Embarressed of your own music

Ahmadbarqawi wrote: Well i recorded some demos using my acoustic guitar & a microphone (i sold my electric guitar due to dire financial situation)...   & the thing is that i'm actually a bit embarrassed to share these tracks because i know the quality is not acceptable (although my friend heard it & he thought it was pretty good)   Does anyone else have this problem & how do I overcome it.

I had the exact same problem as you, but it was 2 to 4 years ago.
I started recording on tape. You know, the worst quality ever!  Also my voice was totally untrained so it sucked. I did that for about one year, recording something like 6 songs.
Then I teamed up with a friend who plays keys and we recorded on a PC our only composition. It was instrumental.
Nowadays I just feel kind of proud but mostly laugh at my early recordings.

What I did to overcome that is:
- got in a band, played with as many people as I could.
- stopped singing for a while, tried to find singer.
- practicing until I could play the whole songs live and then recording them.

Chameleon wrote: Hmm... I can never, ever get the tracks to sync up perfectly in Audacity.

It takes a little tweaking, But you have to use the time shift button.

Audacity is an amazing little program considering that it's free. It runs on Macs too.

Eetu Pellonpää wrote: I think Klaus Schulze said that "To be an artist you have to be an egoist.". Maybe this is partially true, and one shouldn't be ashamed of his/her own works. But ofcourse there should be a quality control when doing an album, or when giving a concert or an exhibition. Too hard self-criticism then makes it impossible to advance as an artists, as you see all of your works too poor.

I remember myself being ashamed of my lyrics :D Some of my friends were really shocked because of my lyrics. So its allways interesting to sing with lyrics I wrote to my friends nowadays. But before I was emberassed.

And an advice.

FINISH WHAT YOU HAVE STARTED. Even it was not a satisfactory...

Even many succesfull musicians usually think they are not good songwriters. So let people decide wheter it is good or bad. Just have records you can rely on. Good or bad.

Atay

Edited by ailgun - June 21 2007 at 07:03

Kraftwerk seems to be doing everything it can to eliminate the period of their history before Autobahn.  I don't know if this is out of embarrassment or maintainance of their image, though.  

just practice a lot untill you can sound good in any situation! Don't record something unless you've practiced it to death. Also, specializing in improv (like myself) can help in those sticky situations where you're loosing it...

Not to plug a Mac but..... Garage Band (free) can help the recording thing quite a bit as it has all the effects and sound generators you could want.

The Bard wrote: im sure if you like it then people with similar tastes will like it too and maybe be able to give constructive criticism.  if they completely bash it then thats just thier opinion and it cant be that bad if you like it.

yea but that's exactly what i'm talking about

 

for example i think that my music is good (not technical though) & listen to it all the time & i know that i can't be objective since these songs are mine, on the other hand i'm too embarrassed to let someone else hear it in order to get an unbiased opinion....