john

Very good. My only critique would be the vocals are sitting a little too far back in the mix. Otherwise, a job very well done!

I have a slightly different perspective. This has been on the horizon for years ever edging closer. I have seen it very much in the web content generation with AI models producing at volume large quantities of low grade text. It’s been there in photo and art treatment and adaptation. Hugely popular in TikTok land. Whether it is cropping out content or adding content. I can easily see AI generated perhaps being popular as a disguising factor within some forms of music and that passing as people become bored with it. I think the larger impact will, at least in the mid term, be AI assisted content creation. The level of AI involvement then being determined by the author. Certainly I am pretty good at spotting AI generated content. It is pattern based creation, so once you know the patterns, you begin to see fingerprints everywhere. That is true of AI generated art, AI guided vocal treatments or web content. AI has been used quietly within “learning algorithms” for years. We see it very much for vocal treatments, like Autotune and Harmonization Engines Even before AI was involved pattern based creation has been affecting music with such as loops, platforms like Fruity Loops or GarageBand. Combining AI with platforms like those is the way forward for many AI composers. The fact is that often we, as creators, are threatened by such evolution… however, if you learn to be the guiding hand for original qualification of AI output, you can create at a higher volume content that does measure up. That, I can easily see as a key differentiator. There will be: Those who adopt pure AI driven content. Formats like club music already fit very formulaic creation, and AI will dominate loop driven content like beat creation done for hip hop beats/backing tracks. Those who produce pure human driven content. Other than as a curiosity many genres will reject AI influence content on idealistic/purist grounds, who often react very angrily to AI that sneaks in initially… until it is just the norm. Those who produce hybrid Human guided AI driven content. This will become the norm. It’s taken years but synths and then samplers took decades to be fully accepted and used almost without question. My point is, we’ve been down this route before. Certainly electronic instruments have become much more important, at times dominating output. Those that, instead of rejecting, think “How can I use this technology to benefit me?” Will be the ones that truly thrive. So many times nae sayer’s have heralded the death of the musical relevance of musicians, yet musicians still exist. Now it is songwriters and composers. Such catalysts evoke change. Massive change. It needn’t be a negative influence (though it probably will be). For me, the larger argument of how society values creatives is much more on point. That is the true battleground. It’s a massive PR battle that we need to win, at all costs. We cannot afford to lose this one. There will undoubtedly be time we are losing battles, but we must win the war.

Great to meet you Hunned Kay, welcome to Songstuff!

Hey Devin, welcome to Songstuff! I look forward to getting to know you.

Nah, half a room. It’ll be too big an image file. You can either resize it to a smaller size, or use an image converter to convert it to something like webp format.

Ultimate has a lot to explore, with some awesome sounds. All the Cremona strings are awesome, but to be honest I like most of their orchestral libraries. That said, I would love to add the Spitfire libraries as well. Their BBC orchestral sounds are stunning too. There are so many other synths available in the ultimate collection, the issue is more "overwhelm". You could spend so long exploring that you would never get any music done. I get around this by dividing my time into song recording time, pastiche recording time and exploration time. The latter two can overlap quite a bit. During pastiche time I record the interesting bits of reference tracks and trending tracks. Sometimes it is about catching the overall vibe, but most of the pastiches I have recorded focus on the song sectional transitions. During that pastiche time I might do some exploring trying to recreate key sections of target songs, learning new production skills and new production tools. Once I have the technique, the skills, the tools, I then might explore further to see how I might use that technique myself. This way my personal recording time progresses much more smoothly, with my creative flow being less interrupted by "how to" distractions. When I first bought ultimate I lost so much time exploring that it was ridiculous. It was fun, but for all it was time consuming I felt that I had only just scratched the surface. That in part has left me with less need to get the latest. It has a few libraries and updates that look and sound great, but they are very much "nice to have". I am already spoiled for choice. I bought ultimate pretty cheaply, combining Black Friday/Cyber Monday pricing with upgrade pricing. It made it very worthwhile and ultimately worth the price tag.

not yet. I hope to soon. It isn’t essential so there is less pressure. I already have some awesome plugins. What about you? What features would you be wanting to get hold of?

Hi Gang Time for a catch up on what you currently do to market and promote your music! Please answer the questions. Cheers John

He’s worked really hard at it Greg and has a pretty unique approach. Just for clarity I don’t mean naked, covered in gummie bears in the dark. Awareness is a huge component. Much more than the typical “can you feel that sensation?” type of approach, which really only scratches the surface and plays down the importance of awareness to improvement and understanding. P.S. The appearance of any unexpected gummie bears is purely coincidental.

I wanted to make sure members see this and take part…. So….. Taddah!

Hey Kevin1, welcome to our community! Dive in!

A Guide To Song Forms Song Form, another way of saying Song Structure, is a useful way of understanding songs that are made up of a number of sections. There are a whole bunch of song forms. Some are quite broad ranging, others are strongly associated with specific genres. Our article “A Guide to Song Forms - Song Form Overview“ gives you a good grounding in the basics of song structure. It also gives you links to in-depth guides on each song form including examples of that song form being used. There are a number of related articles to help songwriters understand the pros and cons of the creative decisions they make. It is not about songwriting rules, it’s about decisions and consequences. For that reason, if no other, it is better to make informed decisions. If this article helps you, please consider sharing it with your musical friends. A Guide To Song Forms - Song Form Overview

Hey DownstreamChaos! Welcome to Songstuff Good to have you with us.

Number 9 didn’t have my biggest reason… available time. I devote a lot of time to Songstuff, but that is across all the boards plus site maintenance and creating articles and blog posts etc.

Hi Leo, welcome to the Songstuff community! Remember to critique the work of other members too. It’s all useful discussion, though generally I think our skills evolve faster through offering critique on the work of other writers, while we get a more immediate benefit from getting our songs critiqued. A bit of both is a good idea!

Hey Grubby! Welcome to Songstuff! Good board name Do you record your songs?

A big shout out to @GregBfor creating the channel trailer! Very much appreciated Greg!

In a world where the degree of “good” is often measured by popularity it could be thought that we have a problem of false equivalence. A bit like success being measured by the amount of money made. There are cases that the metric fits, but they are far from the only measure of good or success. There are many, many metrics we can apply to songs. The importance of each metric to us as individuals is determined by the importance of the aspect being measured. Words like “good” can be applied to any of those aspects. “Good” overall is personal too, as the addition of the factors important to us.

I used -ish as the coverall for all Alternative categories. It’s funny, we went from the battle cry “don’t label me, I don’t conform to stereotypes” to a world of infinite labels, to some categories of label users who use “flexi” to cover people who cannot decide on a label but are nonetheless desperate to have a label, such as “Flexitarians” aka meat eaters who don’t like being labelled as such for many reasons. I remember a member determined to argue with me, maybe a decade ago… I had used the label “metal” to describe Motörhead, only to be told they were not metal but heavy rock of some particular kind. I tried to explain in the 70s and 80s they were Heavy Metal. There were less genres than today. What was metal then was still how I thought of them. My listening habits didn’t demand an ever dividing array of sub genres. I was content to know that genres shifted as fashions evolved. This upset the member in question. “But it’s not heavy metal!”. He just didn’t get it. Yet it was supremely important to him that I used his classifications of music. Truth be told, -ish is my get out clause! It’s getting near Christmas, let me rephrase. Ahem. “-ish is my get out Claus” 🎅🎄

Hi Gabe Welcome to Songstuff! Glad to have you with us. I’m looking forward to hearing your music. Cheers John

I would answer but…. Lol

It is on our playlists (Songstuff, SSUK, IMS) on Spotify and soon YouTube . We then promote our playlists on the social media for each site... small followings atm but they will grow. Currently I am an admin on a few Facebook Groups, give me a direct potential reach, just through groups, of about 27k. Add in our other social reach and our website reach.... it's a lot

Hi David It can be worth it, but if your social following is low, it is unlikely. The lower your numbers, the less likely. I am sure you’ve noticed, the music industry (entertainments overall) runs on a currency of list numbers. Far from a complete list, but… How many fans. How many listeners. How many streams. How many downloads. How many likes. How many shares. How many comments, and the big daddy, how many units sold. To get numbers, you need numbers. It also gets easier where you have significant positive trend numbers. That means measures and tracking. Like everything else, if you treat Spotify as something in isolation, you really hobble yourself. Individual assets and platforms work best when working within an overall strategy with integrated tactics designed to work together in coordination. So, it’s a good idea to have a release process and a release strategy, with a promotion tactic that, if Spotify is your focus, promotes your Spotify tracks and playlist placements. It’s also a good idea that your other assets and tactics work with this approach by coordinating efforts and timing. If your primary purpose at this stage is to build a listener base then a release strategy is a good idea, backed up with a release process and marketing plan (even a very simple one). At it’s simplest you try to create a “staircase” of fans (listeners tend to be more a pattern of mounds), where each release causes the rise. The reality is not exactly a staircase, but it is close enough. It only functions like a staircase if you have a way of retaining fans. With no method of retention the fan graph more resembles half a single heartbeat scan with no climb in numbers over time, just blips at the time of release, just like the listener “mounds”. You might wonder, “why bother, I just want Spotify listeners”… assuming you want your listener base to grow over time, without a significantly increasing budget, then ideally you want each release to be heard by (at a minimum): those who liked previous releases + new audience There’s a lot more to it, but you get the idea. If you want a growing listener base, then you need to be engaging those who already like your music and new audiences. Sadly, ceding control of that to Spotify is a bad idea. You want as much control of it as you possibly can… so that means engaging with listeners and fans outside of Spotify, using social media, blogs, forums… and top of the pile, email. It’s quite a bit to set up and coordinate for just Spotify. I am sure you have a bunch of songs… but I would advise against large dumps of songs at one time. Get the benefit out of each song before releasing the next. There are arguments about EP and album formats… but for me they still make sense. They still make sense for the music industry as a whole. Even when they release track after track, they still pull together longer play formats. Getting this stuff put in place is worth the delay… though that only works if you put time into it! Not a simple answer, I know. I hope this helps. Cheers John

Hi and welcome to Songstuff Tony! A big ambition but I hear you. Procrastination has killed many, many viable projects.