john

Good voice! So not like Sabaton I like it when an artist puts a bit of work into a video. Music wise, the orchestral patches are a bit synthy. I thought it might have been good to have a bit of guitar crunch come in, and I thought the faded overlay worked but could have been broken up a bit with some zero transparency shots. I didn't expect the spoken section of video at the end. A signature outro?

Hey gang, post photos of your studio to our studio gallery... https://forums.songstuff.com/gallery/category/7-your-studio/ Cheers John

Hey Gang What is your go to gear? The things in your studio you just can’t do without? Why are they so essential? Cheers John

Hey Jayden, welcome to Songstuff! Good to have you with us

Hi and welcome to the Songstuff family!

Hey I often see musicians talking about writers or artists that influence them, but rarely are the producers mentioned and yet often they have been a huge part of getting the "sound". Ken Scott, David Bowie - David Bowie, Hunky Dory Nigel Godrich - Radiohead, Ok Computer Adrian Utley - Portishead, Dummy Andrew Powell - Kate Bush, The Kick Inside Bjork & Graham Massey, Neilee Hooper - Bjork, Army Of Me Ian Anderson, Terry Ellis - Jethro Tull, Aqualung Henry Binns, Sam Hardaker - Zero7, Simple Things Svein Berge, Torbjorn Brundtland, Olie J Mjos - Royksopp, Melody A.M. Pink Floyd & Chris Thomas - Pink Floyd, Dark Side Of The Moon Mark Ronson, Salaam Remi - Amy Winehouse, Back To Black There's plenty more, especially on the rock side of things. These are a few of the producers (in no specific order really) that have influenced my approach to production. Who has influenced you? Cheers John

Nice and mellow. What's the background tapping? It sounds like your guitar is resting against something hard and tapping against it as you play. It distracts from the rest of the piece. It could do with either being removed from the recording or turned into an actual percussion part and brought up in the mix. As it stands it detracts rather than adds to the track.

Hi Tomas. welcome to the Songstuff family! Good to meet you

Absolutely no problem, just suggesting options.

Man. Frustrating. I have never used them. I can see why it is free. If it is like this with the set up, it doesn’t bode well. Perhaps try Distrokid. Much cheaper than cd baby, but used enough by indie musicians. I would expect several artists on Songstuff will be Distrokid users.

Hey Gary, welcome to the Songstuff family. Generally less people use forums than used to, but it is more fashion than practicality. People use social media for things like critique and mix critique with engagement posts using work in progress, all really bad ideas. Especially Twitter! Forums are an early social media, and they are very well suited to some tasks. I could go on but I won’t bore you!

Hey Momo, welcome to the Songstuff family! What’s your background / interest?

Hi and welcome to the Songstuff family Sesa! Take a look around and dive in to some topics.

It doesn’t serve the member or the site for us to do something that doesn’t include goodwill. In practical terms we don’t want to be promoting things people are not happy with us to promote. That would be a lot of wasted effort on the part of staff just to piss members off. What is the point in that? We can’t make money from doing it. Our main reason to promote is to help the artist or writer, and the secondary is to attract more likeminded people to the site for members to interact with. If we abuse what we can do it would kill the community, serving no one at all. There is a big difference between what can legally be done and what it is wise to do. If you are in a 60 mph driving zone, do you take a sharp corner at 60, or do you slow to take the corner safely? Life is full of “could”s that are unrealistic scenarios for very practical reasons. If you do not consent for Songstuff to distribute what you write via Songstuff itself, you cannot be a member. That is true for every single website, including email providers. Patently for us to display it to anyone else in the world, to digitally transmit it across international boundaries etc. Requires permission from you. Otherwise Songstuff would be breaching your copyright. Exclusivity is a different issue, that relates to your copyright. Songstuff has no interest in, or right to, exclusivity for forum content. There are times with video content we might want that for a period due to the efforts we might go to on your behalf, but that would be a whole separate agreement. Of course you can post stuff in your blog or book. If you want to exclusively post something to your blog or book, (and this is not Songstuff specific) don’t post it anywhere else. Our forums are mainly publicly viewable, with some member only areas. We are not assuming intellectual control of everything you post here. Neither do we distribute anything without your permission. On a practical point, it would be unmanageable for us to ask fo specific permissions for every item of content, never mind annoying for members. Instead we have member only areas and public viewable areas. You choose where your post goes. For example content in “member only” areas cannot be shared by members or promoted by staff. Going beyond that we are trying to give you more informed and explicit control by having boards like showcase that we tell you up front if you post here we might repost it to promote your content. That is an informed choice you make. Until now we have acted in a trustworthy way with what permissions we are given. It is not in our interests for us to abuse that trust. Trust is involved in every case of data content. Where we do not explicitly rule out some scenarios it would be crazy of us to do things so hostile to goodwill because communities do need some goodwill in order to operate. I should say, I am not against rigidly stipulating specific source forums (like showcase) for potential promotion in terms of copyright permissions, however to do so we remove a lot of flexibility and potentially increase the work of our volunteer staff. An alternative is possibly best achieved by making most boards member only but that will probably reduce the number of new members attracted to the boards. Or we do as currently implemented. We can also change the balance a bit and perhaps signpost things more clearly and make the info about the different areas more readily available which is the direction we are going in just now. We ask for less permissions than sites like Soundcloud, who let other people embed your content in its entirety on any other website. Our social share buttons default to the title and a link (only on public topics). Private Soundcloud links you have to share directly and responsibly. Whereas a member or member group only post on Songstuff can only be shared with members or that member group. Staff do not share anything from private or non public areas out with those groups. YouTube has very similar content sharing to Soundcloud. Facebook does allow you to choose topic sharing, but only on content posted to your wall. Post elsewhere and either global permissions apply or the permissions of that page or group. Pretty well all other forums have similar permissions to the way Songstuff’s were, giving them a wider remit on what they can do. They too tend to have social sharing buttons, public and member only areas. While we ask for permissions for the staff to repost to specific places, content for a specific purpose, in practical terms that only draws on specific boards or content types (interviews/articles etc), to abuse that would undermine trust and kill the boards. Its late and my explanation probably rambling. My “idea” is to try to help members in the ways they want helped. Sometimes that is with knowledge, sometimes tools, sometimes via peer interaction, sometimes finding collaborators, sometimes finding friends with similar interests, informed opinions or enthusiasm, but also help in finding artists to play their songs, places to reach fans etc... and just like everything else it is with informed consent and goodwill. Could we do things different or better? Probably. I am always open to suggestions. I don’t make money from doing all this. We provide all this based on goodwill. We try to provide this as a safe, fair place to interact, where you are respected by staff and other members. I try to treat people fairly and help them achieve the music goals I can help with, how I can. I don’t think it unreasonable to cover our asses copyright wise, or to make sure members understand the rights they are being asked for and why, or to spell out the members part of the contract. We provide all this for nothing, extending goodwill and trust to members not to abuse what we give them too. Based upon your experience of Songstuff, has it, to your knowledge, ever previously abused the permissions you or others have granted it? If we can make you more comfortable, I will look to do so. I certainly don’t think your needs or wants from Songstuff (as explained by you) are incompatible with my perception of the wants and needs of our member base as a whole.

I would love to know how we make a video interview with you without you knowing, or without your permission. We have almost as many uses of the site as there are members. Some do it purely as a hobby or exploration of something that could become a hobby. Some are very ambitious and see themselves becoming professional writers or artists. Even when someone writes purely as a hobby, it does not necessarily mean they want everyone to know, or no one to know. I simply want the site to support different songwriters and their aspirations, be that completing a song, or something more. When we do an interview with an artist or writer, it starts with us asking them. We then promote that interview on site, off-site, in our newsletter etc. Posting to the showcase board is about showcasing the songs posted there. It says as much at the top of the board, as does a new gallery category. Whereas the critique boards are for works in progress. I don’t think we have ever considered featuring a WIP. Where we feature and promote we want to be doing so with the understanding and approval of members. As said, most sites have much wider ranging permissions hidden away. The restriction of “for promotion” is because the intended usage is not for commercial reasons. Copyright exists as soon as you create something. That is why we ask for copyright permissions from you in our terms and conditions. You choose to do that. Without those permissions we could not operate as a forum, because we could not let anybody see anything you had ever typed or otherwise uploaded You’ve been around the site and seen what we do, the kind of things that we promote. We are now talking of adding other things for those who want them. As mentioned those would require further permissions from contributors.

Hey shootermcgovern, glad to have you with us Dive in!

Hey Einav, welcome to the Songstuff family! Great to meet you!

Does that help?

Hey Gang Our boards used to be organised according to function, which is alright if you know what you want. Members regularly complained that they couldn’t find stuff on site. So we introduced the “Interest” view of the boards, a goal oriented view. To bridge the reorganise we kept the old view too, currently the “Main Forums” section. To avoid duplication of boards, the boards live in one place, and the other view just links to that same board. The trouble comes if you try to carry out an action, such as create post, where you are then promoted where to create the post. The linked version of boards are just greyed out and cannot be selected. So, it may well be a good time to start removing the duplicate links to simplify board navigation. I’d welcome your opinions... Ideas are very welcome too! Cheers John

Great to hear. Online communities of any kind are very much about getting more out of a community by participating and putting more in to the community. Of course there are other factors, but that is fairly universal. That includes social media, and forums are a type of social media. I look forward to hearing your music!

Hi Eva, a big welcome to the Songstuff family! Great to have you with us. Dive right in.

Hey Riley, welcome to the Songstuff family! Good to have you with us. Dive in and if you have any questions, just ask. btw, for demo tracks, try a Soundcloud account and just Mark the track private / unlisted, then when you post them here the embedded player works seamlessly just by posting the song link (no embed code needed). The more inline your songs are the more plays / reviews you get. For work in progress tracks include lyrics in your post. They make a useful reference point if nothing else. Cheers John

Hey Nathan, welcome to the Songstuff family!

Hey Geoff, welcome to the Songstuff family!