara La Fey

I never noticed it here - it's a slow grinding song - but you're right. Sabbath always liked to do basic tracking live, and I think that's simply how it was done in the early days. Many Sabbath tunes have worse issues than this. (Supernaut speeds up dramatically by the end. You can hear guitar mistakes from Tony and rimclicks from Bill throughout their catalog.) It didn't help that Bill has said on several occasions that he was so drunk during H&H sessions that he doesn't remember doing about half the album. That was when he was so out of it that he let Tony set fire to him, and he's said he still has the burn scars. I've never seen a contradiction between tracking live and using a click. The drummer has the click, do a couple run-throughs with the band, then hit Record. I was a drummer in the 80s and always clicked, even for local bar-demo CDs. I do not have a metronome in my head. I even got one or two of my bands to practice that way a few times, cause I warned 'em that I was practicing with the click and that some things would change....

So what makes a good collaborator? I ask because apparently I'm not. But I'd like to be. My situation: I'm not an experienced collabber. Technically I suppose I'm theoretically kind of a multi-instrumentalist, I guess. I play some guitar, some keys, competent on bass for pop and most hard rock (not necessarily metal , and def not jazz or prog) - but I'm only good on drums. I write music and lyrics, and I do everything down to the fx. When i get an idea, I tend to get a large spectrum of it: the lyric content, and lyric feel, the word imagery, the music genre or sub-genre, sometimes even down to instrument tones. Of course I don't get most of the details right away (and sometimes never), but I get a fairly complete overall picture of where I want the whole thing to go. I get its personality. Then I have to rise to the occasion and make it real. Aaaand it seems I also do this when collabbing. I tend to take over because it's my responsibility to bring my idea to life. And yes, I definitely think I know what I'm doing. Obviously the jury is still out on whether I actually even have half a clue, but I always try my best. Collab #1 fizzled. Part of that was technical delays on my end, but the initial writer eventually decided to return to a version of his original draft, and maybe shouldn't have offered his idea as a collab in the first place. Maybe. I dunno. The 2nd is an EDM song, which I'm very new to, and my collabber is better at it than I am, but completely missed the musical feel of the early draft lyrics I sent - maybe partly because I hadn't captured that feel in those early lyrics anyway, and partly because the subject matter and the target audience aren't things he can relate to personally. We were both very upfront about that before jumping in. So I sent an early draft version of the whole thing, and he kept bowing out, and eventually said I should send him my complete version and he'd like to help me produce it. That's great, but as a writing collab, I'd call it a fizzle. Collab #3 was some very nice pieces of music from one writer, and a very nice lyric idea from another. Just words here and music there. I warned them I was getting serious ideas for the whole thing, and would prolly try to take over. They said to go for it. So I arranged the music into what I'll swear on a copy of Atlas Shrugged is meant to be the verses, chorus and bridge. This required significant lyric rewrite, so I also wrote new lyrics with the feel and imagery I told them upfront I had in mind. The music writer seems to be happy, but the lyricist understandably feels left out. I used as much of the original lyric as I could make work, which turned out to be just the overall idea, the title, and the bridge (which I fleshed out and re-paced). So this hasn't fizzled, but if an initial writer is unhappy, I can't call it a success. These are all good and talented people (and I've found them all on these critique sites). I've been happy to have a chance to work with them. But the fizzle rate is making me seriously consider abandoning collaboration altogether. Which I really don't want to do. :-( So WTH?? Am I just one of those people no one can write with?

I really shouldn't date myself like this.... but I lived in a town that was in the movie at the time. Sylva. I lived somewhere on Memory Lane.... no, but my internet-aided trip down it says I was 1 block S of Main St, NW corner of Jackson and Schulman (but I swear it was Maple St back then; 14 Maple St). I was a just a little pre-Vara, in the first classes as Fairview Elementary, and discovering hard sci-fi and Black Sabbath - both of which have stayed with me to this day. Anyhow, I remember the people in town and in the mountains being a fairly decent and friendly bunch. There may have been evil mutants around, but they would have crossed up the locals somehow, and been dealt with, I'm sure.

Nice thread!! One of my songs (not yet tracked) is a metal piece written to have feel and melody similar to the bluegrass western stuff like Wild Wild West and Bonanza. I'd throw Honorable Mentions to the merry Munsters theme, the jazzy Jetsons theme, and the rockin' Rockford Files theme. Totally great music there. But I think the best theme music I've ever heard are these (and I can't believe no one posted them yet!!)....

Yes, the mightiest tree. ImKeN: :-) I don't have the funding to get the stuff to go ask for crowd-funding, so that will have to wait. Unless I think of a good angle.

TBH, I didn't realize it was your opinion, because you stated it like it was a fact.

Jenn and Rudi - Amanda Palmer needed 100k to finish one of her albums. Through Kickstarter, she begged peeps for money and raised 1.2m, iirc. And seems to be doing well since then. So your view isn't always correct.

Thanks for all the responses!! I'm mostly gonna watch you guys hammer it out, as you're generally more up to speed on this than I am. But a couple things do cross my mind.... The problem of begging money for luxuries may be self-solving: most donors wouldn't donate to that anyway. Whether a high nose : signal ratio has caused a mass exodus from those sites is another thing I have no idea about. As to personal causes, I doubt it matters whether it's personal to the beggar, but whether it's personal to the donor in some way. That's just human nature, it's how charity works, and it's how business works. On age: RAMMS+EIN were all mid-30s to early 40s when they started out. Plus middle-agers today do buy new music. Being middle-aged still won't help, but it does offer a peer-audience which is more affluent than teens. Age as a sole (or even a major) viability criterion is the old-school obsolete big-label teens-only rip-off-the-naive-kids biz. It's not so much that biz anymore. On that "note", wouldn't it be great if Patreon and SellABand, et al, became the replacement for those old talent scouts and development deals from the big labels? (Just as iTunes et al have become distro sites.) It seems they'd be "art for the people, chosen by the people". No middlemen. No bean-counters.

Thx guys!! Steve and Just1L - I know that trans isn't enough, but IF I offer good music and such, I do think a lot of people would appreciate the uniqueness, and the LGBT community will be very likely to support it. Yes, IF the music and all that stuff is good. And getting feedback on that is why I'm on these critique sites in the first place. If you're curious, see my submissions "Incoming" and "Radio Free World" in Song Crit. And give it to me, both barrels. I can take it. HoboSage - Yeah, I'm "around the corner from 50". Where's the reality check in that? Do crowd-funders not like to fund middle-agers?

John, thx!! I will check her page extensively tonight. I actually have an old friend who is a big-time sound engineer, and is hanging his shingle again and offering a free-upfront recording deal for points later. Can't beat it. But I wouldn't go to him with this until I really have something worthwhile. Right now we chat about computer problems and such.

Thx, guys. Richard, I'll think more tangibly about what a band really can give in return. I know that generalities won't cut it. Rudi, why wouldn't you do it? John, I bookmarked Patreon, and will check it out. Right now it looks like one needs sellable-quality production there. I can't afford it, hence wondering about crowd-funding. :-(

I read an article yesterday about Amanda Palmer, a singer who got herself hugely crowd-funded on Kickstarter. Does anyone have any real knowledge or personal experience with crowd-funding? I'm a trans-girl working to hone my writing skills so I can put together an all-trans band and maybe take it somewhere. The time is soooo right for this!! Being trans, I'm basically a part of the "LGBT" community (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and nowadays countless others). The LGBT is very good about supporting its members and generally sticking together. There's friction, but we're generally good about it. And generally affluent. And generally have very few members writing hot original LGBT-themed music for us - and somewhere right around ONE hard rocking all-trans bands currently doing it. I think the LGBT is my built-in audience, and would be perfect crowd-funding donors of LGBT projects in general. If you can reach 'em. I won't even tell you how bad my financial situation is right now. Let's just leave it at this: I badly need it. In general (LGBT or not), how do you beg your peeps for money? What do they need to ensure that their donations are going to a legitimate cause or project, rather than just dope? Or are these sites disappearing because of dope money and other scams?

You don't say it. You play it.

YAY, a t-sister!! And better yet, one who knows that she should NOT keep singing like a guy!! :-) I'm ~2.5 yrs hrt and writing for a hard-rockin' trans band I will form as soon as I can find enough pro-level members. I write "libertarian trans-rock", and am always especially interested in other transpeople's feedback, as I'm trying to write for us (and beyond). It's a whole new playground almost never tapped into....