MikeRobinson

My experience of living in that city, and in surrounding cities such as Chattanooga, is that great music now occurs everywhere. The business of musical production of course depends to a certain extent upon the ready availability of recording studios, but an awful lot of stuff is done by sending files through the Internet. The corporate headquarters of BMI, ASCAP, SESAC won't be moving anytime soon. Sure, cities like Nashville have a certain persona which they sell to tourists, which lately is "Nash-Vegas" on Broadway, but the actual business is that projects of every possible description are always afoot. I'm no longer convinced that you have to "live in" a particular city in order to "connect with its music scene," nor that you will actually be successful in doing so, even if you do. "Bloom where you are planted," unless you have an itchy foot ... in which case, "more power to you!" (So do I ...)

"You're already here, are you not?" I mean that quite seriously. In every city of any size, there is always a music scene, and there are always people who are supporting it, e.g. with recording, producing, mixing, mastering, and so on. Today, quite a bit of this activity occurs "at home." I would therefore suggest that you try to bloom wherever you are now planted. But by all means, visit all of the cities that you mention, as I have. (Nashville's a two-hour drive away, and P.S. you forgot Memphis.) Immerse yourself for a few days in their music scene. But don't bother to join the masses of hopefuls who think that they have to be in a particular place to be meaningfully involved with music. It's just not true anymore. Also, be careful not to typecast a city with a particular style of music even if it is known for it. "Every kind of music imaginable" can be and is produced everywhere.

"Part of the workings of the musical magic" comes from the fact that 7ths, 9ths, etc. are perceived by the ear as "not quite part of the foundation chord anyway." The 7th is only a half-step away from the next octave, and the 9th (otherwise known as the 2nd ...)i has wrapped-around completely. The sense of musical center is being anchored by the root, the third, and/or the fifth below, and you should always be very careful not to completely discard this. The listener's ear will therefore allow you to "skate," at least for a few measures, with the harmonies that are suggested by these "not quite" notes, as if they were fulfilling their traditional roles in the keys to which they "properly" belong ... provided that you do not, in fact, abandon the "real" key of the song. You are, as it were, feinting in the direction of another key ... but not just any key. This Wonderous Magick™ only(!) works because the "other" key is "the 7th or the 9th of the home key," and because the chords continue to share several notes in common with the chords of the home key ... to which you quickly return. The listener continues to hear notes taken from the home key, although for a few measures (s)he perceives that the roles played by those notes are taken from the "other" different, yet closely-related key. The listener enjoys the musical contrast for a little while, as one might enjoy a surprising dash of spice, but does not perceive it as a complete modulation (because it isn't).

Per contra, a lot of my music originates in a (free, and awesome!) musical scoring program, MuseScore. (Uh huh, "sheet music!") But I think that the most(!) important thing to remember is that the creative process is "one part inspiration, nine parts perspiration!" In other words, "it won't show up 'like Venus popping out of a clamshell on the beach, fully-formed (and completely starkers).'" Nope, the final composition is going to be what you decide that it should be ... and there's going to be an awful lot of very arbitrary(!) decision-making to do. Never, at any point, expect to hear "a celestial harp-strum," or to see a beam of light coming down from heaven showing you exactly what to do next. "There is no 'right' answer ... only 'your' answer." Even though the audience will only hear "the finished product ... tah dahhh!!," and is free to imagine that it popped out of a clamshell on the beach, you have no such luxuries. They only see the finished muscle-car tooling its way down the highway ... but you remember oily hands and a garage full of parts scattered all over the floor. "Pssst!! Don't tell them what the actual creative process is really like! They prefer clamshells (and naked women) ..." - - - Another key, I think, is: "never throw anything away!" You're not exactly going to run out of hard-drive space, so keep everything, even if you "throw it away and never want to see it again." Because, one day, it might turn out to be exactly what you were looking for. Keep all your drafts, all your intermediates, and all your "junk." And, anytime and everytime you're "just noodling around on your instrument," hit Record! In the end, songs aren't something that "comes in a clamshell." They're something that you make, in a creative process that is entirely invisible to the audience. There was a time when Michelangelo's David lived in a quarry. Today, I defy to find a single chisel-mark on it ...

The reality of those days was that most revenue expectations were tied to sales of albums, not concert tickets. You were lured into the venue in hope that most of you either already owned the latest album or that you very soon would buy it. Artists were fairly-forced to play many concerts, in god-help-us-all places, because every one of those places had at least one record store.

"You wanna collaborate with me? Very well: sign here." Yeah, go ahead and call it a "pre-nup." It exists for the selfsame reason. Before either of us enter into this future, "possibly fruitful, possibly not," business arrangement, we are going to on-the-record document and agree-to certain things. A great many very-famous bands – Pink Floyd immediately comes to mind – ran into a lot of trouble, and heartache, because they did not "mind their P's and Q's" when they needed to.

Here's a thought ... "in each case, you are writing for a customer," who badly needs to purchase a product which reliably dovetails into a very-rigorous(!) set of constraints which have nothing to do with the music. In each case there are industry-specific websites and blogs ... e.g. taxi.com ... that are specifically targeted at composers who are trying to "break in" (or, "to survive").

A few months ago, I bought a new 88-key controller (after my previous "axe" suffered an unspeakable accident directly-beneath a storm-created hole in my roof ... go figger), and I still haven't figured the damned thing out. But it sure is fun to keep trying! "What? What?! A 'big boy toy?!' How dare you! Can't you see that this thing is obviously a tool?!" (koff, koff ...)

Please try to bear in mind that "America's Top 40," a-la Casey Kasem, was ... and very much still is ... an artifact of the broadcast industry. Today, there is no "radio" which determines what you get to hear. Today, the consumer of music has indeed become empowered to choose ... and to immediately receive the product of their choice. There is no more "king-maker." Thus, there really is no more "king." Today, you, the artist, have a very direct(!) connection with your audience. And the "cost of goods sold" of the thing that you wish to sell to that audience, is "zero." If the customer buys it, you make money. And if not, you're not staring at boxes of unsold vinyl in your garage. - - - And, as to the original topic-statement of this thread: "In my experience, there is no such thing as 'luck.'"

When you listen to a professionally-produced recording, it might never even occur to you how many people had an integral part in what you hear, nor exactly what it was that they did. You don't get to hear any of the stem recordings – the stuff that was actually recorded in a studio – and you don't get to peek behind the scenes of writing the song, arranging it, orchestrating it, and so on. You only hear ... "perfection." (According to some engineer/producer or another.) You're a songwriter. (Yes, you are a songwriter!) Your job is to create the idea, and then to produce a good demo of it. It won't be perfect; it won't be of to-die-for technical quality. But, it will be yours, and it will probably be quite a bit better than you think, as interpreted by someone who has never encountered it before. No matter what you create, you're always gonna be "too close to it." You're never really going to be able to look at it objectively. So, you need to carefully share it ... and to do so entirely without apology of any kind.

"Symphonious, go hug your wife!" You're 33 years old and you've got the greatest gift a man could ever have. Way-y-y-y too many songs have been written about not-having such a gift, or about having lost one. (And, feel free about writing another one – just, not from personal experience.) Life doesn't come with a warranty or an instruction manual, but "the power of two" cannot be shaken. And as far as music goes, there will always be two ways to look at "publishing it." Some people want to share their musical journeys in near-real time, and they do find an interested and appreciative audience. Others, like myself, want to polish and polish and polish the turd gem. It's all good, just as long as you keep making it. Even if you never make a dime from music, the ability and the determination to make it is precious – and, the ability to "share it with the world" is, until a very few years ago, completely unheard-of.

LMMS runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac. https://lmms.io I dunno – I use an open source music-scoring program, MuseScore, which I selected in preference to(!) both Sibelius and Finale when I was fully expecting to buy the professional edition of one or the other. It does absolutely everything that I need to do, and a great deal more that I haven't even discovered yet. I'd still buy one of the commercial tools if I stumbled upon something that it couldn't ... but it's been a long, long time now, and I'm not dis-satisfied yet! I snagged a copy of LMMS and will probably spend a lot of time in the future learning much more about it ... even though I own a copy of Logic Pro X. (GarageBand has turned into "Logic Pro Not-So-Lite.") The most-fun thing about computer technology today is that now it's possible for people to collaborate, all around the world, and there's now an abundance of CPU power and memory with which to drive everything ... including a program that has an emulation of Commodore 64 sound devices. We've got really well-developed ways to do "cross-platform" deployments of software that runs efficiently on all platforms. It's possible for a world-wide team of self-disciplined people to collaborate efficiently. The commercial programs are, of course, great. But, if you don't have the money or simply are not yet ready to spend it, the open-source tools are anything but "second rate." It's immediately obvious that you can do professional-grade music with LMMS, and I am very glad to have just been introduced to it.

As Richard Tracey's post, above, indicates in his included hyperlink, a so-called "NOI" is a legally-required formality that's been around since 1909. The service is formally notifying you that they intend to obtain a license to sell copies of your stuff. ... and, of course, to pay you for it. About the only thing that you need to do is to check to be sure that the information they provided on the application appears to you to be factually correct. (If it's not, then now is the time to fix it!)

Also, as I said before, registration is an objective, independently-verifiable claim of title, officially made with the Government and made by you "under penalty of perjury." Just as you'd better have the title-certificate in your hot little hands when you try to sell an automobile, pragmatically speaking you'd better have the copyright registration-number when you try to peddle a song. Because, the person to whom you're offering the song can objectively look-up your claim, verify that the record really is on the government's database, and can document that he performed that search. And in so doing, "cover his corporate you-know-what!!" ... which, considering the Draconian penalties that are built-in to copyright law in order to protect artists, is an extremely sensible precaution for them to take. After all, they're in the business of selling and distributing music. They're not in the business of stolen cars ... or, unregistered ones. You will be required to prove, in this way, that you are the lawful owner and therefore entitled to bargain. "You're in the business too, aren't you? Then, Mind your P's and Q's ..."

This is not true. (At least, not in the USA.) As you will see from http://copyright.gov, there are many things that you can copyright – movies, sound recordings, literary works, and songs (sheet music). You can copyright a song using nothing more than a lead-sheet: a minimal expression of the melody of the work. Then, at the same time or at some future time, you can register a particular sound-recording of it, of course linking the two registrations so that it's clear that "this copyrighted recording" is "of this copyrighted song." If you complete a more-elaborate written arrangement of the song, which you're planning to publish on its own, you can also cover your bases by registering that. Each "collection" that you register for your $35 each must be of a single type of material: you can't mix sound-recordings and sheet-music in the same collection. Of course, you should complete the song before registering it – in that you need to have worked out what the essential song is, so that you can express it as a lead sheet.

LMMS looks like a very powerful tool – thanks for sharing. Even though I own a copy of a commercial DAW (Logic Pro X), this tool looks very powerful and interesting. Looking at it, quite honestly, I'd try to take that(!) tool into new and different areas ... try music that isn't "beats," and so on. Getting better at making music usually isn't (IMHO) a matter of finding "a 'better' widget." It's learning more about the tool that you have, and stretching yourself to apply it in new and different ways. Find some piece of music that you've never played with before – classical, anyone? – and try to imitate it as closely as possible using the tool (LMMS) that you have right now. And/Or ... "hmm, here's an LMMS feature that I don't know anything about. I just stumbled-upon it. Wonder what it does?" (And then ...) "Well, isn't that cool ... wonder what I can dream up to creatively do with it?" It's quite obvious that you can do that sort of thing with LMMS for a very long time ...

And, Jenn, Hobo, I would very quickly agree with both of you. Music speaks to a far-deeper level of the soul than speech ever could. However, for the purposes of my post, I am constraining myself to the acknowledged-subset of songs that strive to tell stories which could, for the purposes of the song, be expressed in verse. (Of which there are many thousands ...) I freely acknowledge that there is a gulf of music ... and, of pure-human emotion ... which cannot be expressed in this oh-so limited way!

Believe it or not, there are people in this world who make their entire living from storytelling. Stephen King comes to mind, of course, as does J K Rowling, but when you turn on your television tonight (if you have one in your house ... I don't ...), you will be confronted with stories among too-many channels to mention. And all of them, quite necessarily, will be built upon a formula that has been studied since ancient times by storytellers (yes, even "ancient" ones) who had an audience to please and a deadline to meet. The play-by-play of this formula ... the "three-act play," or pick-any-one novel or episode ... goes like this: Prologue: "We live in a place where absolutely nothing interesting happens." (But, this First Act will be stuffed with things that will become relevant later.) Plot Point One: With the Second Act, the Hero's life is suddenly up-ended. ("She unexpectedly said, 'goodbye!'") The Hero spends much of the Second Act trying to get a grip on the situation, as he is at the same time inexorably pushed to the ... Plot Point Two: ... when, at the beginning of the Third Act, our Hero is irrevocably driven to action. He cannot stay still. He cannot gather up his marbles and go home. He must beat the odds, overcome the foe, get the girl back. The most-pivotal point in this Act is when his future course of action becomes crystal-clear to him (for the first time ...), and he commits himself completely to achieving it. (Whether or not he ultimately does so, is secondary.) Climax: The moment we've all been waiting for. As a lyricist, you are, in fact, "a storyteller." But you are "a poetic storyteller." You must somehow tell the entire story using just a handful of verses. And in fact, there are three ways that you can go about doing it: what I will call "first derivative (direct)", and "second derivative (indirect)," and "who-cares derivative (universal)." (More on that in a moment.) But first, there are two critical things that your lyric must achieve: Enter at the Second Plot Point: Your storytelling must introduce a Hero at the instant of the Third Act – Plot Point Two. "The girl has left," and the Hero must pursue her! Or, as the case may be, "die trying." Cover All the Bases: Even though you enter at Point Two, you must cover all four bases satisfactorily. The listener's own life experiences can be used to achieve the Prologue, and a few well-placed lines can get us to the starting gate. Although your song might or might not have a "happy-or-otherwise ending," it should very definitely (and, unmistakably, and, satisfyingly) point to it. Now, let me close by explaining what I mean by "first vs. second derivative." In calculus, engineering, thermodynamics and other obscure topics, sometimes we refer to "change," "rate of change," "rate of change of rate of change," and so-forth. But, never mind all that. The issue here is: is your singer experiencing (or relating) "the story itself" (first derivative), or is (s)he commenting on it "one step removed" (second)? Or, are you simply "talking about Everyman" (universal)? To me, "second-derivative songs" are by far the most interesting, while also certainly the most hard to write. - - - - - "HTH!™" ... Okay, I'll stop right there ... So, what do you think? - - - - - P.S.: Did I, in writing this, take liberties with "Aristotle's Incline?" with respect to how the Three Acts actually fall, and so forth? Uh huh. "But, good news! We're not in college, now!"

I would definitely encourage you to show us. To a certain extent, rules are made to be broken. These are but guidelines, "rules of thumb" that usually work and that are typically used. But good songs don't have to be typical. A song starts with a story and I think that the most-important thing of all for it to do is to "hook me with a headline." Then, tell the story in an engaging way. If you can make the tunesmith's task easier along the way, so much the better. Think about the principles of storytelling, knowing that you'll be telling that story in verse (not prose) that's intended to be set to music. As you write, don't throw anything away. That means, don't highlight text and delete it to write something else: use the "strikethrough" button (you might have to customize a word-processor's toolbar to get it), or turn the page in your loose-leaf notebook with your #2 pencil. Keep everything that you come up with as you work non-destructively to fit them all together into a final form that works. There's no pre-set path through these woods, until you finally make one, and sometimes your explorations come up with material that can be used in several future tunes or variations. (Even, "the songs that you think are pure crap" ... keep them, and, when your creative juices seem stuck, go back and listen again to a few of 'em. You never know. It might suddenly be perfect.) It would be a shame if you threw-away something because it "didn't fit the form" when it did fit the story that you're trying to tell.

The songs never stop running through my head. I grab the Voice Recorder app on my iPhone and warble them into the microphone as often as they come to me. Then, I strive to use the rest of my modest computer's prodigious power to do something with them. First and foremost, it is a personal journey. I am content to do it, if necessary, only for myself. But I find that some of the songs resonate with other people, and I've even managed to make a few dimes. I don't think that I could possibly stop writing songs, even if for some insane reason I ever wanted to. While I would love for Publisher's Clearing House to show up at my doorstep with a stupendous check, just like anyone else would, I have come to prize my daily encounters with The Muse. She is a difficult master.

I've read quite a few tomes on mixing which suggest matching-up an instrumental track that is panned hard to one side, with a slightly-delayed reverb of the same sound on the other. Producing the effect of a really large "hall" in which the second sound literally is an echo.

My goodness! Don't I seem to have acquired quite the fan club here! And I'd like to suggest what ought to be a basic ground-rule here: that we are all here to talk, as candidly as we will, about music. Not about one another. You're free and encouraged, I think, to offer "a vigorously dissenting opinion." But, leave the individuals who express those opinions – whatever those opinions might be – out of the realm of discussion. - - - - - "You asked me what I thought." "I told you." And, I told you in a stream-of-consciousness way as I was listening to your track as any listener might do. This is not to imply that my thoughts match what any other listener's thoughts about the same music might or might not be. But, they are mine. And, as best I could manage, they were strictly aimed to be constructive. I am delighted – imminently surprised, but of course delighted for the songwriters' royalty checks – to hear that one of the songs that I "dissed" is "a huge hit." Doesn't matter to me, because I've never heard it before. So, you just heard the while-it-was-playing off-the-cuff reactions of someone who had never heard any of these songs before. (And, I would still "cut" Aces exactly as I described.) The beauty of music is that everyone is perfectly entitled to their own opinions and to their own music-buying preferences. And, that everyone else is perfectly entitled to ignore someone else's opinions!

I agree. Now, let's get to some critique of the tracks you shared. Ace High started with an immediately-interesting lick ... then, inexplicably to my ears, started repeating it, over and over again, until I began to wonder if the recording was defective. Then, it broke into a new musical idea ... and did it again! Then, finally, vocals started, and although "I can't understand a word you're saying," it actually is a driving rock-vocal performance. (Very "Rush.") Furthermore, the initial vocal idea breaks very-cleanly(!) into another one, after a four-bar guitar gap, the song proceeds rather agreeably with only a little-too-much repetition. Then, a key-change ... an engaging power-guitar riff (you're shreddin' it, pal!) The song proceeds ever-more-frenetically to a very nice conclusion. ... so, start by cutting-out about the entire first minute, because my Gong Show instincts were more-than ready to go off after the obligatory "first fifteen seconds." Present that first "interesting lick" no more than twice. That "new musical idea" no more than twice thereafter. Then, shred!!" (As they say: "in music, foreplay is over-rated.") Opera, unfortunately, didn't make it. The recording is simply too quiet to be understood, and what I can hear of it appears uninteresting. It rather-quickly got "Gong'd."

To me, the same old "business-model FAIL" just keeps happening over and over again: It isn't enough to create a wildly-popular service. ... You have to make money at it!

On the other hand, Stairway to Heaven contained a chord progression so memorable that there was a copyright-infringement suit that basically concerned it. (The suit failed, because the chord progression is among the things that are studied at University.) Nevertheless, it defines the song.