Musical Demo Submission thread

[cocoadog]

Name one good current pop anything.

"Good" is 100% subjective. Nobody can look at any piece of music, anywhere, in any style, and say "that is objectively bad music". (That's right, even Stairway To Heaven ultimately gets off the hook.) The fact that something is "pop" (short for "popular" and let's not forget that) suggests that a lot of people may like it, and if a lot of people like something, well, there's a whole bunch of people who think that the music is "good" and therefore not "bad". People don't make a habit of buying music that they hate, strangely. Market research indicates that people buy the music that they enjoy.

Steve Vai just does not age, does he?

So you are saying that no ones opinion is wrong? That leads to bad things remember. People can listen to any kind of music they want to, I'm just saying that pop isn't music. Singing maybe, but not music. Any use of instrumentals that it includes could be played by first time players, or edited on the computer. That is not music.

That's an interesting point of view. Many music scholars would disagree.

I find that hard to believe. If I was a music scholar and was less well known then a pop star who doesn't work half as hard as me but makes 10 fold the cash I would be kinda pissed.

Yes, that's certainly possible, and in fact I met many people at University with that particular chip on their shoulder. However, you wouldn't make the logical leap to saying "what they're doing isn't music" unless you were a complete music snob. You could say "I think this music is bad/worthless/terrible/whatever", but to say "this is not actual music" would be obviously incorrect. It's a cheap shot taken by people who often don't actually understand how the music works, or why it works. Just because music is "bad" doesn't mean it's not music. It's the same mistake that people make with art, where they look at art that they think is total shit and go "oh, that's not art". Of course it's fucking art. It's just art that you don't happen to like.

In other words "art" "artistic" and "music" "musical".

Unless you consider singing itself music it is hard to say that pop is music. I know not all of it is like that, but I have heard songs on the radio where there is literally a bunch of clapping. With maybe one guitar riff and some symbols. I honestly don't think that's music. Some of it doesn't even hold itself together rhythmically, it is all about the singing.

So by that definition a choir would also not be music, as would most tribal music...

Well no choir is just singing. Tribal music uses drums so that counts.

That's so incredibly not true, that I could post over a hundred examples of you being 100% false. I don't have the time and you probably don't have the patience, so here's just three for the "no choir is just singing" part (and note - no "instrument simulation" in these videos):


And "tribal music uses drums", well that depends on the tribe. Plenty don't.

Isn't that all most the same as the last one you posted? Yes making sounds with your voice that resemble instruments is fine. Choir from what I have experienced is just people on stage singing current songs or Christmas carols. Obviously I have my definition messed up. Regardless pop without instrumentals still isn't music, there is no rhythm.

 

[BonsaiK]

Isn't that all most the same as the last one you posted? Yes making sounds with your voice that resemble instruments is fine. Choir from what I have experienced is just people on stage singing current songs or Christmas carols. Obviously I have my definition messed up. Regardless pop without instrumentals still isn't music, there is no rhythm.

I'm not going to continue this discussion because your idea of "music" differs so wildly from the commonly accepted definitions of music as held by the dictionary, music teachers (including myself), and performers that I don't think a rational debate is possible. (It's off-topic to this thread anyway.)

 

[blankedboy]

http://www.villafuzz.net84.net/index.php?p=2_12

That's my latest one, you can have a browse around my website if you want to see my other stuff.

Finally, a chance for some decent critiquing! It's about time...

 

[cocoadog]

Isn't that all most the same as the last one you posted? Yes making sounds with your voice that resemble instruments is fine. Choir from what I have experienced is just people on stage singing current songs or Christmas carols. Obviously I have my definition messed up. Regardless pop without instrumentals still isn't music, there is no rhythm.

I'm not going to continue this discussion because your idea of "music" differs so wildly from the commonly accepted definitions of music as held by the dictionary, music teachers (including myself), and performers that I don't think a rational debate is possible. (It's off-topic to this thread anyway.)

And I am damn proud of those higher standards.

 

[BonsaiK]

http://www.villafuzz.net84.net/index.php?p=2_12

That's my latest one, you can have a browse around my website if you want to see my other stuff.

Finally, a chance for some decent critiquing! It's about time...

I nearly didn't click on that because it wasn't a link I recognised.

It's not really 13/8 - well, you could choose to write it that way, but generally speaking for a song like that if you were to put it in sheet music form you'd write it as three bars of 3/4 and 2 bars of 2/4, just because it would make it easier for a player to get their head around the rhythm of it. It's just courtesy. Mind you 13/8 does sound more impressive, hey...

Obviously it's a no-go-zone commercially with stuff like this, but oddball instrumental themes like this turn up in film and TV soundtracks all the time. I could see this music underneath a "tense moment" in an action film or something. Perhaps it's worth trying to put this music to some video and using the result as a resume to try and break into the world of TV scoring... ?

 

[BonsaiK]

Hi BonsaiK. I'm not sure if you're still on this thread now it has derailed. I'm in a progressive funk band (yes, progressive dream funk ) in Australia. I read what you wrote to the other prog muso in Aus, but I was wondering if you had any more advice for a less heavy band.

This is our heaviest song, I think it encompasses a lot of what we do. It's from a while back, and it was played was too fast, but it's still the best live recording we have.

Spoiler

It's been derailed to high hell but damned if I'm not going to try to get it back on track. I should start a separate "BonsaiK everything you say sucks cock" thread for people who want to troll me so they don't clutter existing threads.

The problem with most "funk bands", especially in Australia, is that they're actually not very funky at all. Add "progressive" into the mix and there's a unique problem - progressive music is all about going through changes as the song progresses (hence the name) whereas funk music is all about laying down a funky rhythm and keeping it there. As a result, people who actually like both progressive music and funk music in the same song are as rare as hen's teeth. The only bands who ever got away with that stuff didn't really play funk music.

The way I see it you've got two choices if you want this band to gain a wider audience:

1. Ditch the funk part of what you do and become a progressive rock band. Progressive rock isn't super-popular in Australia either, but it's a better shot than where you're at now. You practically are progressive rock anyway, it won't take much effort, all you'd have to do is chill out on the 7th chords a bit, and break the bass player's thumbs so he can't do that doink-doink stuff.

2. Go completely funk and ditch the rock influences. This means, above all else, confiscate the double-kick from your drummer and make him learn how to do actual funk beats. Your drummer plays like a rock guy and this is why you don't sound remotely funky at the moment, regardless of what the guitar and bass are doing. Without funky drums it's just not funk - it's rock with funk guitar over the top. Then you'd have to make him do the same tempo for an entire song too. It's probably a bit of a tall order, because you want to be progressive obviously and this advice is probably against everything you stand for, but if you can do funk well without the progessive rock influences, there's a real market there for this right now. And break your bass player's thumbs. What makes a bass line funky is note choice and placement, not that doink-doink stuff. The time for that playing was 1990.

I'd be interested to hear some slightly less-heavy stuff if you have anything, just to see if the same issues exist there.

 

[II2]

@BonsaiK

I have a slightly different question/submission that falls outside the criteria you established, but I think it's one you are probably familiar with and could easily give me a quick pointer.

I'm not really at the "demo submission" stage; I have 2 full length albums and an EP mastered to CD audio standards under my belt, but... they're not really doing a lot for me. Songs get written, mastered, thrown in the vault and eventually packaged for my website. Most of my paid work in the music industry is from semi-professional foley work and sound design, rather than my personal output.

Specifically, I would like to establish myself on itunes, to both officiate my music in the 'common archive' and remain self published while incurring a (likely minute) source of secondary income.

I'm sure you've had experience working with iTunes and was hoping you could provide some n00b pointers for someone who would like to jump on the bandwagon, with little prior experience save owning an iPad.

Cheers.

If you want to listen to my work, I'll PM you the link, but it ultimately is irrelevant to the advice I seek.

 

[BonsaiK]

@BonsaiK

I have a slightly different question/submission that falls outside the criteria you established, but I think it's one you are probably familiar with and could easily give me a quick pointer.

I'm not really at the "demo submission" stage; I have 2 full length albums and an EP mastered to CD audio standards under my belt, but... they're not really doing a lot for me. Songs get written, mastered, thrown in the vault and eventually packaged for my website. Most of my paid work in the music industry is from semi-professional foley work and sound design, rather than my personal output.

Specifically, I would like to establish myself on itunes, to both officiate my music in the 'common archive' and remain self published while incurring a (likely minute) source of secondary income.

I'm sure you've had experience working with iTunes and was hoping you could provide some n00b pointers for someone who would like to jump on the bandwagon, with little prior experience save owning an iPad.

Cheers.

If you want to listen to my work, I'll PM you the link, but it ultimately is irrelevant to the advice I seek.

I don't work with it a lot myself, but I have a friend with a catalogue of recordings he did over 30 years that does reasonable business on iTunes. He didn't try to set that up himself, he got an agent to do it for him. He's not very computer-literate though, he's a bit cynical about the Internet and so forth.

If you are releasing your own CDs yourself, completely independently, or even better pas part of your own company (iTunes like that sort of thing), there's no reason why you can't try and strike up a contract with iTunes yourself. That's as easy as following the dots on their website. They'll probably give you their standard agreement that they give to any artist. Read it make sure you understand everything in it before you sign. If there's any ambiguouty there get a music industry lawyer on the case. Looking at the profit-sharing ratios on iTunes, I'd say it's probably better for you financially to have a record company of some form before negotiating with iTunes, otherwise you might only get 10% of the income from sales, as they might try and move themselves in the position of being your nominal record company for Internet sales. If on the other hand you're signed to a major label, well you probably will only see 10% of profit from sales and there's nothing you can do about that... except not be on a label, or renegotiate your contract (good luck with that one if you're a relatively unknown artist).

 

[BonsaiK]

*snip*

Thanks for the input. Everyone in the band has quite different influences, so I can see how that mix may sometimes sound jarring. Personally, I can't understand drums at all, so I don't notice. We were about to take a break as the drummer and I are heading to Canada soon, but we were already planning on easing up on the funk aspect and moving towards more of a fusion sound.

I think I would take the prog part over the funk part, mainly because I just can't write in straight 4/4 anymore. I think I've mentally scarred myself.

Yeah if you can't write in 4/4, and you don't understand drums (at least on a purely theoretical level), funk is not for you!

 

[II2]

snip

I don't work with it a lot myself, but I have a friend with a catalogue of recordings he did over 30 years that does reasonable business on iTunes. He didn't try to set that up himself, he got an agent to do it for him. He's not very computer-literate though, he's a bit cynical about the Internet and so forth.

If you are releasing your own CDs yourself, completely independently, or even better pas part of your own company (iTunes like that sort of thing), there's no reason why you can't try and strike up a contract with iTunes yourself. That's as easy as following the dots on their website. They'll probably give you their standard agreement that they give to any artist. Read it make sure you understand everything in it before you sign. If there's any ambiguouty there get a music industry lawyer on the case. Looking at the profit-sharing ratios on iTunes, I'd say it's probably better for you financially to have a record company of some form before negotiating with iTunes, otherwise you might only get 10% of the income from sales, as they might try and move themselves in the position of being your nominal record company for Internet sales. If on the other hand you're signed to a major label, well you probably will only see 10% of profit from sales and there's nothing you can do about that... except not be on a label, or renegotiate your contract (good luck with that one if you're a relatively unknown artist).

Cheers, Thanks!

 

[Treefingers]

snip

Brilliant.

http://ninja-starfish.bandcamp.com

2 originals and one cover...

Keenly awaiting your feedback.

 

[BonsaiK]

Right, I finally got the damn thing recorded. I'm a pretty bad singer, but I did my best with it.

Spoiler

I wrote it with one of my friends, and he does backing vocals near the end.

Okay, so you're not the world's greatest singer but then that's okay, your voice is workable. I'd lose the slight Eddie Vedder tinge in it though - nobody wants to hear that vocal tone in 2010.

Golden rule when your singing is best described as "functional" - don't overstretch yourself. In this song you're doing lots of reasonably hard-to-pull-off vocal gymnastics, and you're getting your pitching right about 60% of the time, which is about 40% shy of where you need to be. You don't really need all that airy-fairy high shit to make the song work. Maybe a tiny bit at the very end, at the most, but I'd consider canning that side of things altogether, and just concentrate on the notes you know you can hit. If that means the song only has a few notes in it, that's okay - use loud-soft (dynamics) in your voice instead of pitch to give the song the emotion it needs. In that end bit, instead of doing high stuff, why not try to inject some more angst into your voice and see where that leads... you don't have to make it into a screamo song, but given what the song is about, it really needs to "get serious" somehow in that end section. Just be sure to use compression on your vocals or the results won't sound good no matter what you do - compression is a vocalist's best friend.

On the plus side the guitar sounds good, but whoever is strumming it doesn't understand how to strum a guitar, because it's not quite in time. If I were to guess, I would say that this problem stems from the guitar player not understanding the true function of the right hand in guitar strumming. In this type of song, the right hand/arm acts like a metronome, keeping the player in time, and syncopation is realised not by speeding up and slowing down the hand/arm, but by keeping the hand/arm movement consistent as clockwork and alternating between "hit" and "miss" strokes on the guitar itself to generate a syncopated pattern.

The correct strumming pattern for this song therefore should be:

V - V A V A V - V A V A V - V A

The V is a downstrum, the A is an upstrum and the - is when you do either a downstrum or an upstrum but you deliberately miss the strings. If you're doing anything else, you're doing it wrong. Amateur players will often do:

V = A V A V A = V A V A V = A V

...or something like that. The = denotes the hand/arm staying completely still. This might seem more economical but it actually screws up your timing. Also note how this pattern forces the player to do two downstrokes in a row when it wraps around. That's fine if you're Metallica but it's not fine for acoustic ballads, and it will cause you to mess your timing every time you have to do it.

Hopefully this makes some sense. I'd consider the above to be the bare minimum of what you'd have to fix up before the song would be worthy of serious demo submission to a label or whatever.

 

[BonsaiK]

snip

Brilliant.

http://ninja-starfish.bandcamp.com

2 originals and one cover...

Keenly awaiting your feedback.

I have to provide my email address to download the link? Not happening. Give me a YouTube or MySpace link please.

 

[Treefingers]

snip

Brilliant.

http://ninja-starfish.bandcamp.com

2 originals and one cover...

Keenly awaiting your feedback.

I have to provide my email address to download the link? Not happening. Give me a YouTube or MySpace link please.

You can stream them straight from the website.

EDIT: However if this doesn't work for whatever reason i will sort something out. Let me know.

 

[BonsaiK]

snip

Brilliant.

http://ninja-starfish.bandcamp.com

2 originals and one cover...

Keenly awaiting your feedback.

I have to provide my email address to download the link? Not happening. Give me a YouTube or MySpace link please.

You can stream them straight from the website.

EDIT: However if this doesn't work for whatever reason i will sort something out. Let me know.

Oh, so you can. My mistake.

God I hate the 12-bar blues progression, but I don't hate it as much as I hate funk/blues. Those two genres should just stay in separate corners because they just don't play nice together. That's kind of a crying shame because your band is actually really good. The vocals are good and even unique, everyone can play their instruments and let's face it, two-pieces doing just about anything are hot right now (thank christ you don't have a bass player because he'd probably do that insipid doink-doink shit and make me want to kill him). If your music was a little less blues/funk bar-band and a little more something else, this would actually be really marketable, that's really the only weakness you have. Start writing some songs for your next EP and stay away from funk guitar playing/drumming for the love of god... maybe also consider writing some songs that don't go in 12-bar format, even actual traditional blues bands are starting to shy away from that shit these days...

 

[Treefingers]

snip

Brilliant.

http://ninja-starfish.bandcamp.com

2 originals and one cover...

Keenly awaiting your feedback.

I have to provide my email address to download the link? Not happening. Give me a YouTube or MySpace link please.

You can stream them straight from the website.

EDIT: However if this doesn't work for whatever reason i will sort something out. Let me know.

Oh, so you can. My mistake.

God I hate the 12-bar blues progression, but I don't hate it as much as I hate funk/blues. Those two genres should just stay in separate corners because they just don't play nice together. That's kind of a crying shame because your band is actually really good. The vocals are good and even unique, everyone can play their instruments and let's face it, two-pieces doing just about anything are hot right now (thank christ you don't have a bass player because he'd probably do that insipid doink-doink shit and make me want to kill him). If your music was a little less blues/funk bar-band and a little more something else, this would actually be really marketable, that's really the only weakness you have. Start writing some songs for your next EP and stay away from funk guitar playing/drumming for the love of god... maybe also consider writing some songs that don't go in 12-bar format, even actual traditional blues bands are starting to shy away from that shit these days...

Sweet, ok. I'll keep your advice in mind. Cheers for your time.

 

[kds]

Hi 'advice guy', I've been reading this thread for a while and would love for you to take a look at my myspace page and tell me what you think.

I really like the feedback you've been giving to people- it can be incredibly hard to find people who can give you informed feedback that's honest and constructive. My myspace is www.myspace.com/karendesilva it's got 2 tracks that I've worked on with a producer.

I've only just joined up (about 10 years after everyone else!) Ok enough chatting...

Let me know what you think!

Cheers