john

I don't like standard crowdfunding sites for much that reason. Patreon is targeted at artists, writers, musicians etc. The idea is not to ask for donations, it is to ask for patronage, something for something. Additionally I would point out a couple of points worth considering: 48 is old to be breaking in the pop, or any music scene, though far from impossible. Ask Seasick Steve. Not a huge international star but he has a viable career from it. He isn't alone. That aside, people can make livings from good music... as long as they have a realistic expectation, surely that is the key? Making sure people have a realistic expectation. Take me, I am 50, I plan to release an album. I am under no illusions that fame awaits, indeed I would not welcome you for it. My goal is to make good music and to make enough money from the album, gigs and other income related to my music so that my music pays for itself and enables the next album to be recorded in a better studio, for me to play better venues. That said, were my dream to be on a national stage, releasing music... why not? If my music is good enough and I am innovative enough in my marketing I see no reason why I wouldn't attract an audience big enough for me to make a modest living from it. True, there are uncertainties, but aiming to make enough to live on depends on a lot of hard work, being prepared to fail, a lot, and making contacts that believe in you... amongst other things. Is it likely I could become a top line star? No. Very, very unlikely... even if I was not 50. Yet again I can't rip someone down for wanting to aim that high. I would try and make sure they had the tools to maximise their chances on one hand and the sure fire knowledge that they have a better chance of winning the lottery. Much less chance without said knowledge. it doesn't make me the purveyor of dreams, but I like to think that I am honest from an informed perspective. I don't sugar coat things, but neither am I a defeatist. One other aspect of the teenager abuse of crowdfunding asking for donations... going beyond the something for something perspective.... artists working on decent ethics ask for money upfront, a type of presales. Pay me a reduced up front cost and I will send you a signed CD and a bunch of other stuff, do a Skype gig, even a living room gig, a ton of other stuff... it is work, just like any other. Songstuff accepts donations, but believe me, it isn't money for nothing. Far, far from it. We don't use crowdfunding as such. Will people judge Songstuff because of it? Some yes. But we were taken for granted by many for a long time despite being free, despite never pushing for a donation until very recently. You are of course right Jenn, some people do abuse the system, some do want something for nothing, some do take the money and run, but I hope people can tell the difference, people can judge what is worthy. I remember years ago someone selling a used polythene bag on eBay. It sold. It was pathetic. Many were convinced the end of the world was nigh, or at least the end of eBay was foretold. Yet eBay is alive and well and being used by many buyers and sellers. So in one way you are right, people will stop funding lazy people, but if you work hard, are seen to work hard and more than earn your donations through graft and delivering value, then just like Songstuff, people will want to support you.

I will add something to clarify... Thanks both for highlighting this... sorry I missed it at the time!

As an example, here is the Patreon page of a fellow Songstuffer raising money for her 4th album, Lauren O'Connell: https://www.patreon.com/laurenoconnell

Not at all... assuming you can do something on video, streaming etc. The point is you raise funding to do a proper album by giving people what they want, your music, interviews, photo shoots etc. It is a combination of crowdfunding and fan base building.

I would look to Patreon. It is a good deal more interactive than other crowd funding platforms with better tools, making it easier for you to earn as you go as well as set larger targets.

Hi Nousevas, welcome to Songstuff!

Hi and welcome to Songstuff Roi!

Hi Tjers, welcome to Songstuff!

You have been playing guitar for about a year... and roughly how much practice do you put in during your average week? In general I would suggest two things in the early days: learn chords, and songs you are familiar with learn scales: major, minor and blues pentatonics. Then learn to play them in different keys / positions on the guitar. There are other scales but those 3 cover a load of songs. seperately look to learn 3 main time signatures: 4/4, 2/4 and 3/4. There are others, but those cover many many songs in learning time signatures you will learn about measures. You will learn how to count rhythms. Slow songs down so that you can play a song without breaking rhythm... i.e. Let the difficult bit to play set your tempo (speed of playing) while focusing on precision/accuracy. Once you can play it in time all the way through you can gradually speed it up to the right tempo. That said, I tend to practice 3 ways. As slow as needed (just outlined), as fast as I can (to improve speed of transitions), and lastly at the correct tempo. Separately I used to practice chord transitions, back and forth between two chords, then back and forth between another two... and so on, each time trying to get the transitions right while making sure every note that should sound does so nice and clearly. There's way more but it gets you started. Last point would be to have a set practice regimen, like 5 minutes on accuracy, 5 minutes on speed, 5 minutes on correct speed. Try that for chord transitions, then scales, then full songs, maybe focusing on a new song every couple of weeks. As you improve and your speed of learning improves you can start learning more songs. all the time add to your knowledge of chords, and things like picking techniques and finger style guitar techniques. use your ears, coupled with knowledge of the song, look at lyrics and chord transcriptions rather than full tab, maybe even video tutorials on YouTube to get started THEN revisit guitar tab and learn detailed versions of songs you already know how to play at a basic level. Otherwise you risk putting yourself off and taking the fun out of playing.

Hi Mary, welcome to Songstuff! I look forward to hearing your songs. As. Music student you probably already have some experience with giving and receiving critique?

Hi and welcome to Songstuff JackRabbit. good to meet you

Good stuff. I look forward to talking about arrangement with you. It is one of my passions. Welcome aboard!

Can you try and explain the basics to me? It's a great way to quickly expose where you are having difficulty. Starting with the basics, what are the horizontal lines? What does each line signify? What are the numbers?

Welcome aboard Verna! On tabs, do you know where it is you don't get it? My guess would be timing without knowing more.

You are right that it can help with feel, but it can cause more issues with spill from your cans. Percussive sounds tend to cut through more, plus you have the issue that drums cover more frequencies so the spill can be a real pain. If you have decent close backed cans it is less of an issue. The whole click track issue is only an issue on initial or draft takes, when recording 1+1 or bare arrangements etc. Personally I use close backed cans and only use clicks on draft takes if I can. Otherwise I use the actual track drums. One thing i found useful when working with a drummer was to get the drummer to do a first beat of the bar closed hi-hat when he wasn't playing if doing multitrack overdubs. They could then be dropped for mix down. This was more to do with disliking various tried clicks and disliking a click per beat (which I kept for the intro).

1. You don't practice with a click track, if you did this would be easier. 2. When you are used to playing without a click, you will find that emotion expresses itself in tempo dynamics as well as volume dynamics. It will immediately feel different when you rob it of one or the other. People who play with rigid timing would add tempo changes at the level of sections to help with the tempo aspect of expression... however, those who are not used to using a click tend to go 1, 2, 3, 4, go... and the tempo is the same until the song end. So, as a solution, get used to practising with a click track that when appropriate uses tempo changes. 3. The notion of "Oooo this is for posterity!" has ruined many takes. One solution is to play the song several times and get a friend to click record without you knowing which take is being recorded. Not foolproof, but it can help. 4. Like Rudi's suggestion about thinking about breathing, this is the core of being "mindful". Try doing that with the click going, and then think about the emotional meaning of the song. Feel the words. Feel the melody. All with the click track going... and then just start. So what if your track has 5 minutes of silence at the front? That way, at least on your draft take, you can get in the zone. On top of what we have spoken of before, David's advice is pretty good though for me I do think performance as a singer-songwriter, I rely upon practice to deal with most issues, including visual performance. It allows me to be comfortable on stage. When I haven't been, it tends to be because I am not comfortable with something. I want performances to be emotional, with an emotional dynamic, and that means me being connected to my own songs, and it means not being self-conscious about experessing feelings. It also means being practiced at shifting emotions through a set. It is something you can get good at with practice. What makes it easier is a set method to center you and move onto the next song. Breathing and closing your eyes helps... do it right at the beginning of your gig before you start. If you are practices doing this at hope you can get good at it. Take 10-15 seconds. Between songs you can do it in 5-10 intiially, but you really can get good at it with practice so that it doesn't require closed eyes and breathing... it is like a long blink and focused thought to put you in the zone for each song. Additionally, visualisation is a powerful factor. Closing your eyes initially is just to make it easier to visualise by cutting down on interference. As you mentioned earlier, associating similar and current circumstance can help get you in the zone. So if a song is happy and upbeat, have some stored things that make you laugh and smile that you can picture. If a song is sad and introspective... have thoughts ideas, images that help evoke similar ball park feelings. Of course, feel the words that you sing, but getting in the ball park definitely helps you get in the right frame of mind for a specific song. Lastly quick tip is to do with set structure. Think of emotional integrity. Have songs that flow together emotionally. Songs have highs and lows in intensity and variations of emotion too. So think of it like a roller coaster. You are the track designer. You need to get people from A to B. Each song is a different section of the track. If you arrange your set to match highs and lows, different emotions, then the number of pauses to let you center yourself is far less... if at all. Similarly, if you want to adapt your set to cope with audience mood, or sudden set extensions or cutting short, then thinking in terms of arranging set chunks of 2-5 songs is a good idea. It means you can quickly adapt your set without it causing too many issues. It also means that you are thinking about the journey you will be taking your listeners on... and that is not a bad thing! In general, sets start with relatively upbeat and energetic pieces, and end on more upbeat and more energetic pieces. Everything in between is a journey

Hi and welcome to Songstuff ramadeanRamadean

On it's own this is the set up line for a load of jokes! Time for the first movement... sorry, I couldn't resist. Members certainly seem impressed with your in-depth introduction lol Moving passed your keen desire to produce, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

updated at long last!

Without looking at the spec, great for gaming and great for mixing and or mastering are not the same thing. Ideally you want cans that don't color the sound. If for example your cans include some tech to artificially boost bass, say for games enjoyment, and then you mix... hearing a level of bass boost that will not be on other systems... that is a problem. If on the other hand it is simply a bass response giving something close to uncolored, simply enough to overcome headphone's naturally poor bass response because of speaker size... that would be ok. As long as you have gone into this and this is the rationale, that is ok. Overcoming the differences in speaker systems is an interesting problem, one that takes a lot of copmparison on different systems and listening environments in comparison with your home studio set up. it pays to use reference recordings for comparison. In a studio that obvious first comparison is the difference between your cans and your monitors and near-field monitors. Most home studios will just have the latter. Even pro monitors can be known to color the sound. For example, Yamaha NS-10 monitors are known to sound a bit trebly because the bass response isn't great. That can lead you to mix with too much bass, so when you put it on other systems instantly the bass is way louder than you thought you mixed it. Play it on a system with an in-built bass boost and it will soon be distorting at the low end. The opposite could be true with mixes on a bass-boosting system, where you might play your mix back on another system and wonder where the bass power has gone, and play it back on a system with poor bass response and the bass disappears entirely. Whatever you do it is important to calibrate your listening environment and tailor it accordingly. In my case, when using NS10s I would know that the bass response would be weak so by boosting the bass on the amplifier until my reference recording sounded the same, I could get in the rough ball park, so that when I mixed it would be like I was using a color neutral set up. My mix would have the right level of bass on it when I went to another system... at least, based on a similar performance to the reference recording. One other point to note, is that it is worth using a reference recording that will have a similar amount of sub-bass on it as you intend to have. Indeed, a reference recording that has the same overall spectral sound that you are aiming for. Using neutral monitoring, or compensating in your mix for skewed monitors or cans, allows you to create an output mix that is in the ballpark of what you want. If you are home mastering it is vital that you also have a decent mastering software suite and knowing your monitoring system inside and out is vital. If you are not doing your own mastering, then delivering a relatively neutral recording gives the mastering engineer the maximum scope with your recording.

Hey Jon Welcome to Songstuff!

Thanks Randy

My fist one? I dunno, but people say it sounds a little punchy lols

On a bright note, the test version of the forums has just been upgraded (hopefully applying the changes here tomorrow) and boy is it fast! That means I can turn my attention to writing, promo and my own music for a change! That will be the last really important tech update to catch the site up. Anything beyond that is at this point nice to have It has taken ages to get to this point, if for no other reason than my health, which doesn't exactly make me the most efficient lol Fingers crossed it will be "Music here I come!" I have a stack of songs to record, and a lot of production experiments I plan to work through. It should be fun