Finished writing a new song, 'A Game of Cards'. Please listen and comment.

[TommoUK]

Here it is:

A Game of Cards

Slaved over the recording for the last 2 days, but finished now. I've posted some stuff here before and can again if people like, but I just want some comments on this here song. Let me know what you think

Thanks!

Tommy

 

[TommoUK]

Thanks for all for comments.

Dr. EM:

The guitar is hard panned Left/Right, I'll try reducing the pan to see how it sounds.

The mic is a SM58, but I may have been a bit excessive with the EQ. I'll tone it down and see how it sounds. I always find bass hard to record and so used a keyboard for it this time, but I might try and record it with a real bass if I can find a good way to record it. As for the drums, anyone have any advice? I can't find much an alternative to using MIDI at the moment, although I'm sure there are much better VST instruments than the tacky one I'm using. I know Drums from Hell is meant to be good but it's a bit pricey... does anyone have any low-cost suggestions?

cleanbluesky:

I hear what you mean about the bass/guitar sync, you're right

My singing is my weakest area in my opinion, in a way this is all practice to make it better! After I've written a few more songs I plan on going through what I've done and trying to improve it some.

Thanks about the guitar

Never listened to Orson, but I'll check it out. I tried to follow a pretty conventional structure, with 2 verses, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus. Could it be that the song is maybe a bit too long to be accessible? My brother was saying something to that effect.

Anyway, thanks. It's better to hear constructive criticism than just complements, I have friends and family for that! I'll try and take on board what's been said and use it to improve on future songs. Like you said cleanbluesky, this is 'learning' for me in a way as I'm still very much a novice to this. I've only been playing the guitar a few years and have hardly any experience with the other instruments in the track.

Any more comments?

 

[TommoUK]

1) Write a easy song. Use a versue, bridge, chorus and make sure they all sound like they should follow on from each other...

2) Do not concentrate on the guitar parts. When people listen to your songs, there are many things that they will notice before your guitar playing and in order to impress them with your guitar playing EVERYTHING else needs to be in place first. The less 'impressive' guitar work you do on the next song, the better. Concerntrate on songcraft. The guitar exists only as a bkacground for the singing.

3) Sing it over and over again until you think you have got it in tune. This will be frustrating, but will teach you an incredible amount, and might also avoid the "back to the drawingboard" feeling if you dont feel you have got the song right and have to move onto something else...

I think the reason the vocals don't sound too in-tune is that I didn't give much thought to them, or a melody. I just tried to sing the lyrics I'd written to the tune of the chords I'd written already... perhaps if I write a more interesting melody for the vocals it'll sound more interesting?

Thanks.

 

[TommoUK]

Okay, thanks folks.

I think in my next song I'll try and go back to basics, and like has been suggested concentrate on the vocals and make sure it's got a nice melody. And maybe make the guitar a bit less harsh sounding.

I appreciate all the comments, at the end of the day I'm just trying to improve and get better at this, so it's all useful.