Originally Posted by Doug Dude
Hey Magne. Thanks for stopping in and sharing your views. As a business, it would 'pay' for you to get the best critique for the dollar BUT lets say this person at this company for what ever the price says do this and do that and then we'll talk. You talk and get the go ahead and then the person that is going make the decision based on his or her criteria doesn't agree? I say cut out the middle man and go to the last one for your critiqing needs.

Douglas


I do that sometimes too. As the 'customer' for these sercives, you are always in charge. And no matter what the critique is saying and who is doing it, Im still in charge of how to develop my song. The whole thing is an interpretive process, where you get help to inform and qualify your own judgement.

At SongU they actually show you the evaluation criteria beforehand, and you get a chance to ask the pro's to put emphasis on any aspect of the song you'd like. That is very useful for me. I use a couple of others as well, but I agree that the good ones are very hard to find, and that you might waste your money on a couple of poor ones before you find the people you click with. But hey, every relationship is like that.

I also think it is not about either-or pro vs. amateur critiques, it is both-and. Both types are very good to get and can be equally helpful, I think. Sometimes I feel the critiques here at JPF are so good, that further critiques won't be neccesary. But the way it most often work for me, is to get critiques from here early in the process, and the pro crits late (before you invest too much time/ money in the damn thing).

My process varies, and once in a while I feel like rebelling and get the song done without critique at all, but I like to have many options available and I do most often make use of them to get my darling songs they best they possibly can. Also if someone is coming on to me wanting me to pay money for critiques, I won't go there. That is violating the trust, as feedback won't be any good to anyone if they are not asking actively for it themselves. This is a basic premise of using critiques, you got to be open and you got to feel recieving feedback can be useful for you, otherwise your money is better spent on new gear! :-)