Can I Please Have Your Opinion?

[MakahaMusic]

Hello.
I would like your opinion of a few of my songs. I wrote "Ride With The Devil" about a bass player that I knew a few years back who died way too young. He died at the age of 29.
Here are the direct links to the songs:

Ride With The Devil:

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_233591


You Don't Got It:

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_229915


I welcome comments from both musicians and non-musicians....


Thanks for listening,
David

- - - - - - - -
EDIT

I'll explain more about the following song in a later post--

I Need Your Lovin':

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_21868


This song is R&B, the first song above is pop/rock, the second one is rock with a touch of punk. Of course these might make you guys/gals think I'm weird for writing in different genres, but hey, I'm a gemini and gemini's supposedly can't make up their minds....

or maybe I'm just CRAZY or schizo


but this madness is just the tip of the iceberg, I've written jazz, electronica, reggae, country, thrash metal, pop, rock, r&b, children's, contemporary christian, latin (cuban), latin (bossa nova, samba), classical (violin caprices, choir pieces, string quartet) and world beat....trying for more....

Most of these songs took me a long time, because on most of them (not all), I had to sing and play all the instruments....but it's a labor of love....

Here's a Latin pop song, with me singing the chorus in Spanish (yeah, you can make fun of me=):

Fiesta (Come on let's dance):

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_64473


And now here's some Electronica--
Spectrum:
http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_162305

And here's a Children's song--
Stories Make It Easier:
http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_233594


And here's a smooth jazz song, I sing phonetically along with the guitar in the chorus--
Transparence:
http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_21871


I'm Chinese, but I actually sing with a slight drawl on this Country song--
Another Number:
http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_386500


I guess this is adult contemporary--
They're His Now:
http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_382295


And a bossa nova Christmas song--
Early on Christmas Day
http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_101338


I'll add some more songs, but I think I'll add them below in later posts....so that this first post doesn't become too big....

[dbSk iS k00l]

i only listened to Ride With The Devil its a sad song but its good ^^.

[MakahaMusic]

i only listened to Ride With The Devil its a sad song but its good ^^.

Thank you for the kind words,

and thanks for taking the time to listen.

[MakahaMusic]

Oh, I guess I should also add, so there's no confusion since this sub-forum is for performers/artists, it's me singing on "Ride with the devil" and I played all the instruments/programming.

On "You don't got it," the singer was my co-writer for that song, Beth...

[Guest SailorBoy62]

Wow... totally was not expecting "Ride With The Devil" to be so... mellow-ish with those lyrics. But it was good. "You Don't Got It" is really catchy and fun, I love it. It reminds me of something that Blondie would do.

[Guest lovejoo]

i like the second song ^^

did you really mix/play the background music yourself?

talented!

[Guest fixated on 1 star]

Ooh "Ride w/ the Devil" - very nice, sounds cool, laidback ish.

Great singing voice too =D.

And all that music and bg stuff you wrote also? That's awesome..

Very talented.

You both (you and Beth) sound professional XD.

Hmm, "MakahaMusic"?

You from Hawaii? Kinda reminds me of this band here called Makaha Sons, they're a hawaiian band. They're awesome too hehe.

[MakahaMusic]

Wow... totally was not expecting "Ride With The Devil" to be so... mellow-ish with those lyrics. But it was good. "You Don't Got It" is really catchy and fun, I love it. It reminds me of something that Blondie would do.

Thank you for the compliments and thanks for listening.

Regarding "Ride with the devil", yeah I intentionally wrote the music to be a little deceptive in relation to the lyrics. I didn't want the music to be too depressing with a lot of minor chords...so I was trying for a more bittersweet kind of feel, not a depressing kind of feel...

And in the chorus section, I intentionally stayed away from strict V-I cadences, so a little unusual there...

Some people have not liked this approach, and some have, so I guess that's why I'm looking for more comments here...

either good or bad....

[MakahaMusic]

Ooh "Ride w/ the Devil" - very nice, sounds cool, laidback ish.

Great singing voice too =D.

And all that music and bg stuff you wrote also? That's awesome..

Very talented.

You both (you and Beth) sound professional XD.

Hmm, "MakahaMusic"?

You from Hawaii? Kinda reminds me of this band here called Makaha Sons, they're a hawaiian band. They're awesome too hehe.

Thank you for the kind words and for listening.

Yeah, I was born and raised in Hawaii. How about you?

Yes, the Makaha Sons (of Ni'ihau)....yes, a legendary Hawaiian music band...they're great!

[Guest fixated on 1 star]

^Haha yeah, I'm from Waipahu =D.

I knew you were from Hawaii lol.

That was great btw, keep posting more.

[MakahaMusic]

i like the second song ^^

did you really mix/play the background music yourself?

talented!

Thanks for the kind comments and for listening

[MakahaMusic]

Ooh "Ride w/ the Devil" - very nice, sounds cool, laidback ish.

Great singing voice too =D.

And all that music and bg stuff you wrote also? That's awesome..

Very talented.

You both (you and Beth) sound professional XD.

But honestly, I never thought of myself as a singer, I just sing on some of my songs so I don't have to pay a pro singer to do it. I sound okay most of the time. But I'll be honest about my limitations: I don't have much of a vibrato, which is okay for some styles (especially bossa nova which I sing okay) and it seems to work on "Ride with the devil"

And I guess the emotion comes through which is important. But people keep telling me to sing, and it makes me blush.

Thanks again for the compliments, but seriously I don't really think of myself as a singer, in fact I see myself as (in order of importance to me):

1. songwriter/composer

2. producer/arranger

3. guitar player

4. keyboard/piano player

5. bass player

6. video games player

7. cook (and I don't do it often or very well either....I make good pasta though)

8. singer

So as you can see, singing is not high on my list of priorities....I do it for practical purposes...

[ss5o1em]

hi

fellow composer here!!

hehe... i'm a newbie though..lol

and my style is diff..way diff.

i do slow ballads ..mainly piano..hehe

newaiiz.. these songs are pretty good..

and ur voice is pretty good too..

u did a good job..

do u use ne programs to compose??

[MakahaMusic]

hi

fellow composer here!!

hehe... i'm a newbie though..lol

and my style is diff..way diff.

i do slow ballads ..mainly piano..hehe

newaiiz.. these songs are pretty good..

and ur voice is pretty good too..

u did a good job..

do u use ne programs to compose??

Thanks for the kind words, and thank you for taking the time to listen.

I'm not sure what you mean by ne programs to compose....

Do you mean composing software? The only PC software I've used is noteworthy for my classical pieces (I have some violin caprices that I wrote, a few short orchestral pieces, and some SATB pieces for choir). But when I write in other genres, be it rock, pop, jazz, R&B, reggae, etc., I use a different process. First I get the general idea of the song with just vocal and guitar on a simple cassette recorder so I don't forget my ideas.

Then if I decide to record one of my songs (I just don't have the time to record all my songs, I have 150+ songs/compositions, and the last couple of years, I take care of my disabled father who had a stroke a while back, so I have very little time to record), I decide what the arrangement will be, then fire up the old Roland VS-1680 16-track digital multitrack I have. I bought it back in 1999 for about $3500, but it's obsolete now. You can get the Roland VS-2480 24-track digital multitrack with motorized faders and a DVD/CD burner for the same price now.

And it depends what my goal is, either to record a rough demo with some bass, keyboards, guitars, vocals, or if I'm going for master/broadcast quality which takes way more time.

I record all the instruments myself so it takes a long time to lay down all the tracks if I'm going for master quality (which means of a sufficiently high enough sound quality that it could be release as is, or it could be used for film/TV applications which need very high quality recordings, because usually music supervisors for film/TV don't have the time or money to re-record your song in the studio, so they use your recording, if they like your song). If I'm going for master/broadcast quality, pretty much all the instrument and vocal parts have to be close to perfect, no string buzzes on the bass or guitar, no wrong notes, no flat or sharp notes in the vocals, no digital distortion (in digital recording, your recording levels can never hit 0db or you'll get nasty distortion, whereas if you're using an old analog cassette multitrack, you can sometimes go +2db or +3db into the red, and it's a natural pleasant warm distortion, and some recording engineers used to do that on their big 48-track analog recorders on 2" wide reel to reel tapes).

On "ride with the devil", it was a rather rough recording (like I said, I take care of my disabled Dad, so it's hard to do serious production work anymore), in fact there's no bass guitar. But the emotion in the vocals came through, so it's not really that noticable....I think....

anyways, thanks for the comments...

do you have a link to your music??

or do you have a thread in this forum for your music??

I can listen to your music and give you my thoughts if you don't mind....

[MakahaMusic]

And now, for something completely different from my first two songs above, going the R&B route, here's another one of my songs--

I Need Your lovin':

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_21868

This song is master/broadcast quality and as such, it took me a long, long time to finish it. I produced it and it took me 2 months to finish. I played all the instruments: keyboards, guitars, bass, percussion, drum programming. I sang the background vocals. The lead vocals is Justin Young. The drum programming alone took me about 15 hours to program, because I never use presets, I always start from scratch, so that the kick drum will always lock in with the bass line. And I tweaked and tweaked the channel EQs (which are parametric EQs), changed reverbs and delays, added and subtracted compressors (my Roland VS1680 16 track multi-track hard disk recorder has 4 different effects processors although I wish it had more), fiddled with the multiband compressor (like a standard compressor inserted into a channel, except it breaks up the frequency spectrum into three parts and then compresses each part seperately with different threshold settings) and mixed and re-mixed and listened to the mixes in different environments on different monitors (like my friends' Genelecs) to make sure the bass, mids, and trebles were equally balanced. That's why it took me 2 months....plus I'm a perfectionist too, actually maybe obssessive compulsive....

By the way, yes, there's a song from the 1960s with the same title, "I need your lovin'" but it sounds totally different from mine, both in regards to melody and lyrics. You can only copyright melody and lyrics. You can not copyright a song title. That's why there are quite a few songs that share the same title, but are completely different songs. I know this because Tower Records use to have this computer thing called Muse, which could search for song titles and artists, and when you typed in song titles, you'd be amazed at how many songs share the same title. But that's okay, as long as the words and music are different...

Anyways, please give me your opinion of it, good or bad....

[Guest blackbird]

beautiful music! i absolutely love your mellow tone in ride with the devil

your lyrics seem pretty folky, which i think matches your vocal style

you've got this soothing way of singing

i'd appreciate it if you could check out some of my songs too

www.myspace.com/patriciajlee

[MakahaMusic]

beautiful music! i absolutely love your mellow tone in ride with the devil

your lyrics seem pretty folky, which i think matches your vocal style

you've got this soothing way of singing

i'd appreciate it if you could check out some of my songs too

www.myspace.com/patriciajlee

Thank you for the kind comments!!

Yes, I will definately check out your music...

There are so many talented singers, composers on so many different forums. Fantasii is a really good singer (she has a thread here), and I've listened to so, so many talented musicians from all over....

I just wish I had a broadband connection....I have a super slow dial up 56k modem which makes streaming of songs very long....even at the low-fi settings it's still slow to stream songs, but I'll listen to your music

thanks again!

[MakahaMusic]

Here's the link to another of my songs--

Fiesta (come on, let's dance):

http://www.broadjam.com/player/player.php?play_file=5366_64473

....I sing in Spanish in the chorus. This one is Latin pop. The chorus section is a songo rhythm (afro-cuban). I've studied many books on afro-cuban music and jammed with local salsa players, and I programmed the drum machine from scratch, so it took a long time, about 40 hours to program the drum machine, note by note by note, very tedious. If you have studied afro-cuban/salsa, it is one of the most sophisticated rhythmic music you can find anywhere. The way the congas, claves, etc. interweave together is amazing. And the bass guitar is the connection between the rhythmic and harmonic structure.

...it took me a while to record this one, I played all the instruments and mixed/mastered. My co-writer Heidi is overdubbed like 12 times, and I overdubbed myself about 12 times in the chorus to give it that huge party like background vocals.

And I don't speak a word of Spanish....my co-writer for this particular song (I have three co-writers that I work with on and off, I write all the music, but I need help sometimes with the lyrics) helped me with the spanish lyrics in the chorus....and my pronunciations aren't the greatest...so you can make fun of me

Let me know what you think, good or bad....

[MakahaMusic]

my songs are not streaming now, now as in Wednesday 7:10 pm Hawaii time...

Is it my computer/web browser, or is it the broadjam website? Can you guys hear the songs?

- - - -

Edit

10:38 pm Hawaii time--

the songs are streaming fine now, it was a temporary thingy....

[Guest fixated on 1 star]

^no I can't hear it either =D

Thanks for the PM btw. I usually listen to rock and no, I don't write/sing/have music on Soompi. I just like going on here and hearing other people and their talents XD.