Musical Demo Submission thread
- Thread starter BonsaiK
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In this thread I attempt to apply the standards of my workplace to what people submit. The objective of this thread is to give people an idea of how their work might actually be assessed by an industry professional. My boss doesn't even know what Soundcloud is (he's not very internet-savvy, he leaves that shit to me), if you sent him an email with the exact content of your post in it, it'd go in the junk folder immediately. Creating a presence on MySpace or YouTube is something that actually requires a bit of effort if you want to make it look good, and it functions not only as a way to hold your music, but as a way to give people detailed biographical information, an idea of the aesthetic side of your musical statement (image, graphic design, etc), and a whole bunch of other stuff which is actually really important for us. Without that information, nobody is looking at anything, you might as well have send me a blank CD-R with nothing written on it, and if you sent one of those to a label it's also going straight in the bin, because it spells out rightly or wrongly "I'm just an amateur, I don't really care what you think", and if that's the way you feel, that's totally cool. However, if you want to be taken seriously, you need to get serious. A MySpace/YouTube presence shows me that someone is in fact serious about being noticed, and about their music.Gaz6231 said:
Of course, now you've kind of blown it anyway with your image-reply, which I think is a little rude, so there's no way I'm listening to your music now. Don't take offense because it's not personal, just consider this a simulation of what might actually happen if you were to submit something to a label but they had a particular request about formats or whatever and you gave them some sass about it. Think they're going to care about someone who is being difficult to work with when there are so many others who are more than willing to be a little obliging? It's better that you make mistakes like these in a thread like this where the stakes are low, rather than in the real world of the industry where something like that could cost you an entire career.
Yeah sorry to belatedly reply to your Soundcloud query. Soundcloud has its place, but you need at least MySpace as well, because Soundcloud doesn't let you do a lot of "branding", it's just like a big folder or something rather than a way to promote anything.zen5887 said:
If you thought a tongue-in-cheek 'dick move' gag was me being 'difficult to work with', you must take life very seriously.BonsaiK said:
I'm a perfectly nice guy, I'm polite and genial under most circumstances, but when someone refuses to even acknowledge my work because it's not on MySpace I call it a dick move, because that's what it is. This isn't real life where format issues are a big deal, it's the internet. I don't take it personally, but frankly I think you're boxing yourself in with such strict guidelines.
I guess if you want a 'brand' or an 'image' I'm not the droid you're looking for.
I use strict guidelines because this is a thread about submitting demos to the music industry, where very strict guidelines do in fact apply. I'm not really "talent-scouting" with any great intent in this thread, I get enough physical submissions without needing to solicit them this way as well. This thread is more about telling people the truth about how they would be perceived were they to submit something to a label such as mine (or a similar label) directly, through the usual channels we operate under. In this scenario, if an artist who wants to work with us can't follow a reasonably simple and clear guideline when doing something basic like submitting material without making a fuss (tongue-in-cheek or not), there's a good chance that they'll just cause us further problems down the track if we were to give that material any attention.Gaz6231 said:
Hey Advice Guy
Our myspace page is a bit crap but here it is:
http://www.myspace.com/TheSpiralArchitectsBand
Thanks for your time,
Cam
Our myspace page is a bit crap but here it is:
http://www.myspace.com/TheSpiralArchitectsBand
Thanks for your time,
Cam
Your drummer's timing and fills are sloppy. That's what is really going to set you back more than anything else. Especially ironic given the lyrical content of the first song. A metal drummer has to be bang on the money or there just isn't any point. I'd either tell your drummer to do some serious practice, or turf him out and get someone else, because he belongs in a punk band. You can drum like that in punk and it's okay, but it's not okay for a metal band where the standard for drumming is much higher. Your other option is the rest of you could start playing punk I guess, but I wouldn't recommend it given the current lukewarm reception punk gets these days...evilevilmonkei said:
Now hold onto your hats folks, because I'm about to blow the mind of everyone reading this.
The main problem apart from the ropey drumming (which is fixable) is that this just sounds a little too safe. You do sound very much like a combination of all your listed influences, (you've got Pantera in there twice by the way, and Bruce's surname is spelled "Dickinson", not trying to be an asshole but label people do notice these things!), and that's a problem because if you pour red, green, yellow, purple and brown paint in the same bowl and mix it together, the resulting colour is grey. All the riffs in both songs, I feel like I've heard them before. In fact in a couple places I definitely know I've heard them before. If you want to get anywhere in metal you really do need a unique sound, or failing that a unique angle, and right now you just sound like a fairly safe mixture of everything else out there. Believe it or not, metal labels aren't interested in safe hybrids of various styles, they do actually prefer it if a band is going out on a limb! There's so much competition in metal that it really takes something very special to stand out. I suppose that's true for all styles but metal has the unique position where musical innovation within the format actually generates - and if you promote it correctly, almost guarantees - attention.
Here we are:
http://www.myspace.com/russell_kuhl
Everything by me, and again, any and all criticism is completely welcome.
http://www.myspace.com/russell_kuhl
Everything by me, and again, any and all criticism is completely welcome.
The bass is too pronounced compared to everything else. Back that off a bit. Too much bass is a common amateur mixing mistake - people making recordings often think "I like cranking the bass on things I listen to, so I'll make my stuff really bassy". All this does is eliminate the need for someone to crank the bass in the first place, which means that if the piece ever gets played somewhere like a club with lots of subs, the bass is so mungy and through-the-roof that you can't actually hear anything else properly.uro vii said:
I'm not sure how much of what I'm hearing is pre-programmed and how much of it is live, but I'd consider making the rhythm patterns more pronounced and also a bit more varied if possible. If you listen to the better electronically generated music these days what you'll notice is that apart from rap, rhythm patterns are very rarely just one singular loop. Something like Aphex Twin or Squarepusher is obviously very precisely crafted... that's what you're competing with.
I'd also consider doing something different with those vocals. It just sounds like a lot of mumble to me. Vocals, when present, are always the most important element of any music, because most people emotionally resonate more with a human voice than any instrument. At the very least, I'd like to be able to make out a word here and there, or alternately, I'd like the vocals to be doing more than just a monotone but carry a melody of some kind. Right now they're the weak point - do something good with them, either melodically or lyrically/rhythmically, and your piece has a greater chance of grabbing someone's attention.
Overall it's not bad, it's certainly different, but it doesn't sound finished yet, conceptually (not referring to recording quality here, referring to composition). I think you've got the seed of a potentially really good idea but you need to work with it a lot more.
Thanks, just a couple of points/questions:BonsaiK said:
Where exactly do you think I should tone the bass down, because I am happy to do so for most of the song, but I think the tone up of the bass in the outro is quite important for the feel of it.
And I agree about the beat pattern, I am still getting to grips with programming drum machines, but I would, and do intend to put more variation in the beats in the future.
I also agree the vocals were a bit of a cop out. After trying various different methods, melodies and filters I eventually just brought it down to something basic. But I had a similar problem with the guitar and I managed to get the sorted out, so I'm sure I can do better with the vocals.
EDIT: I was talking to some other musicians who I will be working with on a project, and they mentioned a lack variance in the track as a whole. I thought about maybe taking the opportunity to add a bridge with a different beat pattern, melody and instrumentation. My concern, though, is that I will be over-hauling the song a fair bit when I should be perfecting what is there already.
I guess if you gradually built up the bass throughout the piece instead of keeping it at that one huge level, that would give the track some progression and make it more interesting, and it would also compensate for the lack of anything much happening in the rhythm, but then you're moving into ambient electronica territory, which may not be where you want to go.uro vii said:
The vocals are still a problem though. Keeping it simple is an excellent idea, but you need to have either some melody or lyrics that are actually intelligible.
Thanks for the reply advice guy. Its really good to get honest feedback.
I might post some more demos at some point.
I might post some more demos at some point.
Our EP has just been returned to us today. Thoughts?BonsaiK said:
[link]http://www.myspace.com/seasekshun[/link]
Well-played, well-recorded, probably the only thing I can fault on a musical level is a little bit too much effects on the vocals and some fairly bad lyrical construction in the verses of "Her Story". They don't "flow" right, there's points where important words are being rushed, and others where unimportant words are being given too much space. Whoever wrote those words and put them in that song simply doesn't intuitively know how to fit words to music, so it might pay to teach them, or if it's you, it might pay to teach yourself before you go writing any more words. However, even if you fix this it doesn't matter from the perspective of this thread, because your band simply won't be commercially successful.Shale_Dirk said:
People often ask me why I insist on a Myspace page or a YouTube presence. One of the many answers is that it saves me a lot of time. If you submitted that link to my work, I wouldn't have even pressed play, I would have stopped as soon as I looked at "genre" and seen "grunge/punk/ska". Punk may arguably be due for a resurgence one day, but it isn't happening yet and you don't have any punk in your sound anyway unless you count the ska track. Ska on the other hand (or at least the rapid-fire ska-lite that punk bands believe passes for ska), and grunge are both completely commercially dead. Sure, existing bands in these styles still have a market, but nobody wants new bands that sound like this right now, because the commercial market has already been over-saturated with this stuff recently, and these things go in cycles. Right now those styles are in the "remember when we used to listen to that stuff? So glad we've moved on" part of the cycle. The nostalgia revival cycle comes next but that's about 10-20 years away, if it happens at all. You just can't be a new grunge or ska band in 2010 (okay, 2011 now), it's bad timing.
Even a very small independent label specialising in grunge wouldn't touch your stuff because of the ska songs, and vice versa. Those two styles just don't go together at all, they're two completely different musical movements with a different feel, different aesthetics, and most importantly, different audiences. If I had any one big piece of advice, I'd say make up your mind exactly what sort of music you want to make, and don't deviate from it. If you absolutely must pick the commercial no-man's-land of either grunge or ska, then hey whatever floats your boat, but I definitely wouldn't be combining them.
In summary, your band is okay at what it does despite the vocal niggles, but the demand for this style of music just isn't there right now.
I'm going to assume you changed your name for some reason and that you're actually FargoDog. I find it so confusing when people change their names.Kasurami said:
You may not realise it, but that isn't your natural voice and you're putting on an accent when you sing. Right now you're thinking "bullshit" but I assure you that it's true. Don't worry, this is natural and almost all singers do it. I know this simply because your profile says you're from England and yet you're enunciating words like an American. The reason why so many pop and rock singers do it is because most singers grow up listening to pop music that is either from America, or where the singers are not from America but trying to sound American, or are also unintentionally sounding that way, so they just subconsciously get it into their heads that pop and rock songs are sung with an American accent. The same thing happens with opera singers where everybody sounds Italian. Punk bands who are very influenced by the early UK stuff also have a habit of putting on a (lower-class) English accent regardless of which country they actually come from, because that is "the way" to sing old-school punk, a lot of reggae artists that are not from Jamaica put on a Jamaican accent in their songs, and on and on it goes. Anyway, if you've lived in the UK your whole life then there is just no way your voice can only sound like Eddie Vedder and nothing else. Also, if the year was 1985 and you sent me this back then (ignore the fact that the Internet kinda licked nuts at that stage in human history) there is no way you would have that vocal tone - you'd probably have the popular vocal tone of the day. Otherwise, explain to me how nobody except a handful of then-barely-known grunge artists sounded like Vedder in 1990 but by 1994 everyone and their dog in a multitude of countries around the world was in a band with a singer with exactly that vocal tone.
Don't take it as a criticism though. This is so common that it really is the norm. Singing in your own actual accent is so rare in pop/rock music made outside the US that when people actually do it, it often sounds wrong or strange:
I used that video because you get to hear his singing and his speaking voice in the one clip. Sure, when singing he's using a singer's vocal projection techniques but it's the same accent for both. Very, very, very few people in my country sing with the same accent as him, it's a sound that's become associated with Midnight Oil because he's almost the only guy that sings with his natural accent in the pop/rock realm in Australia, however what he's doing is simply what an Australian accent actually sounds like when sung. I know when I get on stage I sure don't want comparisons to this band, people might start to think I'm a "political singer" or whatever which I don't want, so I'll use whatever vocal tone I think works.
So my message here is it's up to you how much you want to change your vocal style, or even if you want to change it. I mean, you don't have to, but purely from an audience reception point of view, I would suggest that it might be a good idea. If you've ever tried to put on vocal accents from different countries just in general speech, you'll know that it's just a matter of reconfiguring the way your tongue sits in your mouth when you're doing words. It can be done. Some vocal instruction could help if you're having trouble doing it on your own.
As for how to adapt the song with a band, I would just play it to the band, and get them to play along and see what comes out. If you're working with reasonably talented musicians then you will find that they have some very good ideas of their own as to how best interpret your song - with the right people in your band this sort of thing just naturally falls into place, so all I would say to you there is don't go into the band practice room with any preconceptions about what they should do, just play it to them, tell them what the chords are and let them figure out the best way to interpret it. You might be surprised with the quality of what you get.