Minor board reorganization and Songcrafters' philosophy/direction.

[64Guitars]

For the past two weeks, the admin team has been discussing the philosophy and direction we want for Songcrafters, and how we can reorganize the boards to clarify and emphasize that philosophy/direction. Before we make any changes, we thought we'd present our ideas here and get some feedback.

This site started as a support group primarily for owners of the Boss Micro BR. I believe that Roland's design and marketing has always been targeted at the D.I.Y. bedroom guitarist who wants to create elaborate, multitrack recordings himself. The internet makes it possible to include other musicians as well without ever having to meet physically. So we believe that the heart and soul of Songcrafters should be about music performed entirely by our members using multitrack technology such as the Boss BR series of multitrack recorders. This is the direction we see for Songcrafters and the philosophy we will be encouraging.

Having said that, we realise that there are still a few members who shy away from performing all of the tracks in their songs themselves. Instead, they use backing tracks, midi files, loops, etc. While we don't want to encourage the use of these substitutes for member performances, we will continue to allow them. However, we don't want them posted in the same boards as the member-performed recordings. There are also some members who post recordings of their local band. That's great, but unless all of the people in the band are members of Songcrafters, we don't want those posts in the same board as the member-performed recordings. Finally, some members collaborate over the internet with musicians who are not members of Songcrafters. Again, we don't want those posts mixed with the member-performed posts.

So here's what we propose to make all of this possible without segregating everybody into a lot of separate boards.

1) We create a General board in Post Your Work. Members can post anything they like here as long as it's legal and is performed at least in part by the member. So you can use backing tracks, midi files, loops, etc. and post your finished recording here. But anything you use in your recording has to be legal. There are a lot of backing tracks, midi files, and loops on the web which shouldn't be there because they are protected by copyright. Just because you found a great backing track at backingtracks.com doesn't mean that it's legal for you to repost it. I recently had a look at that site and found many files that are clearly illegal. Those files are going to get that site's owners into trouble. They've already had legal trouble regarding songs by Joe Satriani which were posted illegally on their site. We don't want that kind of trouble here at Songcrafters, so you must ensure that any files you use and repost here are legal.

And, as I said, you must perform at least part of your song yourself. You may think that your friend's band is great. But unless you're a member of that band, we don't want you to post their music here. Only post music that's your own or that you played a significant part in. Your friends can always join Songcrafters and post their own songs.

If you are a member of a local band, you can record your rehearsals, jam sessions, or gigs and post them here. And if you have collaborated with musicians who are not members of Songcrafters, you can post those recordings here too. You can even post recordings you've made entirely yourself here if you choose to. However, there will be separate boards available for member-performed recordings and we'd encourage you to post in those boards instead. But it's your choice.

The idea of this board is that all kinds of recordings can be posted here. So it will get a lot more attention than the Backing Track Jams board currently gets.

2) All current posts in the Backing Track Jams board will be moved to the new General board and the Backing Track Jams board will be eliminated.

3) The Collaborations board will be renamed to Work in Progress. As the name suggests, this board will be for anything that's not complete. This could include unfinished recordings which you'd like other members to contribute to (collaborations). It can include song lyrics, because lyrics are just a song which has not yet had the music added. It can also include early mixes of songs that you're working on which are not yet complete.

4) All current posts in the Lyrics board will be moved to the Work in Progress board and the Lyrics board will be eliminated.

5) The Original Songs and Cover Songs boards will remain, but we will insist that everything posted in these boards is entirely member-performed. The only exception will be the drum track. Roland includes a drum machine in most of their recorders because they realise that the average bedroom guitarist would otherwise have no way to include drums in his recordings. It would be foolish not to allow our members to use these drum machines. Also, we don't have a lot of drummer members we can call on to collaborate with us, so it's reasonable to allow our members to create their drum tracks any way they can. That can mean a drum machine, loops, midi files, etc. But this only applies to the drum track. Everything else, including bass guitar, vocals, keyboards, etc. must be performed by yourself or another Songcrafters member. Any existing posts in Original Songs or Cover Songs which do not meet these requirements will be moved to the General board.

6) The current posts in the Songcrafter Tributes board will be moved to the Cover Songs board and that board will be eliminated. We love Songcrafter tributes and want to encourage more of them, but we don't think a separate board is necessary. I'll continue to add any future Songcrafter tributes to the Tribute Fest jukebox, but they can be posted in Cover Songs.


So, the new structure of the Post Your Work category would look like this:

• Post Your Work (category)
• General   (Any completed songs that are legal and contain at least some member performance)
• DIY   (Do It Yourself - Only completed songs where everything is performed by members except drums)
• Original Songs
• Cover Songs
• Work In Progress   (Anything that's not complete)

I'm not yet sure if Original Songs and Cover Songs should be child boards, as shown, or separate boards on their own. But, either way, we've gone from 6 boards down to just 4. I think that's much simpler and spreads out the activity more evenly.

We'd appreciate some feedback on this.  And if you have any questions, please ask.

[launched]

I agree with the administration's desire to condense the site to a small degree, and to clarify song authorship makes a lot of sense to me.

The only thing I would hope remains constant is some sort of tag that is labeled "Collaboration". I think it would be a bad idea to discard our shining beacon of invitation. True, there is not always a healthy amount of activity visibly, but behind the scenes it works wonders. "Work In Progress" is an entirely different animal.

Thanks,

Mark

[Greeny]

Well thought-out and well explained. It feels like this direction has more or less happened organically anyway, so it seems sensible to make it more 'official' with the changes suggested.

Gets my vote anyway.

There's a little grey area that's probably worth mentioning though:

On the DIY / Covers board, I'd like us to still be able to post an updated track to our threads. Although this activity could be seen as falling under 'work in progress', it doesn't always begin that way. For example: 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.

We also need to agree on allowing a little bit of Audacity-type sound fx on the DIY boards. Strictly speaking, it's not member-performed, but it's often a reasonable inclusion in producing a finished song.

[Migs]

Do you still intend a Boss focus that would warrant tagging of boss/non boss recorded stuff ?
Is there anything more that can (or should) be done to protect the site owners from copyright infrigment issues caused by board members rather than rely on the member to ensure legality of what is posted ?
It isn't my area of law but I can do some looking to see if there is anything we can do to reduce the risk.

Oh, otherwise well thought through.

[AndyR]

Gets my vote guys.

And I agree with the points that Launched, Greeny and Migs raised.

I'm guessing that "sound effects" would probably still be ok Greeny. I've used a ticking grandfather clock before, that sort of thing. (Obviously, a "sound effect" such as "Jack Bruce's complete bassline performance from Politician" comes under a slightly different heading than the sound effects I think you and I are thinking of )

[Geir]

Gets my vote as well.

I think it's very well thought out and very much in the spirit of this wonderful site.

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

[henwrench]

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.

             Know what I mean?

                                                       henwrench

[alfstone]

I agree on many of the new directions, but not all.

Points 2, 3, 4 and 6 are OK for me too.

I have doubts about the concept of separating the "everything performed by members" and "not everything performed by members".

I think that in most cases each one of us lives several hundreds of miles far away other Songcrafters, and unless we are poly-instrumentalist (of course I am NOT...), if you go on on this way we could have the "everything" category full of just voice & guitar (with some keyboards...) songs. So, quite simple compositions, without the sound of reed, strings, synths and so on.
Of course I talk by my point of view, since I use often (legal) backing tracks by BIAB to enrich my performance. And as far as I know, usually all the loops can be freely used, even for commercial use. So, separating the "everything" from the "not everything", giving this way a negative connotation to the "not everything", has no sense, IMHO. We listen to each song on the whole, regardless of what has been used, of course if everything used is legal.

To be clear: nothing against a single instrument, or single instrument plus voice song, but I would expect the same if someone thinks about music as a more complex thing...and this of course requires loops and/or backing tracks. Again, everything used must be legal, but I think that this is responsability of the poster. A disclaimer of the website management would be right, in this sense.

My 2 cents...

Alfredo

[Greeny]

buggerments

Ha ha... I love that expression! Pure henwrench gold!

[Tony W]

it gets my vote as well

2 things I would like to mention though.

I would have separate boards for Originals and Covers in lieu of child boards strictly for navigation purposes. The "Originals" board is the heart and soul of this forum, there's no way it should become a child board. As a matter of fact, it should hold the top level position in the "post your work" section. My child boards barely receive any attention for a couple reasons. They require additional navigation which surprisingly people don't do. We're a one click society. The final reason: Child boards are quite easy to collapse accidentally, and will increase administration requirements.

I'm on the fence with backing tracks. Part of me wants to view it as a logistic nightmare. If the stipulation is legality, then it suggests that the admin team would be required to investigate each post independently. Hell, I don't know if the backers I've posted are legit or not, mostly because I don't care.... sorry.

On the other side of the coin, I'm glad backers are getting bumped to a higher level, I don't see any difference between backers and all the sampling that's been posted at the top level boards. I considered that an unfair distinction, so this levels the playing field a bit. Get it, playing field...

Geir brings up a solid point with the keyboard capabilities. I can make some pretty amazing soundscapes with my keyboard with minimal key strokes, slap 3 minutes worth of guitar work on it, and call it an original which sounds like a masterpiece (relative to my skill level). Ultimately my personal feel on this would be that these posts belong in the "general" section. Lets face it, I can add in a symphony with a push of a button and a couple key strokes.