Old demo fest

[kenny mac]

Hey guys,
             was talking to another songcrafter tonight and we started talking about old 4 track demos etc from years ago and it got me thinking.
What about old demo fest?There must be loads of songcrafters with old(hissy) low end recordings when they were 1st starting out that they/we could post for others to hear.
Also it would be good if the other songcrafters on the site could do a copy ofone of therse old songs and bring it up to date as alot of times songwriters dont like to re-visit old songs again.
What do you think?

[Farrell Jackson]

I think that's a great idea Kenny as long as we can clean them up a little with our current recording processes.  I have several.......and they all sound bad, lol!

Farrell

[suburban behemoth]

Where is that old Tascam? ...

[64Guitars]

Sorry guys. This goes against what Songcrafters is about. We want people to get actively involved in recording now and post their results. That's why we have our festivals; to encourage people to record something new. We don't want to fill up the site with old recordings.

If you want to get some feedback on your old demos and other old recordings, here's what I suggest.

• Create a page somewhere else on the web for your older recordings. There are lots of free sites available that would be suitable (SoundClick, alonetone, SoundCloud, ReverbNation, etc.)
  
  For a good example of what I mean, see Tod's (Rata-tat-tat) page for his old band Powertrip:
  
  http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_7210759
  
  I think weebly.com is quite good because they offer lots of great ways to jazz up the page and make it your own. The only downside of weebly is that it limits your files to 5MB each for the free service, so you might have to use a lower bitrate for your longer songs (might not make much difference with old hissy recordings anyway).
  
  
• Create a topic in the Introduce Yourself board, if you haven't already. But only one topic per member, please. Think of this topic as your Home Page at Songcrafters. You can post information about yourself, bands you were in, etc. And you can include links to other sites where you've posted your older recordings. If people are interested, they can then visit these other sites to hear your older recordings, and comment on them right there in your Introduce Yourself topic. This way, all of the information and comments about your old recordings can be kept in one topic, and Songcrafters can stay focused on new recordings.
  
  Here's the topic Tod created for Powertrip:
  
  https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=15955.0
  
  Except for the fact that he posted it in General Discussion rather than Introduce Yourself, it's a good example of what I mean. Lots of us checked out his page and commented in that topic. There was no need to create separate topics for each song. We just followed the link to his Reverbnation page, listened to the songs, then commented in his Powertrip topic.
  
  
• Optionally, you can include links in your signature to the sites containing your older recordings. We have icons for the major sites already for that purpose:
  
  https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=4

Of course, if anyone wants to cover one of your old demos that they found on your external site, they're welcome to post it in the Cover Songs board because it is a new recording. Note that it's the vintage of the recording that I'm concerned about; not the vintage of the songs. Everyone is welcome to make new recordings of old songs and post them in the usual way. It's just the old recordings that I want to discourage. Most of our members found Songcrafters shortly after they purchased a new Boss BR recorder and searched for support from other BR owners. So Songcrafters has always been (and will continue to be) about what people are doing with their new recorders; not what they did many years ago with a cassette recorder or whatever.

I'd also like to point out that we've had two TributeFests so far, and will likely have more in the future. That would be a good time to encourage people to listen to your offsite older recordings to see if there's anything they want to cover for the festival. There will never be an Old Demo Fest but future TributeFests could serve a similar purpose in that way. I'd suggest that you also indicate in your Introduce Yourself topic if you want people to cover your songs (a few people don't want to have their songs covered). We also have an icon you can add to your signature to indicate that it's OK to Cover. See this message:

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=15129.msg189122#msg189122

[kenny mac]

oh well,I suppose thats what the general Discussion forum is handy for,Ironing out what we can do etc.
I personally have no interest in posting old material I just thought from a creative point of view it would have been good to see the results rather than copy a known bands back catalogues.
Oh well Onwards and upwards and er,,,Tally ho 

[64Guitars]

I just thought from a creative point of view it would have been good to see the results rather than copy a known bands back catalogues.

Definitely! That's what TributeFest is for. We do covers of songs written by other Songcrafters members. It doesn't matter if those are covers of recent songs posted here or older songs posted offsite. Either way, the cover will be a new recording, so that's fine.

And you don't have to wait for the next TributeFest. If you want to cover another member's original song, you can do so anytime (as long as the member is okay with having his songs covered).

We love tributes! I don't know when the next TributeFest will be but you can be sure that it will happen sooner or later. We'll probably have one every year or two (this year's was in May/June).

TributeFest 1 (2010)
https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?action=festival;sa=TributeFest

TributeFest 2 (May/June 2012)
https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?action=festival;sa=TributeFest%20II

[kenny mac]

Cool
,I think its a great accolade that someone wants to cover your song and there are so many great original songs on here,,,,,,,,In fact I think we should have an old rottenhead festival as he has a bigger back catalogue than K-tel 
Ok,sorry no more suggestions,Im with the flow from now on.

[Farrell Jackson]

Oakey Dokey.....my old tapes sound like crap anyway. It's best to leave them in the dust bin 

Farrell

[phantasm777]

don;t give up so easily. i plan sometime to put some of my old stuff on here, in my intro topic. most is not stereo and one mic on much of it, we're talkin 70's. 80's. i am going to use audacity to remix it and put or take away treble or bass where needed. when i have the time.

[henwrench]

What about in the 'Post Your Work' boards, we have a new one, 'Old Demos - Off Site Hosting Only'....or something? Mind you, to be honest, I find it incredibly hard to keep up with all the new stuff. I listen to more than people would be aware, I just don't comment as much as I should  Bad Boy, Dirty Boy....In your BED!!! 

                                                                         henwrench