john

Hey So, Studio One 5.4 has a bunch of new features including native support for Apple Silicon M1 Processors. Native mode for Studio One 5.4 gives additional CPU optimization for improved overall CPU performance. It also introduces a new Plug-in Nap option which disables processing for any plug-ins that are not currently passing audio and so improves overall CPU performance. You can monitor the status for each plug-in in the updated Performance Monitor. It also has other stability improvements. The Note Editor inspector now contains a new Chord display for notes beneath the existing Input Chord display. Multiple formats can be exported in one pass when just one single format is selected, making the switching of formats as simple as selecting a different format. Studio One 5.4 is available as a free update to Studio One 5.to 5.3 owners and to PreSonus Sphere members. Existing users, open Studio One and on the Start Page and click “Check for updates” to get it.

Welcome to Songstuff Lynne! We have a collaborations board. Maybe you could post your request there and take a look at some existing posts to see if any are a possible fit? Good luck with your search!

Lol Yeah, when the new badge system replaced the old one a couple of months ago we all restarted, me included. I enjoyed being a rookie again!

But it is a good topic Greg. One size does not fit all, and discussions should explore, probe and where possible find common ground. At the very least we understand ourselves and the differences between us that bit better.

personally, I miss that direct connection to the audience for my songs. Not just the performance but particularly on more intimate gigs there’s the chance to talk to people before and after the gig, to add to the immediate connection while performing. For me, music is a conversation between the writer and the performer, the performer and the listener. Playing a gig is the most direct way of hearing their response. In fact, for songs that are more open to interpretation, the writing process is only finished within the head of the listener. By having an actual conversation, I get to find out what my songs mean to the listeners, how they connected to the song, and ultimately… do they have a reply! Maybe for writers who are not interested in interpretations, or connections, but only in their own interpretation, or those whose lyrics are more literal, or who think of it less like a conversation and more like a speech… audience interpretation means little. For me, it answers the questions about “how am I being understood? What do they take from what I say?”. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a literal writer, or thinking of it more like giving a speech. My own curiosity simple doesn’t compute disinterest in the effect (or lack of it) of my songs. I have no sense of right or wrong about it, simply noting there is a difference in approach that I struggle to understand but at the same time just accept as a different perspective. I’m warbling now lol

Hey Gregg It’s funny. It’s two experiences for me. 1. The place my fear lives 2. The one place I feel at one with myself, truly at peace 1 exists until somewhere between halfway through the 1st song and halfway through the 2nd song. On only 1 occasion did it last an entire gig. When I gig regularly I generally start unwinding as soon as I start singing. I prefer to make the first song something I am very familiar gigging to ease unwinding. If I place something less familiar as the first song I struggle to settle. When I rarely gigged I used to find it hard. I’d really struggled to settle since I was performing as a kid. Then in my late teens, early twenties, I was gigging several times a week at some points. It was at that point that I learned to be comfortable performing. There’s an axiom that I use a lot: An amateur practices until they get it right A professional practices until they can’t get it wrong For me, playing live has me practicing playing until I know what I am performing better than almost anything else. I get to a point where I know the songs so well that I don’t care. I get confident that I will cope no matter what happens. My aim is to be relaxed, enjoying sharing the gig, the experience of the music, with the listeners. If I don’t know the material really well it’s very hard to get to that point. My confidence comes from not being afraid of making a mistake. I have practiced to the point that I am unlikely to make a mistake, and in the unlikely event that I do, I am not worried at all. I will know what to do. One great plus is that I get to enjoy the gig! Cheers John PS I edited the above post because I accidentally hit submit, mid-sentence, halfway through!

Nice to hear a rock track. Nicely performed too. Good energetic mix. Thanks for sharing!

Hey Guys This week I have had a few conversations about empowerment, about achieving goals, personal habits, motivation and ultimately about having what we need to achieving our goals. Do you feel empowered? I’d love to hear comments and of course see some responses to the poll! Go on. Be an active part in the conversation about achieving your musical goals! Cheers John

Hey thelonecontraband, welcome to Songstuff! Good to meet you.

Sounds like fun, why not?

Hey Kadïï, welcome to Songstuff! What kind of music to you make? Do you have a link to your EP?

Hey Ido, welcome to Songstuff! Glad to have you with us

Hey Josh, welcome to Songstuff! It’s great to have you with us!

Welcome to our community Senseoffence! Good to have you aboard! What plans do you have for your music?

We all have what floats our boat and what triggers us. For some it might be a broken couplet, for others it might be using a TR-909 for a handclap on a Hungarian Polka. Uptightness usually relates to taking comments personally and a need to be right. The flip side is of course a lack of ability to learn from others and often high stress levels. Critique is a skill to learn. It’s a discussion and a mutual interest in exploring possibilities. Perhaps the site could do more to help there, training wise, and there’s definitely an opportunity for members to help encourage a healthy attitude within their fellow members. Forums go through phases, often dictated by influxes of new members. They may or may not have previous critiquing experience, or no critiquing experience. Some forums mistake positive critique with only saying nice things about critique. It’s not. Critique is not about mutual back patting. That’s the reality of a forum that is pretty good at delivering honesty, and positive clique is about discussing ideas and exploring workable solutions/steps forward. Some other forums encourage an “only nice comments” policy, creating users who don’t know how to handle criticism or how to offer it in a healthy way. Meanwhile other forums create an almost combative environment which do little to discourage aggressive criticism, creating users who don’t know how to offer effective critique. In both cases, there is a tendency to focus on bringing up lists of perceived faults or compliments, without discussing why they feel that is significant, what the impact is, and importantly discussion about what the author can do to address issues and lessons to be learned. You are completely right VX, it is far more of an issue with lyrics critique. I’ve considered this before. My conclusion then was that we consider language more intrinsically connected to our personal identity. We do the same with singing versus playing instruments (where an object is involved in making music) or with dance. People are more likely to take them more personally. Maybe we need a compliment board, an insult board and a critique board! Of course sometimes our forums can be a little less than perfect (Okay, okay… keep cool... it’s true!). We all do what we can to keep our boards healthy

Great stuff Mahesh. It’s good to be reminded of it! Love this song. On a bright note, I am very much looking forward to your new releases!

Cool cool, just didn’t want you to feel remotely pushed. I try to keep encouragement to helping people to achieve stated goals and discouragement for paths that lead away from stated goals or where a path is likely to be highly damaging to the person or their attainment of stated goals. I completely get explanations for wider audiences… I also don’t want them getting the wrong idea about my comments lol I’ll zip it for now

I used to have a thing for really bad movies. Epically bad. Like “Plan 9 from Outer Space” . The one movie I would still love to see again would be “Them!” A 50’s movie about giant ants. I loved it as a child!

I get it. I’m not trying to persuade you that’s why I said “if it suited you”

You can still build an audience for your own material. Others will enjoy it. Compartmentalising around different brands is hard work, but it is a clean solution.

Hey there Lindsay, great to have you with us! An interesting background and goal. Do you make music yourself?

Of course, you could, if it suited you and you had a cunning plan, use all your knowledge, skill and contacts, build a new artist name, an artist with integrity, who doesn’t require directorial input!

Hey What are your favourite movies and why? Feel free to post whenever you find new favourites too! Please include the title, director and any additional background relating to the reason that your like it noteworthy actor and their character, or writer and performer of any soundtrack if that is a major factor in liking the film. You get the idea. Credit where credit is due! Cheers John

certainly in-site engagement tasks, events and challenges should be part of encouraging social activity and relationship building.. which is all good with or without some direct music connection. Encouraging general and off-topic chat will help aS well

To all… We’re making changes all the time to improve things. We just more than halved the page load speed, so our Google rank will improve once again. For the last age we’ve been putting together a number of improvements. For example: One key thing for indie music is reaching an interested audience. The trouble is Songstuff is largely artist facing. Most indie OMD’s have the same issue. That means artists build fan lists from other artists, who are unlikely to be genuine fans. Indeed, most will never have listened to your music. It makes for large numbers of disengaged followers, giving you the impression that people just don’t like your music. Artists can be good supporters, most are not. If they encounter you as a listener, they can be like any fan. If they encounter you as an artist, there is a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine… maybe” vibe. So, here is just some of what we’ve been looking at so far to help get our boards more lively… we’ve been repurposing Songstuff UK as SSUK, and created the Independent Music Stage (IMS). Both are intended to be fan facing. We will maintain playlists that largely mix the best indie music with mainstream music (about 80:20) with the aims of: 1st we are creating an active music platform with great music, but importantly by promoting the playlists to mainstream and indie music fans we blur the lines and hopefully introduce fans to awesome music they might never have encountered otherwise. 2nd, the IMS provides an active outlet with a high quality target standard for Indie artists to aim for. Most playlists and opportunities are open to all indies. Some are open to Songstuff members only. 3rd we are targeting some high flying indies to become members of Songstuff. 4th we are adding a talk based podcast for Songstuff, and for SSUK. 5th we are drawing up some basic legal docs to enable us to protect artists and ourselves to do live streams including interviews, performances, workshops and more. These will be fan facing for IMS and artist facing for Songstuff. 6th We have created a media company incorporating a record label, publisher and PR, registered in Texas (Red Circle 7 - RC7) initially for staff to release recordings, but later to help artists release their music properly, based on a short term contract for label, publishing or PR (or all 3) or sub services eventually. We have been creating products to aid indie artists and help fund the community properly. A few of these products will have a user community based directly here. We have an intention of creating a few music blogs, recruiting writers, hosts, illustrators and video makers and creating an awesome media channel on the Independent Music Stage channel on YouTube and distributing podcasts via Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Music and more. We also plan direct community based events like workshops and challenges. We will support fan products like merch and who knows maybe paid for streams, and access to advertising and more for artists to get their products out there. We plan to also get Songwriters and performers out there, not just the artists. Helping raise the profile of songwriters and performers we hope will be an awesome add to our platform. We are looking into interviewing mainstream artists as well as emerging indies, just like the playlists, we hope a mixed audience will really help indies. We also hope to interview team members of bigger artists and organisations and get their take on recording, production, performance, release, distribution, management, PR, copyright and more… Lastly (now) we plan to build community on each social and media platform, all connected to Songstuff or Songstuff UK. Some of the above is in an advanced stage of implementation and others are still at the research stage. There’s more going on, but that gives you a flavour for our work level and ambition for Songstuff and our members. We’re in a great position to help Indies, and have a history of doing so. Still, lighting a fire under our own asses has helped us begin to transform our community into something we feel contributes, is relevant and will be sustainable. So please, as you see us launch initiatives like the IMS, please follow, like and share our accounts, and playlists with your friends, fans and connections. A popular IMS is useful for all indies and music lovers, and that is pretty rare. All of this will have corresponding community activity, here and on our social media portals. All should help make Songstuff lively, and supportive. Importantly, I hope to maintain the culture of the boards as a friendly, useful community. Is this enough? In all this, we need your support. Not just in promoting this place, but also in helping to shape our community into the kind of large community you would want it to be. We have clubs to facilitate sub areas that members can directly control, so that if you want to build a virtual, active music club, you can, or if you want to create a quiet corner, to talk with like minds, you can do that too. So please, please, be active, get involved, enjoy your music. Help us to help you. Love n stuff John