john

I have to agree with @BigDAWaudio. Sing out loud. Make your mistakes loud and proud. Own them, learn, and don’t do them again. Singing timidly in “weak voice”, allows you to hide your mistakes, plus you are only learning to sing in that weak voice, when you need to learn how to project. Sitting with your instrument is a good idea. If you are a singer, it’s always a good idea to play a second instrument. For singing you have to train your ear the difference between the sound you hear through the air and the sound you hear through bone, particularly your jaw bone. There is a pitch difference. What you hear through your jaw bone is at a higher pitch. Not being able to tell the difference, and especially if you have an attention dominance issue (paying too much attention to what you hear through your jaw), you will have a tendency to sing flat. I find simply cupping your fingers behind your ear, with the heel of your hand towards your mouth, you will amplify the sound you are hearing through the air and by adjusting how close the heel of your hand is to your face you adjust the volume balance between what you hear through bone or air. This helps you train your ear. (Also useful when you are struggling to hear your voice, and importantly how to adjust your pitch, when you are hearing yourself more through bone in a live setting) Use a software program or even better a mobile ear training app for your phone). There are many.

Hi A great question! The shortest answer is to record, mix and master at the highest quality your system can cope with for future proofing your audio. You can lose detail from your audio at any time by reducing quality, but you cannot add back lost detail by increasing quality. Instead, all you do is interpolate values… ie adding pseudo or false detail that merely preserves the same audio signal at that better quality. 44.1kHz 16 bit is a 40 year old standard, but still being used in some 8k video, albeit in 22:2 audio channels. Apart from that you are looking at 48kHz for HD video and 48kHz or 96kHz for 4K (which is also 5:1 surround sound) and 44.1kHz or 48 kHz in 22:2. Video is vital for modern musicians. If you ever plan to have your music used in video formats, then master at 48kHz minimum. Just now 96kHz 24 bit is used by sound designers for movies, audiophiles but as processing continues to speed up audio quality will only improve. Why have your audio languish? Disadvantages of recording, mixing and mastering at higher quality? You need higher spec computer, software, audio interface. That’s it. Cheers John

Hi There is no right answer, only the answer that is right for you. What do you want to DO with your music? Is this (answer to the above question) the real extent of your ambition for your music? Do you consider yourself to be happy with achieving this? If you are happy, then all is well with the world if you have achieved it! Well done you! If you have yet to achieve your goal, are you actively work to achieve your goals? If yes, awesome, if no, what’s your big plan? If you are not happy, you are the master of your own story. What are you doing to make it a happy ending? Cheers John

Hi I have a few questions about your approach to songwriting that will help me in preparing future articles and a possible course. So, if you don’t mind, please answer the following questions as best you can and fully as you can. Much appreciated! 1. When you are writing, do you intentionally employ techniques, or do you just wing it and hope for the best? 2. Do you just write, or write with one dedicated technique per song or do you tend to employ several techniques? 3. How would you rate your knowledge of songwriting techniques? Abysmal, Poor, OK, Good, Awesome 4. Do you use a conscious use of song forms up front to lay out your song, or the sections of a song, or do you just write in an ad hoc way? 5. How would you rate your knowledge of Song Forms? Abysmal, Poor, OK, Good, Awesome 6. Have you used the Songstuff articles on Song Forms? Do you have any feedback? 7. What would you like Songstuff to do, to better help you as a songwriter? Cheers John

No worries, I wasn’t intending giving you a row, just answering your question… I wasn’t sure if you used forum to mean this specific board or collectively this site as some people use it to mean both. Oh and by “you” I meant anyone…. Not just you lol

Okay… My main instrument is…. Dun dun dun…. Guitar! I play acoustic and electric. I like everything from folk & guitar music, to rock, metal, funk. I find it a very natural instrument to play. My second instrument is piano and keyboards. I actually started the piano when I was 4. My mum was a part time piano teacher and opera singer. My third instrument is my voice. Weirdly I learned little about actually singing from either my mum or choirs from when I was a kid. Most of my vocal learning was as an adult after I had to step in because we couldn’t find a singer for my band at the time! Beyond that I play bass guitar, mandolin, didgeridoo, bodhran, bagpipes… though I am pretty out of practice with the last 3. I also have a djembe, violin (used to play very well, now badly out of practice). I’ve played various drums, but I am a beginner on a kit… and don’t have a kit to play. I would love a set of Uilleann pipes, but I’ll need to save up. I would love a concert grand piano too…. Along with a house big enough to put it in! One day maybe. If I win the lottery. Here’s a link to a gallery with some of my instruments in it: Cheers John

Hi What do you consider your main instrument? Do you play any other instruments? If you do, what would you consider your second, third and beyond instruments? What other instruments would you like to play? I’ll post my instruments in a weirdo reply to my own topic. Be gentle, I have Covid! Cheers John

Hey A great topic, and something I think about a lot. A little bit of history and why I think change is on the cards. There are virtues to different approaches and drawbacks. For example, albums. Less in demand for a while because of the way tracks are sold by online stores and how listening habits adapted due to artificial amplification of a particular voice within the listening public. That being that artists were ripping off the listening public by forcing them to buy an album that was 7 terrible tracks and 1 good song, with artists using crap songs as filler to justify higher prices. Coupling that with all album tracks being available individually and algorithm bias, there is a short term sales advantage to following a single release strategy right now. BUT There is always a “but”. That is where albums were being treated by the music industry as they were. There is an artistic advantage to releasing collections of tracks. They allow artists to explore a seam of creativity. They allow artists to bundle their creativity and then move on, drawing a line under material to move on to a new style. That is harder to do under the constantly present in the public eye, single release model. Think about all the greats. Albums tell a greater story too. Plus, singles tend to be easy to get into, but we tend to get sick of hearing them pretty quick too. Album tracks were often slow burners, to took more listens to get into but they often bit to a deeper level too. Some of the most popular tracks of all time were never released as singles, like Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. Some the biggest acts in the world were reliant upon the album format. From Pink Floyd to David Bowie to Madonna to Queen to Radiohead, albums have been integral to bigger splash, bigger budget releases. It stands to reason. If you leave a tap dripping, you tune out the drip. Eventually you just don’t notice it. Meanwhile am album is a big splash, an explosion of water. You notice those. They demand your attention. Something that seems to be largely lost is single versions and album versions. Back in the day artists used to have the album version included in the album and a shorter, radio ready version available as a single. In the 1990s and 2000s labels had shifted away from considering artists as long term investments. Their short term greed saw them creating less massive artists with top selling catalogs and instead giving our shorter and shorter contracts down to the modern single song contract (with further song options). This, coupled with the streaming platform sales model, led to artists living to dying on a single song. This is not conducive to a good career for the artist. So, while a serial single release plan can be appealing, it is not necessarily our best career choice, not necessarily our best creative choice. In truth, I think we need to do both. Even if you creatively make your music just for you… you still have an obligation to deliver value for your listeners. Forget that and they might just feel you are simply self indulgent and self serving and they will start deserting you. Keep valuing them, and delivering value to them and respecting your own craft, and the fans of your music will be more likely to remain and have your back. It is a massive topic. Cheers John

As long as you observe, analyse and advise and the thrust of what you offer is constructive, we encourage it. Constructive means helpful, not “Only saying nice things” as some people have misinterpreted it as before. We would draw the line at simple criticism or antagonism. If that happens we encourage members to report it to site staff. If in doubt, I am sure a member of staff can advise. More than any forum allowing, individuals tend to fail to tell others of critique they are looking for or not looking for, and those offering critique sometimes ignore such requests and instead think critique gives them open season for opinion venting. It doesn’t. We ask members to keep discussion civil, and if you cannot respect each other, then respect this site, the broader community and our site staff. If someone cannot do this, they should not be posting here.

Welcome to Songstuff Elena! I fixed the post for you… all you need to do is post the video url, same goes for Soundcloud songs.

Hi All A new article about using mindfulness to speed up your learning, make practice more effective and to enhance performance. https://www.songstuff.com/guitar/article/mindfulness-and-making-music/ Cheers John

Hey All What do you do to track and develop ideas for your songs? Pen&pad, a notepad app on your phone/tablet/desktop? Do you use the memo recorder on your phone? What about idea generators? Word suggestion tools? ChatGPT? Rhyming tools/books? Online Thesaurus? We all use different ways, and I am interested in what others are using and hoping to also get some suggestions. That aside, I am just interested in what you all do to work your magic Cheers John

Sheesh, I’d cut things back so much! I enjoy playing my keyboards so that’s good. Same goes with my guitars, bass and assorted instruments. Sure I could replace them with plugins but meh, I prefer playing the actual instruments… and I get plugins for the instruments I can’t play or can’t play to a level I am happy recording. I was a musician first, starting learning my first instrument when I was 4 years old, it makes sense to me to still have the ability to use real instruments when I can. I started working in a recording studio when I was 16 years old. I fell in love with that physical interface. It’s just largely souped up with a digital back end. I record a few styles of music from folk, through classical, rock and electronica to name a few. Sometimes software instruments are adequate and appropriate, sometimes they are a square peg in a round hole. I am far from against plug ins, but sometimes they are a lot of work for a lesser result (sometimes exactly the opposite is true too). I keep my options open if I can. A lot of my remaining audio hardware is legacy. An old dual gate compressor, an old physical sampler, so that I can recreate old mixes easily. I unashamedly use patchbays for 2 reasons… I have a very bad back so crawling around connecting the various bits of gear I have is not something I want to do every time I reconfigure my connections to include a bit of gear. The other reason is to protect the connectors on my hardware. The Patchbay gets worn out, not the connectors. The other main bits of gear are an old DAT for my old DAT masters, and my MOTU ES 828 interface which is a perfect interface for the variety of recording scenarios I might need. That said I wish I had the modern equivalent of my old creamware cards from my old Carillon PC. That was an awesome sound card in it’s day. My second PC is for video streaming and video editing. I’ll be using that for recording video versions of old and new articles for Songstuff, for creating video courses, for interview of artists for SSUK, and IMS and Songstuff and for songwriters and producers on Songstuff too. I’ll also be using it for video for my own music. I also use that PC for most of my internet. The PS5 is just for fun. My University course was all about designing audio gear, hardware and software. I am toying with the idea of creating some software instruments, effects and tools. I also studied a variety of Ai tech from learning algorithms, genetic algorithms, neural networks and object oriented design. Applications from instruments and effects through to adaptive interfaces and creative Ai have all developed a lot since I studied. All that is in the software realm. I design and admin websites, create digital art… so much of my life is purely software… purely inside the box or online, so I indulge myself with the comfort and immediacy of hardware interfaces (including the faster work rate they bring). It’s not gear for gear’s sake. Each part fulfils a useful role that I understand. I am more aware than most of both the capabilities and benefits of software and software modelled gear, but I am also very aware of their limitations and compromises. Sometimes I enjoy the benefits and live with the limitations, sometimes I don’t. They are all deliberate choices. Believe me… software takes up a lot less room! On a bright note, I didn’t opt for 16 or 24 track reel to reels for my old multitrack tapes!

I’ve added a Home breadcrumb to every mobile page. I’d be interested to know if that helps address the problem

48% atm. That is low but variation is typically fluctuating around 55%. Still, when logged in on mobile, the Useful Member Links section is on most pages. I get that it doesn't help non-members. I am more than happy to look at adding a Home button on the boards if the current navigation doesn't meet needs.

Articulating them is a great first step towards manifesting them I’ll check out your lyrics

Hey Michael Great to meet you! Welcome to Songstuff What ambitions do you have for your music now? I don’t mean ‘become famous’, though if that is your jam, that is cool too. I mean specifically the music part of the equation