john

um…. 123…. 5? Lol Kontakt is one of my favourites and many libraries (Native Instruments and 3rd party) would have my top 5 dominated by Kontakt. Omnisphere II is awesome. ‘Nuff said. I haven’t used Vienna since about 2007, even though I had build a pretty good library collection by then. I haven’t tried Stormdrum. I’ll need to check it out. What do you like or dislike about it? I have a pretty large Wave collection. I have the Izotope starter bundle which is great, I just haven’t had money available when forking out for new controllers. I loved Wavelab but once I dropped out of the cheaper upgrade cycle due to a lack of funds, getting back on meant an expensive purchase… it’s on my to do list!

Hey all My studio is so hot it's pretty unusable. By the time I sit down I can already feel the sweat begining to run. It's so hot and humid that spending time in the studio is more of an endurance challenge than anything else. Making music is shelved in the short term. Can anyone recommend a silent (or close to silent) fan? Ideally something pretty durable too. Cheers John

What can I say, I’m cruel!

Hey I don’t entirely agree with everything the presenter puts forward but I agree with most of it. It’s pretty well explained too! Check it out…

Hi The presenter is a bit nervous, but his points are still very valid. Audience Branding Content

You have an About Me profile page, and once you get enough posts, a board signature. I would recommend adding your music links to both and some text and images to your About Me, plus if you have some, adding a video link in your About Me. Videos and audio from main sites will auto embed players.

A pity about the marketing side. It takes creativity too, and is engaging listeners and trying to find your audience. The process is essentially the same (apart from the paid advertising option) whether you sell songs or give them away for free, including using video and live performance as part of your marketing efforts. A lot of artists rule it out like it’s something shady. It can be, but it really doesn’t need to be. Weirdly though, plenty are happy to reap the benefits as long as they don’t need to know, which really is shady! Still, if you know you aren’t interested, you aren’t interested. Loads of good stuff to be explored in songwriting and seeing songs through to the end of the song creation process. If you aren’t marketing I guess by release you mean upload more than anything else? Do you have any written yet?

Hey BFO, welcome to Songstuff! Good to have you with us. So, what’s your plan as a bedroom guitarist?

um, it helps when you post a link! Can you post up the title in English please? Posting in English is a site rule.

Thanks. Probably my least favourite task in a studio. It can be so satisfying to fix, but it is almost always accompanied with the dejection that it was “such a simple thing. I should have known!”, and that just flattens any joy!

Hey I just spent an age trying to find the source of hum on my audio, only to discover that it came from a brand new Samson Power Brite PB10. What a pain in the ass. The PB10 is supposed to clean up mains supply and protect equipment. Adding a hum is not part of the job description. So, I bought a Furman M10LX E Merit Power Conditioner. Connected it up just now and…. No more hum. Yay! Pretty critical for any audio recording but when used with my RC-505 it was a nightmare. Every time you layered recording loops, stacking them, each loop added the same mains hum, which just dominated anything looped making my rc-505 useless. One more problem solved! Cheers John

I know Simpan has used several identities, and rarely replies to his posts…. I just don’t understand the need for subterfuge, especially in this case.

Owing to a community wide amnesia our entire community was duped into believing the entirely believable falsehood, err I mean plausible fiction, um story, that this was your first cover. Obviously the other covers were indeed originals that just sounded like other songs, with the same words and titles. See? Entirely believable when you put it like that!

We have dedicated boards for different categories of content. It makes it much easier to find similar content, or to find threads you might be interested in when browsing while stopping short of using the search function. Here’s the cover and remix category: https://forums.songstuff.com/forum/172-covers-and-remixes/

Hi and welcome to Songstuff Drone! Looking forward to hearing your tracks!

I like the 3rd person observation lol

It’s not a set value, it’s a ballpark. Typically most of a “sweet spot” track would be built on that which is familiar too us, in order that we view that innovation in as good a light as possible. Absolutely. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Even when bands innovate, if they don’t keep innovating they become stale and predictable. If you keep innovating with the same elements, new songs just become pale imitations of the old. So yes, innovate, but vary where you innovate. One if my reasons for starting this topic is that too often it is, as you intoned, artists pay lip service to it. They talk about it, but don’t do it. Hmmm. Maybe a thread or innovation event would be a good idea?

You are absolutely right. I wrote an article for Songstuff, probably 19-20 years ago (Time flies!), Commerciality, Familiarity and Originality which grappled with the issue from a songwriting perspective. Still relevant today, which is why it is still on the site. Too unusual and it can take so long for people to get into it that it never takes off, a slow burn. Too safe, too familiar and it is easily picked up but completely unchallenging and so people bore of it very easily. A lot of music today is safe. Made that by business men wanting predictable short term money over risky long term money. That goes for labels and publishers but also production companies, advertisers, tv channels etc. In honesty, they do want those big hit moments, but that relates more to riding a wave or being somewhere in the late-early adopters to early bandwagon jumper zone.There is a sweet spot. Artists want hits, but also longevity. Music of the late 60’s into late 70’s is particularly remember because labels and culture was more content to play the long game. Bands were encouraged to experiment, to make mistakes in order to learn. It was common in that time period to get 3 - 5 album deals. That gave artists room to try new things. Now labels (like pretty well everything else) focus on short term goals, maximum return for minimum investment. Pink Floyd are one of the biggest bands in the world, despite having not released a totally new album for a decade, and not having played a gig in a similar time frame. Arguably, talent aside, a major factor in their success was the fact that they heavily experimented in pretty well everything. Sound. Music. Words. Light. Visuals. Graphics. You name it, they tried to innovate. Luckily it was a time when audiences also gave room to artists to experiment. Just like labels, modern audiences are largely demanding and focused on short term gratification. They are a good deal more sophisticated, and as a result demand the same of their artists. For artists it is important to realise that those that are truly remembered, those whose music is celebrated, are those that heavily innovated, and who became masters of “reading the room” and who balance innovation with short term appeal. Being safe might earn you a living, but in the long term it is likely to see your music largely forgotten, drowning in a sea of same-y safeness. Think about it. Nobody every achieved greatness by being ordinary. With music production today, much innovation comes from combination of pre-made. Back when guitar effects were simple, innovation largely came from how the instrument was played. Keyboards had simple capability, but virtually no presets. There were no soft-synths, no sample libraries. People invented their own sounds. Once samplers came along you had to build your own sample libraries, and once libraries were available for sale they were fairly small. Everything funnelled artists towards innovation. Nowadays artists are spoiled by an endless supply of presets. They don’t have even tweak, they just load a new preset. Back in the day keyboard players were embarrassed to use presets… but then there were only a small number of synths and fellow keyboard players could spot preset patches a mile away. Audiences demanded to be entertained with fresh sounds. Necessity being the mother of invention, so artists invented. The issue with today’s off-the-shelf preset nirvana is that nothing really drives innovation. Safe is the name of the game, and that is a big problem. Artists risk being completely forgettable. Grey in a sea of other greys. Like other things in life I think the balance point is given by the 80:20 rule, where 80 is the familiar and 20 is innovation. Taking the innovation 20%, 80% of that should be at the safer end of the innovation spectrum, with only 20% being (ie 4% of the total) being truly innovative. That’s the sweet spot right there. Its just an opinion.

Hey How much do you feel you innovate through recording and production? Or do you stay safe? The same question can of course be asked about songwriting, but I think it is a more common question. What do I mean about innovation? Well, emulating the production techniques of someone else is staying safe. Experimenting with known techniques is something new for you, but still not innovation. Innovation is coming up with unique, new uses for. The innovation can be small. It can be inspired by something others have done but it is fundamentally that creative spark. Often it ties to taking a risk and finding a new use for something. Using a technique or technology outside expected genres, blending music genres. I ask because innovation almost always hooks me. It makes me want to listen more to an artist, whether it is in songwriting, arrangement, recording or production… something new catches the ear, catches the mind. It makes me think “if they can do something new and unexpected here, what else might they do?”. Cheers John

Hey there Peter, welcome to Songstuff! Some great influences, I look forward to hearing your tracks!

Hey Zechariah, welcome to Songstuff! Good to meet you

Hey Icon831, great to meet you! Welcome to Songstuff! Do you have plans for your music?

They’ve been using algorithms of some kind or another to crunch data for years. There are so many easily available data points these days it would be surprising if they didn’t use them to predict what happens next.

No need to say sorry!

I share the same general concern that artists collectively will reveal too much of what happens behind the scenes, blowing any sense of mystery, in an ill informed pursuit of engagement with no real filter (really folks, you use an audio editor… editors exist for a damn good reason. Add to that, you wouldn’t dream of going out to public jams or open mics until you at least understood the basics). It is not dishonest to show your best side via whatever medium. After all, 99% of us will self-edit to a degree. I certainly haven’t seen any livestreams coming from a toilet (yet!), because on some level artists understand that going to the toilet is fundamental to being a human, but it barely registers for artists promoting their music. Funny that! And yet I see it all the time, artists presenting a warts ‘n’ all view in the name of authenticity. It’s just like dating. It takes time for most people to see us for who we are, because we hold back some of it, for many good reasons. Do we need to see all the various stages of preparation someone goes through before going out with them in order to appreciate how good they look or that they went to some effort? Would it ruin the surprise? Absolutely. Undermine the anticipation? Probably. Ruin the impact? Definitely. Like video, podcasts, livestream, the issue is not technology. It’s how people use it. A little ignorance goes a long way. I guess what I am trying to say is…. Music is an entertainment industry. It requires some mystery to preserve it’s magic. Think of it this way…. You get to go see a world class magician. Sure, you know it’s not real magic, they are tricking you, but we enjoy not knowing how they did it. Would you prefer knowing how they do every single trick before going, or going along and enjoy not knowing? It’s also fairly obvious, but it’s easy to see the negative effect on all magicians if you start revealing tricks because many tricks share common elements and many many tricks will be ruined. I think it’s obvious when you think of it like that. If artists would only learn what to share, how and when to share it, they and the industry would benefit greatly. As it is, clubhouse offers a lot… but only if people know how to use it.