Free feedback and advice on songwriting, recording and mixing - via Twitter

This idea is simple, but fantastic:

• You send a link for a song you would like some advice about
• The link is posted on Twitter, so anyone else who would like to can take a listen, and offer their opinion
• All those comments are posted on Twitter - meaning:
• Other people can read all the opinions, and reply, if they like. Anyone is free to join the conversation
• You can see if you agree with the comments, and perhaps put them into action to improve your song, recording or mix

There are two places you can see it in action:

For advice and comments on recording, mixing and production, follow @prodAdvice or visit the Production Advice Community for more detailed information. Songs and comments are archived on a dedicated Tumblr blog.

For songwriting advice and comments, follow @RavenousRaven on Twitter, or go to the Twitter Songwriting Community to find out more.

(If you’re not sure what Twitter is all about yet, try the free Twitter 101 For Musicians PDF here on Music Think Tank.)

WHY is this such a great idea ? Because everybody wins:

• Artists, songwriters and producers get free, crowdsourced feedback and advice
• People following @RavenousRaven and @prodAdvice can listen to the songs and also benefit from listening in on the conversation
• Anyone contributing will find a huge benefit from taking part - “flexing your muscles” by thinking about other people’s work and making aconstructivecomments is a great way to gain perspective on your own strengths and weaknesses
• Everybody gets to network with other people who share their passion and interest - artists gain exposure, songwriters hear artists, artists can connect with songwriters, producers can interact with artists, artists and bands can suss out producers…
• Did I say everybody wins ?

This idea came originally from @RavenousRaven, and I’ve stolen borrowed it from him (with permission!) for the Production Advice Community. I hope you like it as much as we do, and will want to get involved.

Ian Shepherd is the founder of the Production Advice website, a professional producer and senior Mastering Engineer at leading independent facility SRT. He is also the author of the respected Mastering Media blog, where he’s possibly best-known for his criticism of excessively loud CDs like Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”, and for his role in the fierce debate over the so-called “Loudness Wars”.

Comments

[Justin Boland]

Soundcloud is a great tool for that, since listeners can give feedback directly "onto" the wav and critique specific points.

[pete whitfield]

It's a great idea Ian and when I've got through this batch of mad work I'm gonna contribute! I, too, like the SoundCloud concept that Justin mentions for the timed comments. It opens the wider question of how we perceive (or 'see') a song - its structure and shape. Thanks for getting this up and running though! I've been playing around with a way to present a song to get inside it and learn from it at http://www.insidethemusic.co.uk/studysongs/fadingaway/loader.html I've got a long way to go - it's on my to do list!

[Ian Shepherd]

@Justin - you're right, the timed comments on SoundCloud are great - I'll consider getting people to use SoundCloud so I can embed it in the blog posts for each song.

I've found it a little piecemeal in the past, though - the nice thing about the Twitter account is that people can respond to other's comments,and it naturally builds a group of people with shared interests - maybe that's true of the SoundCloud version too, I'll dig a little deeper.

@Pete - Thanks for that link, it's a really interesting approach ! And, I look forward to whatever you send :-)