Hi everyone, including Floyd and Charlie. This feedback back is great.

I appreciate all of your feedback.

This whole thing is an ongoing experiment to use one song to purposely and methodically *test* the commercial market from many different angles to see if the “professionals” have anything useful to contribute or whether it is a waste of artistic time to listen to “commercial-music centered feedback.”

I have learned a lot and the process of experimentation and alternate takes is not over. I am actually doing more as part of the experiment. I listened to the country music mixing YouTubes Floyd recommended and also took Charlie’s great advice on the use of compression and normalization in Audacity on certain individual tracks before mixing begins. Great suggestions.

There is compression all over the place on this mix and I think it does make it jump out of the speakers. It “sounds” radio, whether it has any emotion left or not—and that is not necessarily a good thing, but it is part of the learning curve. So, I have learned something from the forum on better mastering.
In terms of “authenticity” as Floyd mentioned, I believe I was at my most authentic when I was 12 years recording with my Yamaha acoustic onto a Silvertone cassette player from Sears.

I think I am going to try and get back to that era in this era by focusing more on simplicity and who I am rather than trying to “write for the market.” However, production-wise I do want to know everything the market has to say about production in terms of feedback so I can take what is useful and use it, and throw the rest away. I didn’t want to throw it away though, until I give myself a chance to hear 100 different sides of the story. Pure experiment.

Your feedback has been invaluable. Again, I learn most of what improves me on this forum, NOT from so-called “industry professional” so thank you. The forum is real.

David Snyder
Songwriter/Renaissance Man
Studio + Fingers

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