john

Hi Gang We have an Introduce Yourself board…. I thought maybe an Introduce Someone New, That Isn’t You would be a good way to introduce your musical friends to Songstuff? If so, here’s a suggested bunch of things to include: Who are they? How do you know them? What’s their musical/songwriting background? How could Songstuff help them? How could they contribute to the community? Optional: Include a fun fact about them! Cheers John

Hey Any Faderport users out there… The latest firmware v3.51 is now available for FaderPort (2018), ioStation 24c, FaderPort 8 and FaderPort 16. The update supports Studio One, Cubase (MCU), Logic (MCU), Sonar (MCU), Ableton (MCU), ProTools (HUI) and MIDI Mode. To get this release, you must go to your My.PreSonus account and then download and install the latest Universal Control. NOTE: If you are updating FaderPort 16 from firmware earlier than v3.32, Universal Control will prompt you to perform a manual reboot to complete the update. Cheers John

Certainly writing directly COVID inspired might be easier in some genres than others. COVID inspired blues, for example, versus COVID inspired pop. Lol

Hey Just for shits n giggles… If you could have one actor or actress to perform a role in a video for one of your songs, who would it be and why? What song? And what would be their role and the video concept? Extra points for those who can help us visualise! If you don’t have your own music ready, perhaps you could use the music of another community member? Cheers John

Well, I appreciate looping, and definitely the skills it has brought you. The ambient guitar you have posted is awesome. Maybe that makes it two! I guess changes in landscape have some swimming, others left high and dry. Some I think were left with a lot of time that quite quickly tapped out their reserves for ideas.

Hey Gang I’ve seen a few artists on social media mentioning an issue with keeping up their creativity levels during COVID. How have you guys found it? Are you managing to keep up your creativity? Do you do anything to help keep your creativity stimulated? How successful is it? I haven’t really noticed any dip in creative ideas, but then I always try to keep stimulating creativity by keeping varying how I express my creative ideas. I guess I’m lucky as I am also active in expressing creativity as a visual artist as well as lyrics and music. For me, variety is key. It stops any feelings of going stale. what about you? Cheers John

Good point I have the Output collection as well as a few legacy 3rd party Kontakt libraries.

Hey Guys What NI gear do you have? I have S61 Mk2 and Komplete Ultimate Collectors Edition. I love the S61, but Komplete is an awesome library of sounds. Worth the price they ask, but we’ll worth waiting for their special offers. Cheers John

Very good cover and an engaging video too. Where did you source your footage? Added to the Independent Artist Stage channel’s Rock It! playlist and the Songstuff Community playlist.

Hi Mike It isn’t integrated as such, deliberately. There is method to my madness… Songstuff is writer and artist facing. All it’s audience and the marketing around it is writer/artist facing. Songstuff U.K. is being developed to be entirely audience/fan facing. All it’s marketing will be fan facing. Why? Because we are building an outlet for Songstuff artists to help them reach and build a real audience. Way too many music sites make the mistake of integrating these two audiences, but it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t help build fans, it helps build follower lists, but they are not the same thing. Ask artists on almost any OMD. Weirdly it’s a similar problem for most artists on Twitter too. It’s really easy to build follower list on artist communities. I follow you, and you follow me, The problem is 99% of the time they never even listened to your music. They are not fans of your music in any shape or form. The common symptom of this is really dead lists. You do a release and the same small group of people respond, mostly fairly Coolly. When musicians/writers/artists encounter an artist, it greatly depends on how and where they encounter them. If they encounter them on a music platform they are largely doing so in a more transactional sense. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. For some it’s more mercenary than that. There are some who are looking for music, of course there are… but most are looking for feedback on their songs, looking for followers etc. Even when they encounter good other musicians, they often do so as an equal. They behave differently than fans. On platforms like Twitter, artists often build enclaves. They band together because building followers from other artists is easy. Unfortunately many treat Twitter like Songstuff forums. They post ideas, half done tracks… and they interact with each other almost exclusively, because they don’t know how to talk to fans. If they talk to fellow artists like they might talk to fans they think they will be shot down. They may well be. There is no other environment quite to responsible for stripping artists of that magic as Twitter. The platform itself is excellent. The problem is how artists use it. It’s very like the gig issue. If artists keep trying to fill out their audience with friends and family, they never find their real audience. They become increasingly disappointed by the level of no-shows, the gaps in the audience etc. They also become increasingly disappointed by the lack of response. Your grandmother is unlikely to be a big death metal fan. To really get somewhere artists need to find and engage a real audience, in the hope of finding real fans. Even listeners who encounter artists on an artist platform react a little differently. A little digging and they find earlier versions of songs, demo recordings, artists interacting with artists… it robs some of the magic. Indeed sometimes listeners get inundated with music spam, from artists looking for easy social follows. For listeners that kills the platform. When fans encounter your music on a listening platform, they do so as listeners, first and foremost. They then treat artists like music creators. They react to the artist like listeners the world over. Because they are listeners they actually stand a chance of becoming a genuine fan. When artists encounter artists on a listening platform, especially one with no sense of quid pro quo, they do so as listeners. There is no transactional sense to the arrangement. We will still have a site playlist that is writer/artist facing, because it helps artists find a small percentage of fans, but it also helps find collaborators and establish a sense of who’s who and aids building connections etc. We will still build an audience for that Building Songstuff U.K. allows us to build audiences. Our plan is to showcase independent music. However we plan to generally have mixed playlists, made up of largely independent artists, some of whom will be the best of Songstuff artists. However, we plan to include mainstream artists too. Why? We want the best artists playing their best music, because that is what the audience expects. If we try to add sub-par songs we would not be helping the sub-par artist. The entire audience might drop off, not just for that artist, but for all on the playlist. Possibly for all on the site. We would also be giving the sub-par artist a false perspective. So we want high quality songs. Our audience expects it. If we end up being inundated with brilliant recordings of brilliant songs, we may well not need as many independent artists from across the internet. For Songstuff it is a double edged sword. We want Songstuffers to produce brilliant music, but in featuring artists that are not on Songstuff… we might attract new members for Songstuff. So that is why we mix Songstuff artists with other independent artists. Why a few mainstream artists? Our responsibility is to create awesome playlists, to showcase indie music. Mainstream artists have fans. If some of those fans find our playlists (which we will do all we can do in that direction) then that might expose them to some of the other awesome artists on the playlist. It’s a win - win. Why U.K.? We already had the domain, but importantly we stripped back Songstuff branding. We will make artists aware of the connection. For general audience we will focus on the Independent Music Stage (look no Songstuff). Indeed the general Songstuff reference us via the abbreviation SSUK, which we intend using as a marketing tool. It is very much a listening platform. A music blog. It has it’s own social portals. It is already building it’s own audience. Admittedly all are near the beginning. Some very near. But they will grow. Does the U.K aspect matter? I don’t think so. We are not marketing it exclusively to a U.K. audience. Exactly the opposite. We are also building music blogs on other platforms, to showcase these playlists, sometimes genre specific sites. We will likely also create a dot com site or two. Eventually. So we need help promoting our playlists. The more listeners the Independent Music Stage gets, the more of a potential asset it is to all Songstuff members. The connection for artists is still very much there. It has the potential of being a massive asset. We plan to treat all artists the same in the public eyes. Features, interviews, Pinterest galleries, webcam performances, podcasts. Maybe even radio. It’s not a small undertaking, but even if we can just do some of this, it stands to be a great benefit. We will eventually be looking for show hosts, interviewers and other help. Personally I think it’s an exciting opportunity. It gives Songstuff a very unique angle. It gives members some real end use possibilities. We’ve given it a lot of thought and think we’ve caught a lot. We’ve spotted a lot of possibilities and found ways to maximise benefits and minimise issues. Honestly the hardest part is the volume of effort involved. Still, if anyone has feedback or comment it’s very useful, and very much appreciated. Even if we’ve thought of something before I am happy, it is still of use. New ideas just enrich an already rich seam. New issues spotted give us a chance to deal with them. When I say “help us to help you” it is very true. The scale of success will depend on us getting help or not. Oh, also, a part of song development on Songstuff will be added, for songs submitted for consideration, we will try our best to feedback constructive comments, to help artists to evolves songs and production to a level that SSUK will feature a song or add it to our playlists. Cheers John PS Sorry to reply with a book!

Alt-ish Playlist on Spotify Check out our latest update to the Alt-ish playlist…. https://www.songstuff.co.uk/alt-ish-playlist-on-spotify/ Help us to help independent artists…. Like, Share, Comment.

Bloody hell lol Sorry Ryan. That’s what happens being distracted lol Yeah it’s been a while since I last saw Bill here.

I did indeed. NMF1 @Steve Mueske I love what you have. I really like the percussion part. The choice of sounds for the percussion is sweet. The arpeggiated synth part that comes in about half way through. When it kicks in the second time it was even better, though it had been set up the first time. Are you going to keep it to 1:30. NMF2 The way it starts is right up my street. Less keen on the arpeggiated sound about 20 seconds in (guessing the timing). I get the need for the part…. Just the sound feels a bit too clean and rounded IMO. Still like the track though @Popthree You do ambient guitar like a master dude! Another great piece Mike. @geographyhorse Scratch that… @Old Technology I enjoyed your track. It opens really well with that choral pad. The background noises felt like conversation, traffic, church music… even before the organ came in. The organ + choral combined beautifully.

It’s not a bad book at all. Better than some others I could mention. It covers a lot of ground, but lacks detail. Ie can be useful for people prepared to use their brains!

Submit Hub is pretty useful. A lot of larger radio/music blogger/reviewers/influencers/curators use them, but still a very long way from all. Additionally, they don’t really do smaller bloggers/playlist curators. Still, if you know in advance who you will be hitting, you can use Submit Hub in combination with contact databases to get a pretty full coverage. I would expect (considering the price) to reach really low level influencers. There are several marketplaces to access higher flying influencers. Prices can get very high very quickly. Still, there is a balancing point. Reaching the right influencer can work wonders. A lot of older influencers, who often don’t even acknowledge the word never mind the market place, will even help for free. It depends on how you intend to get benefit from influencers, what tactics you use etc. Building a relationship with key influencers takes more effort but can pay big dividends. Working with micro influencers can also be handy. There are other ways to target people. Some paid, some guerrilla. For example, using targeted Facebook advertisements. Facebook has some 200k data points per person (probably more now since I last checked). Points of cross reference we as individuals could never know, but Facebook knows. There are private influencer groups on Facebook. We don’t know the members, but when running an ad you might target people who are in those groups and like the kind of music you make. Certainly, if you can, it is a good idea to cultivate relationships with playlist curators, music bloggers and influencers.

All boards you need to be a member to post in. Some boards are visible to the public, others are not. It makes little difference just now as the public cannot currently view the critique board posts, just that the boards exist. We we’re thinking of introducing two levels of boards if we ever get round to free and subscription boards. A free critique boards being publicly readable, subscriber boards not publicly readable. Most online music forums are publicly readable.

Looks like my kind of fun Steve. Thanks for the head’s up!

I meant to say that I’ll remove this mix from my soundcloud tomorrow, I just wanted to share and take part . I plan to release this properly via a full release process sometime after Christmas. It might be worth having a member only board version of new music Friday too?

Thanks Steve! It was fun to do, writing while recording, instead of writing then recording. Ok, I worked out the main piano riff first! There’s still a few mix issues, but nothing too major. I may well have posted it up at an earlier stage had it not been for three things. I get obsessional when I get recording. I forget to eat and drink, and ideas come in a flurry I want to set down. I started the track before Steve posted his new music Friday topic. I am planning on recording all my new tracks as full arrangement, guitar+vox and piano+vox. Additionally I might do an alternative arrangement and/or find people to create a remix. My first version recorded for each track relates how I envision that track fitting within the context of my other tracks. I tend to have fairly complete imaginings of songs very quickly. I have woken up before with a full idea of a song I wrote in my sleep… though not full lyrics, just the music. The other versions are more for either promotional purposes or as rewards for people on my mailing list etc. I have a few I plan to do as stripped back tracks. Some tracks are definitely better suited to one way or the other. My electronica tacks sometimes cannot be done effectively with an acoustic instrument. Some tracks are very adaptable. I have written a new riff for my next track. I can tell you now it’s not a simple 1+1. Thanks for having a listen guys!

Hey hey A work in progress “For You”… Cheers John

Oooo nice! Congrats on the nomination!

Hi exploring the open mic idea. @Popthree Staff have talked about an open mic a few times. The format we thought worked best was a 1 hour live meet up as a livestream open mic. We’ve been preparing for a number of livestream events from chats and interviews to performances, plus webcam performances. Ideally we’d like to make the open mic available on our YouTube channel, both live and as a video after the fact. Doing the livestream without preserving a video may or may not be an option if we use 3rd party services. Apart from that, a video of the open mic is likely to be the best advert for gaining an audience and performers, which could also be brilliant for our community. At least that was our thinking. We would need permission from the artists and songwriters to broadcast their music otherwise we would be laying ourselves open to potentially massive legal problems. Even if we were just to broadcast to a closed group, we would still be broadcasting. So far advice ranges from getting signed or esigned permissions, to check boxes agreeing to copyright. No one I have spoken to suggested, never mind recommended, doing it without permission. The days of sites getting a pass have gone. That aside, getting permission is the right thing to do. Still, it’s been this that has held us back. The same would apply if we did the same with purely audio as a podcast. Certainly to connect everyone reliably, live, audio or video, performers and audience, we need to take advantage of 3rd party services. We have most of the technology already sorted out. As we would effectively be the broadcaster we just need to finish work on the legal side. Even if we didn’t have livestreams available as video after the fact we would still need to have permission given to the account holder. To do it without that central account would be much harder as everyone would have to swap from feed to feed amongst other things. Still, I think we can arrive at a simple solution to make it happen. We already have the YouTube channel and a central livestream account that will allow us to bring in guests. Update: We had a 45 minute convo about open mics, web performances etc at the staff meeting on Monday. We have so much already in place. Staff left the meeting each with tasks to help make it happen. As it stands, for the open mic: We’ll write a procedure and requirements needed (webcam, internet connection etc) Performers would need to sign up beforehand Test stream to iron out issues We would set up a livestream and provide performers a link and join time We will provide a basic copyright permission statement for performers to electronically sign and return before they perform. This protects the writer, artist and site. we already have: a YouTube, Facebook page and Twitter page a tested stream set up a re-stream account We also thought to use the open mic to select artists to potentially offer an opportunity to be featured via SSUK including webcam performances (pre-recorded, not live) and interviews for the Independent Music Stage. Nice to get a solid opportunity from an open mic… plus the open mic itself is a great way to get feedback and find some new listeners. Rest assured we’ll make it happen ASAP.