MikeRobinson

"It's all com-ing back ... to me now." (hurl)

Whereas a lawyer (or was it an accountant?) would sidle up to you and ask ... "what do you want the time to be?"

Echoing John, and also echoing "Judge Wopner" in the early American TV show, "People's Court": get it in writing. First! Before submitting any work-products which could possibly be covered under copyright, i.e. "to which you might plausibly assert any sort of a proprietary ownership claim," be certain that you have in your possession an executed contract which stipulates your entire agreement regardless of what the other party might ultimately choose to do with the material that you have furnished. This contract should clearly specify the terms under which you are submitting the work to the other party "for their consideration," and it should set definite time-limits by which they must decide, and it should explicitly specify what either of their decisions must be. It should expressly identify the material as remaining "your property" until that decision is made, and it should expressly state that the material remains "your property, unencumbered," in the absence of any decision. If the contract does not exist, and/or if it does not clearly specify all of these things ... run away!

Whew ... what a story. Yet this is precisely why, before I post anything anywhere that I might "commercially care about," I register the US Copyright first, and wait a full calendar day before posting. (Of course, I myself am a citizen of the USA, and your copyright-laws may vary.) AFAIK, the biggest legal litmus-test is "the presumed-owner's intent." The assumption (at least, under US law) is: "(1) You own it, unless you, in very specific and deliberate ways, clearly establish otherwise by means of an obviously-intentional act that you perform or a contract that you sign. Yes, yes. However: (2) Put a ©Sign© next to your staked-claim, anyway." At minimum, "declare your proprietary claim and your proprietary intent," for all the world to see. Stick a "Circle-C" on it, and make it obvious. If you post an MP3-file or whatever, include a copyright-string in the metadata. What that will most-certainly achieve, anywhere on the planet, is what Don Henley called "The End of the Innocence." If someone goes after your rights, then they're scroo'd. No one is gonna believe that "they didn't know." And no one is gonna believe that "they didn't do it on-purpose." An "innocent infringement defense" is gonna fall flat, and the owner of any legitimate web-site is gonna jump to your side. ("No one is gonna believe that the offender is anything but 'an insufferable ' ... "but, I digress.™") The $35.00 that the US Copyright Office charges to register the claim is easily worth the money. ("Now, we're cookin' with gas!") In the same manner, if you are quoting or using someone else's copyrighted work, under what you consider to be "fair use," then ... say that. If you genuinely and in good faith believe the material to be "in the public domain" ... say that! Even if a Judge someday walks up to you and says, "no, no, no, you're wrong," then at least you have a plausible and believable claim of innocence. You said it, and it's quite clear that you did your homework ("due diligence") before saying so. You might be wrong, but you could plausibly argue that you were knowledgeable and respectful of the law, that you consistently acted in good faith (as you [erroneously] perceived it), and that you timely acted to attempt to cure the potential breach once you were advised of it, and that, therefore, you were not guilty.

One of them's not a bartender ... he's a songwriter. Just the one you want when the heat starts turning up . . .

Recently, I finished a short piece called Cat Walk, which you can listen-to here, which – to my ears, at least – really sounded like "a complete song." I wondered what exactly it was that made my ears think so. And I think that a pretty substantial part of that answer is, "repetition [that doesn't sound repetitive]." If you looked at the project timeline in Logic Pro X, you would see that the piece actually consists of, with very few exceptions, a handful of two-bar phrases that are extensively repeated ... except that they are never actually repeated. (Heh... they're split in two, flipped end-for-end, turned upside-down and both ... but never quite "repeated.") This characteristic of the piece sounded, to my ears, "very familiar, and very commercial." The degree of repetition that I knew to be a fundamental part of the song's design ... simply didn't sound that way. Instead, it sounded ... familiar. Hmmm... It's not just the lyrics, but the underlying repetitive structure of the music itself, that makes a commercial song "click." A song needs a lot of repetition, at various levels, to really stick in the listener's mind and cause his or her toes to tap.

Living "both in and very-near-to" Nashville, I think I'm at least quasi-qualified to say this: "It's a business, folks! So, take your blinders off, and deal with it!" --- <<first_name>>, We wanted to let you know that we believe your submissions for <<major_star>> are very good, but not quite what <<ms_gender>> is looking for at this time. However, if you will just <<slow_pitch_for_money>> ... --- In today's Internet-besotted world, I would hope that most people by-now would be able to see their way clear of this sort of scam, but you never know. The folks who right now are pitching to "mainstream country radio" find themselves caught in a formula: "every country song in 2013 is the same." But ... "The Internetâ„¢" ... fortunately(!) ... "is a damn big place."

Ahem... to describe the experience, I am somehow reminded of that lyric (I don't remember right now which one) which referred to ... "a fake orgasm ... turned into a real one." It really is ... indescribable ... when something that you have busted your over ... for so long, "in solitude and in silence" ... suddenly becomes something that you're hearing in a music hall. You grip your beer in a crazy sort of way, suddenly aware that no one else can share that experience with you. (Or, that they would ever think to. To them, to all of them, "it's just another song." But, to you ...) .... ooohhh .... yeahhhh .... And then, you get control of yourself and order another beer.

Also – the African and Indian (as in "India") musical traditions place a very different emphasis on "melody."

Some (big) bands do it this way: the songs are "works made for hire," owned by the band, which is a corporation, owned by the band's organizers and maybe its members under some written organizational set of by-laws. Thus, the band will always have the right to perform its own songs, and they will be able to share in the proceeds according to some arrangement that has been set forth (in a legally enforceable way) by them. The band's name is also often registered as a trademark. Kansas® is a good example of this, but there are others ... Chicago, KISS ... When you get into serious-business and serious-money, "minding your P's and Q's" is a big thing.

Heh... "Nashville is a very nice town – really." I was at a nice little concert just last night where Naomi Judd was in the audience – quite routine, and she seemed to have a great time as did we all. It was no big deal. However, all that being said, let's get down to business. Which, by the by, is business. Nothing more, nothing less. "Songs" are, pardon me, "a product." Andd-d-d, quite frankly, they are a dime a dozen. Andddd-d-dd-d-ddd, quite frankly, there are so many "hopefuls" out there, "trying to pitch one" here in the Internet Age, that (well, call it "in self defense," since for the most part that's quite appropriate ...) a certain system of "trusted gatekeepers" has developed. You can "separate the wheat from the chaff" in the following way: The chaff is trying to attract you. "Hey, they know you're a green-horn dreamer," so they want to reinforce your dream ... for a few bucks." The wheat is asking for earnest-money, and promising you nothing. (Easy example: http://www.taxi.com. There are many.) The wheat consists of companies who are seriously helping the buyers of music to find the music that they want to buy. They charge you a (token) fee to participate, which more-or-less covers the real costs of their time spent to judge your contribution ... and ... (fair warning, here!) they are [paid to be ...] gatekeepers. in a word, the "bright line rule" is simply this: the (useless) "chaff" will expect money ... since this is all they really want (suck-er!!) anyway. Whereas the "wheat" will cover oblige you to cover their expenses. They are in business, and they quite-frankly expect you to be a business(wo)man, fully up-to-speed as to how this game is actually played. Yes, they do "have the connections," and they (quite sensibly) are paid to filter out the chaff. Because, the customer that they serve needs to buy "the right piece of music, (unless, "stay tuned," the Director changes his/her mind... hope you're cool with that) ... preferably in the next two hours." Ahem. "Music" meets "Business." Welcome to Nashville. (Meanwhile, do keep your money in your pocket...)

... whereas I never used "9." However, I do know that the Apple site has a very detailed comparison. I've been very satisfied wth X even though I at this point know next-to-nada about it.

I've seen one where there are seven guys all sitting on barstools in a row, all playing acoustics.

It is, indeed, a sober lesson, and one well worth remembering: There's no such thing as "overnight success" or a "free lunch." There are, however, an exploitable number of wannabees who don't know that ... people who have bought into the "it's all about Me" Kool-Aid. In the case at bar, the industry sold 600,000 units of product. To get those sales, they were willing to invest in studio-time, Heineken, sub sandwiches, and – yes, of course – "weed." They had writers (who, they felt, could out-write Spose, at least in terms of producing the kind of Almighty Product™ they wanted Spose to do). Spose was swept-along, dazzled by a single check for what was actually a very trivial amount of money, and the label got what it wanted: 600,000 sales in a hurry. ("Not Bad," I might add, for a couple of kids from Portland!!) Okay, so the same label, after "running the numbers," decided that an entire album might not sell sufficiently (according to their very-corporate business model ... the same model that oh-by-the-way moved 600K units in a month). That was their decision to make, and they made it. Even though "Spose" might feel right now a bit ill-used, the fact is ... he was responsible for selling over 600,000 units(!!) of product in a couple of(!!!) months. He's only in his twenties: maybe he can do it again. "His Kind of Music" did attract serious corporate attention, and did sell a very-respectable number of units. This amounts to a critically important thing in the world of commerce: traction. Even though "Spose" might not be entirely satisfied with how things turned out for him – he has, while still just in his twenties, produced music that not only did attract very-serious commercial attention, but that also promptly(!) rewarded that attention with more than half-a-million units of sales. So ... my advice to him would simply be to "go back and Get Busy™ again." Take that hip-hop musical idea and expound upon it. Busy yourself preparing another product to sell. You know that you have an audience of over half-a-million(!!!) people who know your name and who've already bought your stuff. That's Huge.™

On YouTube you will find lots of truly-crappy videos which all attempt more-or-less to cover a remarkable musical experience: The Eagles playing Hotel California live. Six or seven guitarists, all playing "melodies" at the same time on separate guitars, all of which melodies blend beautifully together to make ... instantly recognizable ... Hotel California. If you were so-inclined to actually chart out all these various melodies, played as they are at slightly-different rhythms to create a very complex musical texture, you would observe that the various independent notes, taken together, form chords. They form the basic chords of the song, with plenty of highlight notes (9ths, 11ths, 13ths), and they do so in such a way that they're constantly "trading places," contributing first one note and then another over time to what would be, in a much simpler arrangement of the same tune, "simply one sustained (yawn...) chord." The effect of any one of those chords is often that of "arpeggiation," which simply means that, instead of all the necessary notes arriving at exactly the same instant, they arrive in quick succession, such that your ear is able to recognize them together. (Even though the performance appears "spontaneous," it is scrupulously designed.) All of the instruments – or at least, most of them – consistently hit the most important "beats" of the overall song so that you never lose track of the song that is being played, even as the constantly-changing blend of melodies dances around it. ("In a DARK DES-ert HIGH-way (BINK! BONK!) ...") Most of the guitars always hit (and emphasize) these notes, even as they pursue their own musical lines. This is how the "melody(ies)" manage to reinforce the "rhythm" of the song and of the arrangement. So, if you actually "charted out" all of this action, you'd find that the different musical lines are always forming chords, but that there's a constant variety in how-and-where those chords are formed. You'd also see that, as they do so, most (but not always all) of them are coinciding on the major rhythmic beats. None of them are commanding your attention at the expense of any of the rest of them, so you find your ear "wandering, delightfully(!)" amongst and between them. "Melody" and "Rhythm," therefore, are happening at the same time.

Journey.

Lots of things have been written about how to "humanize" a MIDI part ... and I, personally, do not feel that simple randomization of parameters is enough to do it (although it might be a start, if you are in a hurry). Instead, it needs to consist of things that real-people actually do when they are performing a part on real instruments. For instance: People naturally vary the volume with which they play a part. (MIDI actually provides two controller channels relating to this, one intended for "expression" and the other for "overall volume.") For example, when an instrumentalist "comes in," (s)he will naturally dig-in a little bit. When passing-off to another upcoming solo, (s)he will ease up a bit. The chorus of a song is often a few beats-per-minute faster than the verses. People also get expressive with dynamics – the "whammy bar" of an electric guitar being the best example of this, but also with guitar fingering techniques (bending the string, hammer-on and pull-off, and so on). Within a phrase, certain notes are naturally emphasized more than others. These notes are often found "on the beat," sometimes where a melody line shifts from turning-up to turning-down or vice versa, and so on. Not all notes are exactly a note's length, and they don't all start exactly on the beat. During a performance, people naturally vary things a little bit. Even if you've copy-and-pasted or looped a region several times in a row ... make a copy of that, stick it into the sequence at some more-or-less random position, and do something a little different with just that one. What "different" is, as with a real performer, is up to you. (If you're not familiar with the instrument, surf web-sites that talk about techniques that musicians use.) And to get these things, you simply play with the available DAW features – like "MIDI Draw" in Logic/GB – and with slight fiddling with a few notes on te piano-roll display. You don't have to fiddle with all of them, either, to get a more realistic effect: this is a spice. Just play the part, looping through a small bit of your song, and imagine that you were playing it. Now, loosen-up a little, imagine that you really had the "chops" to do yourself what you're hearing, do a little "air guitar" like you're used to doing while sitting in your seat in the audience at a concert or stuck-in-traffic in your car ... observe what you're doing ... then go put some of that "feeling" into the part, a little bit at a time. (It doesn't take much.) And, then, don't forget that sometimes "very mechanical, sequenced sound" might be exactly what you do want in a part! I grew up listening to "80's music" when all this stuff was brand-new (and I couldn't afford a bit of it ...), so I actually like the sound of an intricate, well-programmed part that is absolutely locked to the beat. The "no human could play this" sound is nevertheless very familiar to my ear, and it can work extremely well in contrast to other parts which are "humanized" or "human." Finally ... Even when you are doing something 100% with MIDI and DAWs ... you are "the Performer!" Yes, the computer might be executing your performance for you, in ways that you physically don't have the "chops" to do by-hand, but nevertheless, this is your Performance. Therefore, "let 'er rip!" Perform the part! "You're on!!"

What is this place, but a place to ramble forever about songwriting?! Never worry too much about your own vocal performance of anything – singers can be hired. You Can't Make Me Stay as a song is, sure, simple, but it's also very fun and engaging. Then, on top of that, there's your arrangement, orchestration, and mixing. It's always a good thing to have lots of variations for parts of a tune, so that you can easily make variations of it. You'll always find that you've made more decisions than you can use – yet. This is a wonderful place to be. Keep everything. It's easy also to get into "analysis paralysis." So it goes. There's always one more way to do it, and there is no "one right answer" to anything. If it sounds good, it is good.

I am of the opinion that every song has several levels of structure – a high-level architecture (AABA, etc); a macro-structure of how the various sections relate to one another; and a micro-structure within each section. It is especially in the last of these that you can really let your composition skills let-loose. Don't let the listener get lost in your song ... and the way to do that is to provide repetition at all levels. Frequently. You provide repetition, without sounding repetitive. For example, I posted a tune called Cat Walk over at http://www.macjams.com/song/78756. Have a listen. Then, try to pick out just how many times the motif that is stated in the opening two bars repeats itself ... somehow, in some form or in some distinct variation of the same essential pattern, throughout the piece. (At one point about 2/3 of the way in, the vibes literally repeat the opening phrase on top of the steel drums as they seem to be playing something altogether different ... which, as it turns out, stands revealed as a counter-melody to the opening motif. I slightly boosted the volume there to make that clear.) Every player has his motif(s), and every one of them is related in some way. Sometimes they steal a motif from another part. Maybe it would be better for me to say, "find a place where it doesn't do these things." (There really aren't any.) Although the presentation is constantly changing, it is also constantly the same. (Can you spot the places where the marimba – the plinking sound that opens the second part – plays something that you heard earlier, upside down? Upside down and backwards? Or, just backwards? They're all in there somewhere. (*) You could also find places where the second half of a two-bar phrase is followed by the first-half of another one, and so on ad crazium. (*) Not an original trick, I'm afraid. As you in particular would very well know, "inversion," "retrograde inversion," and "retrograde" are as old as Bach himself. You can exercise your composition creativity to very good effect by working out variations. Just don't let the listener get lost in it. Some things are more or less "par for the song-form." For example, you expect the opening to introduce a motif and a contrasting motif – which it does. You expect another instrument to come in with something that's different, yet related. You do expect to hear the first instrument come back, repeating some but not all of what you've heard recently. The "rhythm cut-up" between those crazy drummers is kind-of expected, and it gives your ears a bit of a break. And so on and on. These are "audience expectations," and you try to fulfill them creatively. Cat Walk could go on for several more minutes (and no-surprise I have a version that does), just by more-of-the-same. (Even in the present fade-out, you're hearing some stuff for the very first time in the fade.) And so it goes. It's variety within, shall we say, "expectability."

Same thread, same creepy avatar icon, exactly the same text, popped up a few days ago on http://www.macjams.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=23;showtopic=273121.

I didn't listen to them all, but let's take your tune, You Can't Make Me Stay, as a short example. I picked it partly because it started on a bright open chord, but also because it is immediately funny, with a very whimsy-laden arrangement. At 0:30, it starts wandering in a completely different direction in which the singer didn't seem to be saying much, then it returned fairly quickly to the opening chorus. Although the chorus does return once more at 1:32 and then the take-out, the structure of the song varies more than I expect a whimsy-laden song like this one to do. I expected the song to have a very predictable, closely-repeated structure: chorus, two verse-lines in the same general musical bent, then chorus again; chorus twice as the singer drives away in his convertible with a little red-yellow-and-blue propeller hat. It should not be much more than that in this case. There and Back Again also caught my attention on the first phrase – and the chords did it. The structure of this piece was more appealing because it was more consistent with my anticipations. The instrumental break is also creative, sounding somehow like a bicycle-bell. Yet, it also could use a sharply different middle-8. I suspect that in general you are singing a little too high for your natural voice range. Often, your voice sounds strained and flat. I didn't hear anything that I would call either "complex" or "bloated," in any sort of negative way. Rather, I felt like I was hearing music that seemed to lack a "pop" structure. You do use a lot of interesting chords and voice-overs, none of which jar the ear.

W00T!! W00T!! W00T!! Whether you're standing there behind the mic, or sitting in the audience hearing a singer do something you wrote, when that audience starts in with the applause ... "O .. M .. G!" There's just nowhere else you'd rather be; nothing else you'd rather be doing. Looking forward to sitting in the nosebleed section of the packed house someday. (It was a nearly sold-out show ... I took what I could still get ...)

Chiming in here, I personally would love to hear some of the material that you are talking about. Can you post (or have you posted) some of these, say, on SoundCloud? Personally, I also love "a rich harmonic meal." Bring on the saffron that costs $100 an ounce; bring on the steak tartare. Bring on a live performance of Hotel California in which (I think it was ...) twelve guitars are playing at once and they all seem to be doing different parts. Yes, there are people like me for whom that attention to detail, those lush, rich textures, do make a difference. When you give yourself many alternatives from which to choose, yes, it takes a long time to decide. Take your time. ... as long as you are able to finish the song, and to make it whatever you want it to be. Maybe what you've actually done is to complete several songs ... chord progressions that, with a little slicing and rearranging, could become part of several works that have similar characteristics. Maybe you're simply coming up with overall song structures that are too dense. Spices, if over-applied, can become a train wreck, even when the spices themselves are of the highest quality. If the song goes through too many intricate permutations and doesn't have repetition as well – if it has tension but no corrsponding release of tension – it can become wearisome to the ear; even yours. If you're bombarded with richness and have no time to digest, it winds up indigestion. But that is just a matter of editing: of inserting space. (You've got a wonderful can of condensed soup, now, add water.) And, once again, when you're finished with the edits, you might have the germ of several different, comparable songs. "So it was all worth it, after all." When you listen to your own work, you're always going to hear the flaws, always going to hear its tiniest nuances, because you put them there. But what matters is what other people think and hear.

Nothin' to it. I was once asked to design a distributed control-system for a program that a guy hoped to persuade people to install as part of a "free game," such that on-command this program would start pinging a specified web-site address a certain number of times. Presto! Instant "hit counts" for Mother Google. Or in this case, YouTube. After a quick chat with my attorney, who confirmed what my gut had already told me, I passed on the project. But I'm sure that someone else didn't. I just think that, if you want to promote your music today, the best way to do that is to write music that you think is good, in a genre that you already like and are familiar with, and then to talk about it (and other people's stuff!) on-line with other fans who also like the same music that you do. And genuinely mean what you say! All of us can smell a "troll" a mile away, and once you pick-up a reputation for being one you can never get rid of it. Put a web-link into your signature line, which takes them somewhere they can listen to your songs or some part of them. Then, don't sit there staring at that one plot of ground, waiting for green leaves to appear ... go write more music and start building up your catalog. Be too-busy planting more seeds. It's easy to get (buy ...) "instant gratification" in what turns out to be "stony ground." It takes longer to find the good ground, to build a good product, to introduce it to people who seriously want it, and so to plant what might someday be part of your retirement income. People often buy stuff that they like from people that they've come to know. (And, so do you.) It might not seem like a huge number of sales, yet, it's almost all profit. So what if you never strike a "gusher," if you've got enough wells out there, each one steadily producing? And, though you scarce notice it, little-by-little growing?

@Stringbeing – that "cliche hook" is also great because it's a natural contrast against what your song does want to say. It's a tired old phrase with no creative value, so when "the bank" that "has come to plunder and pillage" says precisely that ... it makes the bank sound even more insensitive, evil, ruthless, cruel. Perfect! For any kind of writing that I do, I always want to capture "virtually anything that comes," then – later ... – choose from among them to start building-up the song or the story or whatever-it-is. I was first introduced to that idea in a pair of books, The World of 'Star Trek' and The Trouble With Tribbles, both about the original TV show. Today we take-for-granted that there was a show named "Star Trek" about the "Enterprise," a starship from "The United Federation of Planets" with Captain "Kirk," "Mister Spock," "Sulu," "Chekov," "Bones," "Scotty," and "Uhura," on a mission to find conveniently "Class-M" planets, which just got filled to the brim with "Tribbles." But, every one of those "quoted" words in the previous sentence was picked from a very long list of words that someone literally banged out on a typewriter just as fast as they could. Decisions were made and re-made. (The original name of the Captain, in the first pilot episode, was "Christopher Pike.") So, "it didn't Just Happen That Way." Somebody picked it. Then, using their experience and guidelines as to what would and wouldn't work in the format of a one-hour 1960's TV show, they started consciously shaping those things into concepts and stories.