I don't usually shill my music on the forum unless asked, but....

I feel really good about these mopey pop tunes I've been making bad demoes of for the last few days, so apart from the bad singing and guitar mistakes how bad are they? Huge chunks of them wrote themselves, which can be good or bad....

Obviously they're only demos, but they're pretty good. Raise the vocals up a bit on the first one though. I'll listen through some more a bit later.

I have a zillion songs, with demos, but quite often I have ridiculously hard parts to nail, and unless I get them exactly right I don't really like to upload. I have one song with a harmony lead between two guitars a third apart, and a keyboard, and it is taking years!!!

Unfortunately being a teenager my voice is slightly reminiscent of a rollercoaster, so my songs are generally instrumentals, with lyrics written for them.

aww man, don't be a teenager, I tried it for 7 years and I don't recommend it at all

so they're not weak songs according to you? good, that works for me because I have zero objectivity after a long period of writer's block...

for your tunes, try simplifying the difficult parts a little to make them easier to play every night, often making a decision like that makes your arrangement more accessible to non-musicians anyway

are you that Josiah luck who I just noticed on soundcloud?

Dang, those sound really good, but like what was aforementioned, you should raise your voice.

Thought about using your electric in any demoes?

Dang, those sound really good, but like what was aforementioned, you should raise your voice.

thanks, I am self-conscious about singing

Thought about using your electric in any demoes?

nah, I was just going to do them all fully electric with a couple friends, track live apart from vocals.... maybe in January... that's why I demoed them at all and put them on soundcloud, so people could listen and decide if they wanted to play on them with me.... so far so good actually

I don't have my home studio set up properly to record loud guitar at home and even 4 watts of tube power is pretty loud for a residential neighborhood.

Yep, that's me. I've only got a few rubbishy demos up at the moment, as opposed to the other stuff I've got. Relief (65) is the one with a harmony lead (I've fiddled around with it a lot, and added so much more than what's in that demo, I just made quickly). Unexplained Happiness is fairly decent for a demo, for me, but again I am remaking it, with the downside I've lost all of the parts.

I've lost all of the parts.

If I can't remember a part in 10 minutes giving the demo a quick listen or glancing at my scribbled sheet music (when I bother) I assume its not good enough to remember and scrap it.

you look impossibly young, maybe 14 or 15? I think I joined my first non-school band when I was your age. Maybe go that route? Playing and writing with other people is really good for you.

Yeah Jim very true. I'm in a band, we had a little slot tonight, and all off our songs are of higher quality than my solo stuff. We are currently doing a SoundCloud, but we have no decent mixes of anything. I'm 13, don't know if that's bad to say online, but hey ho, as I've said before internet creeps don't hang around on equipboard. All the profile pics I have where I have my jazzmaster, and I'm in a classroom are 10 months old so I look a tad older now. I'll update my PIC soon.

I hope to upload some decent stuff, to my SoundCloud at some point soon rather than that substandard floaty crap

Yeah Jim very true. I'm in a band, we had a little slot tonight, and all off our songs are of higher quality than my solo stuff. We are currently doing a SoundCloud, but we have no decent mixes of anything. I hope to upload some decent stuff, to my SoundCloud at some point soon rather than that substandard floaty crap

its hard to make recordings when you aren't old enough to drive

knocked out another set of lyrics (more or less) so I made another scrappy acoustic demo.... I am feeling very indie today

Heres my blunt and brutal opinion.

Pros:

Great chord progression. Reminded me of Hedwig and the angry inch I liked the first song and "Two Wrongs" because of this. I did not like "Wasted Time".

The lyrics were in an original format. Only band I could think of that did anything close was Mars Volta. Would be interesting to hear you sing a harmony instead of the melody for the "Two Wrongs" song.

Cons:

The guitar track had a lot of slips. I would edit together a few takes together and make it near perfect.

Your voice is a little less soprano than what the song calls for. I would play the song a step or two lower to have it fit your voice better.

Guitar was a little off time. I would add a simple drum track or just play to a metronome click through headphones.

They're 1 take per track demo recordings to go with the charts for my friends who are going to play bass and drums on them with me. No corrections, no frills, needed them done in avery limited amount of time. Points well taken, of course. Not to be defensive, I wasjust sharing the writing on EB because listening back it seemed worth getting feedback on from other songwriters and maybe getting some structural ideas as the songs are on the short side. I guess i shouldn't have posted anything so scrappy that was mainly recorded for transcription purposes (i always find ot easier to transcribe guitar lead sheets and vocal melodies from recordings while sitting at the piano, the guitar is more about doing than thinking).

thanks for the praise on the lyrics, it is really hard to write poppy songs that don't fall into a handful of tropes... that goes for the music too, when you get too creative with melody or the chords/parts you can be in danger of straying into other genres,,, if you play it safe and string together a pile of familiar hooks you wind up writing someone else's song

oh god, my son discovered my microphones... I think I can spare a whole day to redo the 1st 4 demoes nicely as well as record 2 more tunes right before the holiday... that is if any of my microphones still work now that Lucian has thrown them around