"The User Showcase is an area where users of PG Music products (e.g. Band-in-a-Box or RealBand) can post links to their original song compositions, for others to listen to."

Ole man ramblings (rants?) in no particular order:

I think PG Music above well stated the purpose of the forum and that most members adhere to it.

The user forum is IMHO an opportunity for PG Music to, well, showcase what members are doing with their products and I think it does a fine job of that...a good business model.

"Too many" attagirls and attaboys is a heckuva lot better than the snarky comments I see on so many other forums. I have served as the admin of a forum and a moderator on a very large forum and I find the forums here light years ahead of most regarding civility, moderating and, yes, helpful information.

There is a songwriter forum ... oh wait that's what I'm typing on smile

A like button would (again IMHO) opinion serve no use other than to drastically reduce the number of comments and as with FaceBook result in folks flipping through the post and hitting "like" -- often with no notion of what the content is.

Guess I'm the odd man out but through my decade on the showcase forum I have learned more about mixing and mastering and songwriting than I ever dreamed and I started in a studio in 1965. Admittedly a lot of it has been through friends made on the forum and subsequent off forum contact. But sans the forum that would never have happened. We came to the board as a couple of hardcore bluegrass pickers and evolved into blues rock...and it's been a fun journey that I owe to the forum.

We and quite a few others always ask for comments. We follow PG Music's forum rules and post specifically what equipment, fx, were used in the production (although many do not).

We "keep up" on the forum by focusing on those that actively participate ... more specifically those that join the community and participate in threads other than solely their own. There is no rule for attaboy/girls...if you don't enjoy the songs from a poster why not just move on and focus on what you like and can learn from or help the poster possibly improve?

Having blathered all that a forum specifically to parse out aspects of songwriting and production is an interesting idea. The potential "issue" I see is whether or not it would evolve into a place where BiaB might not even be mentioned. And in that case surely there are other forums around the net to discuss same.

PS I'm using generic "you's" in the above, i.e., not preaching to anybody on this thread ... just doing the aforementioned ramble smile

Bud





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