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That's because everyone is trying to get themselves heard. If you look at the folks who are being smart about it, they've realized that the best way to get their stuff heard is to create helpful videos/articles that help others grow and learn.

If I say, "Here's my new song. Please listen." There's nothing enticing about that. Why should you? But if I build a reputation in the community as being a helpful asset that has helped other people get better at their stuff, then there is more value on my stuff when I share it. More than that, the people who do value it will have a more personal connection to it because the person sharing it helped them succeed. There's a relationship to the artist, rather than that one song I spammed over and over for 20 views and one subscriber.

Everyone wants to be heard but nobody wants to listen. That's the general problem of the vast majority of subreddits like this. The same is true for music groups on Facebook. Everyone is just spamming youtube links and getting no feedback. Who are you? Why should I care? That's the question to answer, otherwise you're just another musician desperately trying to get attention (like most of us are).

"People don't buy your product, they buy your story."

Also look at the first response you got for posting your link. "sneaky." Why? Because at first it came off like you were trying to address the problem and participate in the conversation. Then you dropped a link at the end which made it seem like you were only participating just to sneak a link in. That turns people off (because it's more obvious than you think it is). So knowing when to post your links and when to pass on self-promotion is also important.

TL;DR: It's not about giving up on subreddits, it's about strategizing your participation. When you think less about yourself and your stuff and more about helping other people with theirs, then your stuff succeeds as a natural result of helping theirs succeed. There's a GREAT book about that called The Go-Getter.

So here's an example. I just spent about 20 minutes writing this comment to help you. Guess what I'm going to do later on? Flip it into a longer, more thorough, more concise blog post on my website, then post that as a link to help others. I'm not trying to directly post my music and get heard. I'm focusing on helping others move forward, but as a natural result, people will have the opportunity to hear my music IF THEY WANT. And if they CHOOSE to go listen without me trying to twist their arm and figure out how to trick them into it, then they are more likely to value what they hear because they know they made the choice to go listen.

That's how musicians are getting heard on Youtube and other places. They thinking less about promoting themselves and more about helping others.

My pleasure! Ralph Murphy is a boss, met him for the first time my last trip down to Nashville. I would highly recommend a few cheap/free resources. Ralph Murphy's Laws Of Songwriting, Writing Better Lyrics - Pat Pattison (You can't really tell but both of these are hyperlinks, so go feel free to click on them), and www.coursera.com offers a free online lyric class. SAC memberships are like $35 for students, and then you can attend workshops free.

I think you can totally write downer characters, but again, give him a redeeming quality. Give us a reason to root for him.

As far as playing. You don't need to be a John Mayer or Elton John. A lot of the most successful writers I know are mediocre at best guitar players. If you can play acoustic guitar in time you have all you need as far as guitar skills. I mean the more you know the better, but you can get by with the basics. A bigger factor for the artist thing is having the "it" factor. It's impossible for me to tell from a recording if you have it or not. I know I don't have the frontman "it" factor. But when you see it you know. It's the confidence, the charisma, the ability to connect with an audience whether it be 3 drunk dudes in a bar or thousands at the ACC. I wouldn't concern yourself with the guitar stuff.

All the best!

First off, I think you have the start of some good material. The feel you have in your vocal delivery and guitar sound is interesting to listen to and has the potential of capturing the listener's attention.


To start, I think the introduction is too long, considering the little amount of development that occurs. There's nearly 45 seconds into the vocals come in. Ask yourself - what is happening in the music in these 45 seconds? What is being accomplished with this introduction? What is its purpose? Does the listener need 20 seconds of just the guitar, and 20 seconds of just guitar and drums to accomplish what's needed in the introduction? If the purpose of your intro is to set the feel/tone of the piece, perhaps just the first 20 seconds of guitar is enough. Can you get more variation in your sound by not even having drums come in until the chorus or after the chorus?


Individually, each section / stanza isn't terrible on its own. However, transitions between each section are a bit rough -- there is little flow between each section and even sometimes each line.

Some basic transitional questions to ask yourself: What note am I ending each phrase, line, verse, and section with? How does that prepare me for the next note, chord, section, etc? How can I increase interest moving from the verse to the chorus?


There's the start of some great ideas in here - you have decent large-scale structure (intro, verse, chorus, etc, instrumental section, outro). Now start to think more on the minuscule level - each note, each transition, each chord, interplay between melody/harmony.


If you haven't checked out any songwriting books, one of the best places to start in your case is The Billboard Guide to Writing and Producing Songs that Sell

As far as mics go I have an AT2035 large diaphragm condenser mic which does the job on vocals and acoustic guitars, and I sprung for an SM57 which I guess is a very widely used dynamic mic for amps or other loud things. I recorded some harmonica the other day with it and it turned out excellent. Well as excellent as it can be in a horrible room like mine.
You might be able to find a cheaper condenser than that if you're on a tighter budget. It's my first, so I honestly can't offer any other advice lol

While not 100% necessary for songwriting, acoustic treatment and a good set of flat-response monitors or studio headphones will most certainly help you hear what you're actually creating.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541606392&sr=8-1&keywords=write+better+lyrics


This is one of the best things I've done to enhance my lyric writing. If you follow the exercises in this book, you will surely see quick improvement. It will not be all you need, however. You still need to put in hard work before you will be able to write songs you really feel proud of. Good luck mate.

Impossible is improbable even outside our dreams

This is the first lyric I heard fully and because of that I want to hear more! The guitar at the beginning was great and the rest was chill in a beachfront kind of way. But the change from the beautiful finger picking to the chill beachfront style jolted my senses a little. Maybe a possible smoother transition, but whatever’s natural works, I’m just one opinion and I enjoyed it without hearing majority of the lyrics.

This mic hasn’t steered me wrong yet, and it can cancel out background noise with adjustments pretty well for the price. The bird sounds went well with the music though

Blue Yeti USB Microphone - Silver https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002VA464S/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_FJpUCbXVXP4HH

So every Wednesday I do something called the Two Hour Track Challenge where I make a song from start to finish live on Twitch. In this challenge I asked all my friends to give me audio they have lying around. Some people gave me throat singing and others actual vocalization singing. I got some Otamatone and some random clips probably from the Internet.

It was a ton of fun! I hope you enjoy the track. If you were interested in watching the recording of this song being made (I used a LOT of Ableton's Sampler) you can find it here. :)

The best way to get good at writing is to write.

This book is filled with writing exercises for writers of song lyrics.

It is a great companion to Writing Better Lyrics. A book (and I also attended one of his workshops) that has helped me a lot.

I think the reason why it may have not done so well is that the verses aren't really creating the imagery to prove the chorus. Much of it is too ethereal and not direct enough to draw the listener in. There's not a ton of focus from the writer's perspective. All of these lyrics and as a listener I'm thinking, "So what?" Not only that, I don't think the idea of the song could be summed up in a sentence.

Remember, a song is a short story and in this there is no flow(beginning, middle, and end) or climax. Also, the singer should never not be the hero of the story or at least learning from the experience.

I can tell you've spent a lot of time learning your instrument and how to compose though and I certainly appreciate that but lyrics are an entirely different craft. Think about this, in the music industry there are some people who ONLY write lyrics. That's how hard it is.

My advice -
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBOUJ5Mbrk
Read this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0898791499
Write one song a day, two if you can, and try to complete the entire thing in 15 minutes. That'll help you focus more. Also, before you write anything, sum up in a sentence the message you want to get across.

You're almost there, sorry if I came off like a dick but you've really got potential here. Write a lot and try the competition again. You'll fair much better when you can paint a picture in the listener's mind and tell your story more directly.

I have typically gone for #2 (at least those are the lyrics that have aged best for me).

I found the book "Writing Better Lyrics " by Pat Pattison to be immensly helpful when I set out to rethink my approach to lyrics.

No offence meant by this statement, but you'd be more likely to get better feedback if you recorded with something other than what I assume is a mobile phone or computer microphone. Something like this (http://www.amazon.com/TASCAM-DR-05-Portable-Digital-Recorder/dp/B004OU2IQG) will set you back about $100, but you'll get much better recordings out of it since the microphones can handle a bit more dBs.

other links to make it easier.

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Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/album/30LMr80UkpGs40T26UajDz

Apple Music

https://music.apple.com/ca/album/this-light-single/1468395764

YouTube Music

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mTZVCc2Q7gs1VORbOzr_zjNncRwNid3lM

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APoAB08ZOrQ&list=PLHZvxMknKcbs6wkKCfZliqa-Pdx246wZJ&index=2&t=0s

Amazon MP3

https://www.amazon.com/This-Light/dp/B07SY6Z169/

Amazon Music Unlimited

https://music.amazon.ca/search/this+light#

Google Play

https://play.google.com/store/music/album/This_Light_This_Light?id=B7t5yqy53thomxr4ont5gp27oju

+1 for this recommendation. The author is a songwriting teacher at Berklee who has a free coursera class on songwriting that comes up from time to time and also has another great book on form and structure. I'd recommend them both, but if you're only going to buy one, buy "writing better lyrics."

Camera: Sony a6000 with this sigma 16mm lens. Next time I should lock the focus :P

Mic: MXL 770 Cardioid Condenser Microphone with this pre-amp to get it into my laptop.

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Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!

Agree about the Pattison book. He has another book called Songwriting Without Boundaries which is great too. He provides so many tools and different strategies to approach your lyrics.

A book that really helped me was "Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies". Learning how to mix and produce songs can be pretty complex at first but this book taught me some good things.

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Musicians-Dummies-5th/dp/1118968018

Check out this book: http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

There are tons of writing exercises to get your sharpen your creative writing skills. I just started reading it and it's already helped a ton. There are a lot of exercises that need to be done in groups or with partners. If there's interest I could start a subreddit for these kinds of exercises.

> Hard work does NOT mean you become one of the best in anything

It absolutely does.

read this: https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842948

Have you read The Song Machine yet? Quite a bit of detail in there.

This book is an entire book dealing with a lot of the fears and problems we have as musicians and songwriters, and gives information to help get past it.