Lonely Soul (very moving R&B style sound, also links to my other work)

Lonely Soul - Very nice arrangement!  However, you seem to be repeating the same melody line plus a variation with the chord progression.  Need to add something more

Caribbean gofast - Again another excellent arrangement!  Also the melody is repeating too much.

Tokyo night - This song is better developed with different parts and progression.  Very nice atmospheric song.  The center snare is bit too loud.  The overall arrangement need some synth to occupy the upper mids.  Right now most of them is in the lower mids and they seem a bit crowded. 

Thanks Vechung for the advice. You are right of course about lonely soul having too much repetition. The problem was that I felt I came up with quite a good melody and a good chorus, and then everything else I did after that didn't really sound as good if you know what I mean. So in the end I figured the lyrics would have to do most of the work. As for Caribbean gofast, same problem really. It's like, whenever I come up with something good, everything else afterwards is just second best to the original idea that kickstarted the project. I seem to have this problem a lot when I'm coming up with ideas for melodies and chord progressions. I'm definitely going to be working on that from now on with hopefully much more variation and more bridge sections in my tracks to change things up a bit. With Tokyo night, once again you are totally correct. I just love any sound in the lower mid range, it's so pleasant to my ears. I don't know why but there is one small range of sound that just seems to agree with me. If it's too high then I don't like it and if it's too low then I don't like it. With all of the amazing variation in music I suppose that is a bit of a problem for an aspiring musician ;)

But it probably is too crowded with so many tracks and different sounds all trying to occupy the same relatively small space. One thing I might do is change or take away the pad sound entirely because without that it doesn't sound like there is even half as much going on. I suppose pads have a funny way of creating a lot of busyness in that way.

Also Willybob I was thinking that the lyrics would be about a sad breakup. It's pretty standard stuff I know but I don't really have any experience in writing lyrics so it would be quite safe territory to get started in. Plus I think everyone has some experience with sad breakups so that should help.

To be honest actually I don't have much experience with any of this stuff. I finally decided to get serious about getting into music almost exactly a year ago now. Before then I had never played a musical instrument of any kind in my life. But I have always loved music and I have always been fascinated by the idea of being able to make beautiful music myself, with my own hands. So I decided to just give it a go and I bought Sonar and got set up with my girlfriends old Yamaha PSR 300 keyboard that she had from when she was growing up.

Since then I have been learning a little bit of how to play and learning bits and pieces here and there about how to use Sonar properly. On that front I've been greatly helped by having grown up with computers for my entire life. But honestly I find it so hard coming up with good chord progressions because I know so little about music still. I am still blown away by the amazing sounds that people can make with keyboards and guitars and everything, and I just think, how are they doing that? How do you make that sound? So I've just been learning a little bit at a time, all of the time. Literally I spend all of my time trying to learn new pieces and practicing so that I can play them properly with two hands.

Anyway, sorry for giving you all my life story here. I just wanted to give you some of the background so you know why my songs have the weaknesses (and hopefully some strengths) that they have. Also I have listened to a lot of the music posted here and I'm just so impressed. I'm impressed by the creativity and the variety of the sound and the quality and just everything really. When I wrote the melody for lonely soul I thought I had written such a musical masterpiece, like the best melody ever. And then I came here and listened to the music on this forum and I was like *embarrassed* 

I listened to two tracks - Lonely soul and Tokyo night.  I can see where you're headed with LS, and it's a good start for sure, worth developing. As a matter of personal taste I would consider replacing the handclap type sound with something else as Mr Timbaland and co have kind of done that sound to death. I actually like the sound, but it just feels a bit obvious in this style now if that makes any sense.

Tokyo night sounds a lot more complete and I like the feel of it. Can't really say much about the mix as I'm only listening on lappy,  but it does sound a little like it's all pretty close together frequency wise and could maybe use something a little different here and there to spread it out a little.

From what I've heard though I think you've done well so far and have nothing to be embarrassed about. I used to feel the same to be honest, and it took me a while to pluck up the courage to post something given the excellent standards of some of the people in here, but I can honestly say that I have learned a lot from those that have been kind enough to comment on my work and also from their comments on others work too and have never regretted posting anything. I'm still nowhere near the standard of the best people in these parts, but at the end of the day I don't think there are many that see it as a competition. To me it's just a bunch of folks helping with and appreciating each others efforts amongst like minded people. Either that or we're all just hear because we've bored our other halves to death with it all and came in search of someone we haven't bored yet ! ;)

Anyway, welcome aboard and keep up the good work.

Yea, a little repititious - and the hand claps - I'm not a big fan of those. But, if you've only been doing this for a year, wow, you're good.

I think this is a pretty good tune - all in all, I enjoyed this.

First - I wish you every success in your final exam at uni for this year. And a great summer break to recover!

There's not a huge amount I can add to the comments already made which I agree with. You clearly have considerable musical talent and after such a short time composing, you also clearly have the skill to use that talent to create quality music. Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing and in the right place works fine (yes, I can still just about remember going to discos!). The best way to progress is to keep on writing and learning. And don't spend too much time trying to improve a written piece. The next piece will always be better.

Best Regards
Malcolm