r/WeAreTheMusicMakers

Hey everyone!

So here’s the situation, my boyfriend is an aspiring musician. He plays electric guitar and wants to record and produce music. He’s got a phenomenal ear for it, the only problem is that he doesn’t have a laptop or an interface or anything (this guys has like 6 guitars though lmao)
His birthday is coming up and I want to get him an interface and a laptop.
His best mate said to get the Scarlett solo interface so I had a look at that and I’ve found a few different places with it (djcity, brisound, mannys, dicksmith, etc) they all have bundle packs with headphones and a mic and some with cables some without (do I need to get cables? He has some for his amp and guitar, would these be beneficial?)
I see there’s a 4th gen and then there’s like 2i2 and 4i4 versions, which would be best to get him?
He’s also said he wants an Apple laptop or an Apple air, would this laptop work best or is there something better that would be more beneficial for him?

Idk anything about all this but I want to learn and get him the very best I can (that’s like somewhat affordable) so any advice is deeply appreciated!!

Hello everyone,

So I sent 3 tracks to a label.

They replied very positively saying they really liked the tracks, that they fit the label well, and that they wanted to do an EP with me.
They also said they would later tell me the release date etc.

The feedback they gave was:

• bass was a bit too loud/heavy
• they wanted the tracks to be around 6 minutes instead of 4

I replied saying no problem, I would fix everything and send updated versions that same week.

3 days later I sent the final versions back.
They replied asking me to enable downloads on SoundCloud.
I did it immediately, they said “thanks, we’ll contact you”.

Now it has been 2 weeks with complete silence.

What worries me is:

• the SoundCloud links still have literally 0 plays
• so it looks like they didn’t even listen to the updated versions yet

From your experience, what does this usually mean with labels?

Is this normal and they’re just busy / slow, or is this usually a bad sign and they probably lost interest?

Trying to understand how common this is in electronic music labels.
Thanks,

I started producing music a few years ago and eventually started writing lyrics, I’m finding myself making progress with both writing and production but my voice fails me every time I get on the mic. For now I’m only recording bars, not singing yet.. has anyone here gotten through that phase and made it to what they find to be adequate vocal control?

Have been playing guitar for a while and now piano for the last 3 years. I am composing with my teacher, but somehow when I learn the rythm of how I want to play I can't seem to play with the metronome when reading. For example when playing on the left hand arpeggio and having to do crochets with the right hand, I tend to accelerate.

Metronome just becomes a distraction.

Any tips out there?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the second chorus of a song I’m working on more interesting. Do you have any go to tricks you use for your second chorus?

I’ve played music for a long time but never got around to composing a song, which is my current aim.

I have plenty of whistle recordings made on the spot as I tend to pick up the music while I’m outside, though in reality the issue comes up all the same when I’m around my guitar.

I assume that a musician who’s familiar with associating sounds with chord shapes, if not chord denominations altogether, would be able to lay out the chord progressions relatively easily.

I would like to know what learning pathways there are in order to reach that stage, especially the first steps since I’m pretty much clueless beside standard major and minor chords.

Welcome to the r/WeAreTheMusicMakers Weekly Feedback Thread! The comments below in this post is the only place on this subreddit to get feedback on your music, your artist name, your website layout, your music video, or anything else. (Posts seeking feedback outside of this thread will be deleted without warning and you will receive a temporary ban.)

This thread is active for one week after it's posted, at which point it will be automatically replaced.

##Rules:

***Post only one song.**- *Original comments linking to an album or multiple songs will be removed.*

* **Write at least three constructive comments.** - *Give back to your fellow musicians!*

* **No promotional posts.** - *No contests, No friend's bands, No facebook pages.*

##Tips for a successful post:

* **Give a quick outline of your ideas and goals for the track.** - *"Is this how I trap?" or "First try at a soundtrack for a short film" etc.*

* **Ask for feedback on specific things.** - *"Any tips on EQing?" or "How could I make this section less repetitive?"*

***

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Welcome to the r/WeAreTheMusicMakers Weekly Promotion Thread! Here, in the comments below, you can shamelessly promote whatever music project you've been working on. Music, videos, Discord servers, websites, social media, promote anything you want. Posts promoting anything outside this thread will be removed without warning.

Contest mode has been enabled to prevent vote manipulation. Every time you open this thread, you will see new comments at the top. Your comment will be displayed randomly like the others.

This thread is active for one week after it's posted, at which point it is automatically replaced.

#Other Weekly Threads (most recent at the top):

* [Click here for Feedback threads.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/search?q=author%3A%22automoderator%22+title%3A%22feedback%22&sort=new&restrict\_sr=on&t=all)

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I finally learned enough theory for my needs. I can screw around endlessly on and around a key, and it all sounds like music. A few times every session, I'll find something that \*feels\* like something, and my first impulse is always that it's too simple. After some effort dressing it up, I decide it's too busy and convoluted, and now I hate it.

Very simple progressions, good pacing, emotional weight, they have everything I want to communicate when I sit down every day. But it's never good enough. Obviously some of my favorite songs are just as straightforward, and I'm making exactly what I wanted to make. I have a straightforward, tasteful progression to build a soundscape from, but I can't accept it, and I start over again and again.

My favorite artists work on basic, elegant melodies, propped up by power chords and some dynamic atmospheres. There are some solos, but even those are starting to look easier to navigate than I originally assumed, even if they take some time and effort.

What the hell is my problem?

I'm a f23 and as a child I've always wanted to make music however I wasn't taken seriously about pursuing it.

I've been playing around with music production off and on since I was about 17 with Bandlab and Garage Band and I'm finally ready to fully get into it.

I'm not super familiar with music theory and I'm not the best vocalist but I think this will be a great creative outlet for me (besides photography, one of my main sources). I wish I pursued music when I was younger but it's never too late.

With that being said, what kind of advice should I know going into this, especially independently? I greatly appreciate the responses!! :)

I'm putting together some rock songs that I wrote on guitar. My punk rock roots tell me to keep it classic, with the standard guitar, bass, vox, and drums lineup, and to get a live sound. But I just finished watching Mark Ronson's masterclass where he mentions how Amy Winehouse's album showed him how modernizing the sound and keeping it from sounding too vintage made it more potent. Of course it's subjective, but I'm looking for ideas that just might make my music more interesting. Do you have any techniques for modernizing your rock tracks?

Hey everyone,

I'm working on a research project comparing technical quality between AI-generated music (Suno v5.5) and real human-produced songs. I'm building a dataset and need high-quality full tracks that include:

• Clear vocals + full instrumentation/music
• Good production quality
• Different genres (Pop, Dance, Hip-Hop, Rock, Ballad, etc.)

I've already been using MTG-Jamendo and Free Music Archive, but I want to add more variety, especially more recent tracks.

I'm looking for recommendations on:

• Best places or communities to find good full tracks right now
• Any specific producers, labels, or sites known for clean, professional-sounding music with vocals
• Tips for finding tracks that are royalty-free or usable for academic research

Any suggestions would be really helpful. Thanks in advance!

TLDR in the title. But for context I've been playing live with a group of guys for over 10 years. I usually play percussion and sometimes sing. We've always been pretty tight but for some reason over the past couple of weeks I keep getting lost and will lose the tempo of what we're doing. I'm not playing anything overly complicated or out of what I would usually do but it's like I just can't feel where everybody is at anymore. Has anyone else experienced this or have any knowledge on what this could possibly be?

Hey guys so me and my band are having trouble finding a good band name that we all agree on. We’ve gone through at least 50 names already and we’ve disagreed on all of them. If you guys could give some ideas I’d appreciate it a ton, thanks.

I've been writing music off and on for probably about 9 or 10 years now, but I'm just now doing it in a serious capacity and actually recording and producing. I always get so sick of listening to my own stuff so many times during the process. Is that just the craft? Does it ever go away?

Hi! First off, if I’m not posting this in the right place, please let me know if I need to ask elsewhere (I’m new to posting on reddit).

I have been writing lyrics for over 10 years. I’ve written hundreds of lyrics and have divided them into projects. I have an idea for an album that I really can’t stop thinking about. I record myself singing, with a very clear idea of how I want the song to sound and I can just hear the instrumentals playing very clearly in my mind.

I don’t really have a background in music. I used to play guitar and piano but don’t currently. I also tried taking courses at Berklee online but felt very overwhelmed and fell very behind in my classes and ended up failing them. I purchased Ableton Live, an interface, a mic, a midi keyboard, etc. I am just really lost on what the next step is. I have tried watching a bunch of YouTube videos but find it very confusing. What is the next step in the process if I have lyrics and a sound figured out and want to translate that to the computer and make it into a full song? I appreciate any help or guidance y’all can give, I just feel so stumped and lost. Also am I missing a step in general or starting in the wrong place? Should I be looking for producers instead of trying to teach/learn it all myself?

TLDR I am a lyricist with all the equipment to make a song but not sure how to proceed with making a song while having limited music skills. I just feel very lost but am very passionate about the album idea I have and really want to work hard to make it happen.

Been thinking a lot lately about how fragmented remote music collaboration still feels, and I’m curious whether other people actually feel the same way or if the current workflow is just considered good enough.

When you’re collaborating with producers, artists, engineers, or vocalists remotely and sending stems/tracks back and forth, are you genuinely happy with how it works right now? I feel like most people still rely on some combination of Dropbox, email, and bounced versions with messed up names.

I wonder if this is a frustrating part of the collaboration process for other people because everyone’s using different platforms and there’s a general feeling of fatigue, but maybe it’s just me.
Curious what your experience has been and whether you think remote music collaboration is actually a problem worth solving or if existing tools already do the job well enough.

*Edit* Problem solved. Thanks to the people who answered.

I recorded a whole song and had really healthy wavelengths that were mostly even on top and bottom. If I'm being critical, the wavelengths on top were slightly higher than the bottom but overall, even. I went to record another song with the same guitar today and the wavelength has almost flipped. Same tuning. Same pickups. Same guitar cable. I can't figure out why it changed. I tried changing the cables, switched guitars (the wavelength was damn near perfect), so it leads me to believe it's something with the guitar. The only thing I changed in the middle of the full song I wrote was the action on the neck so the strings might be slightly closer to the pickups. It sounds full if I'm not looking at the wavelengths but I'd like to know what others have found to be the culprit for this asymmetrical waveform. Are there other things I should consider?

Someone stole my music, my literal exact audio file, and uploaded it to Spotify and it got hundreds of thousands of listens. He used DistroKid to upload my music.

This was a song I created by myself years ago, It is all real instruments. Has my voice in it, etc.

They put it under a slightly different artist name and song title, and the beginning was slightly cut by like 2 seconds and the end was cut by a second or two also, so the exact duration doesn't match up perfectly to the actual original file, its a few seconds off.

I suspect they may have done this to try to bypass detection, it doesn't change the actual experience of the song its just a few seconds of silence mostly.

I successfully had it removed for copyright infringement after showing extensive evidence to Spotify I am the rightful creator. However, I do not use Spotify.

Now I'm thinking I should put the official song on Spotify, but can I get those plays transferred over to my now official legitimate Spotify page? Is it possible? Has it happened before? What do I have to do?