Are any of these Americana tunes CD-worthy?

Delmont

Member
Hey!

Over the past fifty years, I've written over 200 songs. When I play live, I mostly play a lot of blues, country, and folk. My song writing is mostly in the old-style American-rootsy story-telling tradition - not jazz, classic rock, punk, hip-hop, or electronica. No looping, sampling, or midi.

I've never tried to sell a song. But, now that I'm retired, some side cash would come in handy. So I'm thinking of putting a few of them onto a well-packaged CD to send around.

Even though I do gig occasionally, I'm not a big instrumentalist, not a recording engineer, and certainly not a singer. So finding eight or ten that anyone would actually like to listen to is tough. If I can't reach critical mass, I'll spend the money I've set aside for the project on something else - maybe a nice new guitar.

But I haven't given up yet. Here are fourteen tunes that I made multi-tracking on a Tascam: The Outcasts

So if you like Americana, how about listening to at least ten seconds of each song and tell me what you think. Are there any that are CD-worthy? Are there any that need just a little more work? Are there any that you would probably not include?

You should know that:

- it's mainly the sound quality of what you hear that I'm concerned with - the playing, singing, recording and mixing. I'm too close to them to be objective and don't have any friends or family who would tell me anything they think I don't want to hear.

- I'd rather dump the project and spend my music budget on new gear than waste money on a go-nowhere CD project. So I won't be crushed if you advise me to forget the CD and go for the new-guitar consolation prize instead.

- Leon Fullerton is the pen name I use for copyrighting music. The voice and the instruments are all me.

- you can find the lyrics and back stories to each song if you follow the links next to each MP3.

- there are about a hundred other songs scattered throughout the website. If you happen to bump into one that would work better on my hypothetical CD, I'd love to know about it. As I say, I can't be objective. I like all of 'em!​

Thanks!
 
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I listened to snippets of several songs and thought the vocal was way too loud in each of them. The musical bed sounded good. Performance, instrumentation, etc. all good. And the singing isn't bad, though more like a sing/talk delivery, but that works fine... it's just too loud in the mix.

If you were able to go back and pull down the vocal track in each song, it would be more listenable. Bring down the vocal track to where most of the other instruments are, then you can find a good balance and fine tune the mix.

Hope this helps.
 
The vocal is a little loud. It's mostly too dry tho. It doesn't sound like th vocalist is in the same room as the rest of the band. Rather it sounds like you're in a closet whispering into the listener's ear.
 
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