"Papa Hawg," my fingerpick guitar instrumental, has been sitting at #2 in the instrumental section for most of the day. Based on this, I'm going to work on some more fingerpick instrumentals, but more importantly, it's served to show how important the first few seconds of the song is.

Many of my songs start with a slow groove. "Papa Hawg" cooks from the top. It's long been one of my most popular songs, but on OurStage, it's done better, by far, than of my others.

OurStage gives you a chance to compare your songs. To see what's doing better than others. It does for many what a critique could never do. It shows what people like. There may be "strategic" voting at the higher levels, but I've never sent out a message on OurSpace, and have never aksed folks from MySpace or any other sites to vote. So there must be a certain amount of validity to a song that does well. I can't think of any other resource that gives you such feedback. Peer reviews? The peer crits here at JPF are valuable, but they're not anonymous, and folks don't just vote yes or no, so they may be a bit skewed. Pro critiques also give valuable information, but not as to whether a song will be a hit, just as to whether a song, in the eyes of the critic, has good craft. The contests here at JPF have Brian's simple but genius idea to make the only instruction to judges be that they vote songs that "move" them (which has already been "ripped off" by other contests.) However, they have a huge number of entrants with a few judges. OurStage provides anonymous peer judging, combined with continuous monitoring of position.

Again, I recommend OurStage to any artist looking for feedback on their material.

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way. -Johnny Cash

It's only music.
-niteshift

Mike Dunbar Music