Minor board reorganization and Songcrafters' philosophy/direction.

[Tony W]

Otherwise we are just relegating them to a section of the forum we all know isn't as popular. It make many of them feel left out.

Sai is absolutely correct about this point. As most know, I created a forum simply to afford people to host files in a familiar format to songcrafters, when Pedro announced that we would no longer be hosting music directly. There was absolutely no intention of becoming a real forum until backing tracks were segregated into oblivion.

There is one inescapable fact about the backing tracks being largely ignored though. If the members here wanted to listen and comment we would have done so....

[chapperz66]

Now I can't post stuff I've worked on with other musicians unless they are members here?

I share Sai's concern over discouraging posting of music involving non-members.  The majority of my postings (virtually all of the reasonable ones!) have been False Prophet colaborations involving one luddite non-internet member, as well as Nick (Nightcaller) and myself.  It would be a shame for Nick and I to have to stop posting these and getting the group's valued feedback.

Although I use a Boss recorder, personally I would be inclined to encourage any home recording equipment as long as equipment used is admitted to.  We wouldn't want people using a full Protools set up yet claiming to only use a micro BR!  

In fact, now I think about it, both my main keyboards have 16-track midi recorders built in.  I mainly use the BR for audio recording my guitars and keyboard submixes, then final mix/mastering.  But I normally state this when posting a piece and always give details when questioned.  I can't see that this is a problem?

Anyway these are only my thoughts.  You guys do all the work on the forum and therefore you must do you think best.

Paul Chapman.

[64Guitars]

There will be some grey areas still I guess but we'll sort them out as we go. A question I was left with is, rather philosophical, "What does it mean to perform?" With all the new technology, there comes so many possibilities to play and sing almost perfect without actually doing very much. I've used the harmonizer on the br800 myself a few times, and arpeggiators on synths also feels a bit like cheating, tho I wouldn't hesitate to use it. The next step for me would be to write out the score for the synth-part of a song (as I'm not a very good keyboardist) and record it to the br and add guitars and vocals. I would still feel like I'd performed the whole song because, for me, writing down the notes would take much more effort than actually performing it ... and then there's all these wonderful new piePhone apps I'd like to try out   .... well ... just some random quasi-philosophical thoughts from the viking monkey ... don't take it to seriously

It's a good question. I think "perform" means to actually play the music yourself. It's okay to augment your performance with technology. But things like backing tracks, loops, and midi files are a substitute for your performance, so they won't be allowed in the DIY boards. I think arpeggiators and harmonizers only augment your performance. You still have to play or sing something. The arpeggiator merely fills in some extra notes between yours. And the harmonizer makes a copy of your performance and alters the pitch of it. In both cases, the performance is still yours. The technology only augments it, so it's fine to use arpeggiators and harmonizers in songs posted to the DIY boards.

But there are other areas where technology can get a bit too automated. For example, my Yamaha keyboard has an auto-accompaniment feature where it will create an entire bass track based on the chords I play. I think that's going a bit too far and a song with a bass track created in this way doesn't belong in the DIY boards. I'm not playing the bass notes at all so it's not my performance.

[64Guitars]

I see that there are a lot of interesting comments being posted in this topic. I'll try to reply to all of them but I'm doing so in the order that they're posted. That way, I won't miss any. So please be patient. I'll get to your comments eventually but it might take a while.

[Bluesberry]

Although I use a Boss recorder, personally I would be inclined to encourage any home recording equipment as long as equipment used is admitted to.  We wouldn't want people using a full Protools set up yet claiming to only use a micro BR!  

I agree with this.  The way I see it this site is all about "Home Recording", not specific to what the recording is done on, but done in a home studio environment.  Recording on Tascam or Boss or any interface that links to a computer DAW (as the latest BOSS machines do) doesn't matter.  What matters is that we are all Home recording folks, not professionals, using what ever tools we can afford to get good quality recordings for our pleasure and sharing with our friends on this site and with friends in the non-cyber world.  

[Geir]

I just want to echo the words of a couple of the other comments here:

A BIG THANK YOU to the admins and the owner of this h(e)aven in the world wild web !!!



PS. I think I'll have to get my brother to join the forum

[Saijinn Maas]

There is one inescapable fact about the backing tracks being largely ignored though. If the members here wanted to listen and comment we would have done so....

You are absolutely right about this... to a certain degree. If you remember, or perhaps my memory is faulty, they got almost as much comments as other posts until they were separated from the other song posts. You made mention in your post on how no one wants to go clicking more than they have too. If they could find all songs in one place, this MAY solve that. But I fully understand that it may not, and then I'd have egg on my face.

[Bluesberry]

PS. I think I'll have to get my brother to join the forum

Great idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Saijinn Maas]

Also... reading my post back, I would like to clarify something. I am not calling anyone here "pretentious" nor "Big Brother". I fear that any possible new members to the community may feel that way. We seem to have a lot of members who either rarely post, or who seem to have become less involved than they used to. I have a suspicion that some changes may have turn off some of our members.

Again... I am completely aware that I may well be full of sh!t and completely wrong. Just food for thought.

[64Guitars]

I post a song like 'Bad Chemicals' that I think is complete. But then Covermark comes along and adds some kick-ass guitar licks that make the track even better. So I'd like to still have a facility to add these 'suprise' enhancements on the same thread.

   I'm forever getting up to these kind of shenanigans....

      I'd like to suggest the protocol be one I've used myself for this scenario....

             Edit your original first post with eg. WARNING!! MIX 2 ON PAGE 3!!!!!! above the player, so people know that buggerments are afoot.
              Repost the buggermented song as a reply in the original thread, but rather than uploading to Songcrafters, use Soundclick (or whatever) to save server space here.

You can also use the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags to add a player in your first message which is linked to an attachment further down in the topic. For example, you could right-click on the attachment for MIX 2 on PAGE 3 and copy the URL to the clipboard. Then edit your first message and paste that URL between the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags and save your message. The first message of your topic will then have a player that plays MIX 2.

I think it's important to always have the latest version of a song (or a link to it) in the first message of a topic so that it can be found easily. This will become much easier when I get my song database finished because the first message will be the only place that songs in the database can be found. And the poster can easily update the message at any time to point to a different version of the song if they choose.