Well, the title says it all. I've recorded an album. It's not my first one, but it's my first acoustic / folk album ever. I've been writing songs since 1998, but the guitar somehow never really attracted me - until now. I'm really happy with it and I just wanted to share the reason for my happiness with you.

The album is called "Save me" and the music is minimalistic and raw. Just ten (and a half) songs, nothing more, nothing less.

It's by no means a record for people who enjoy fast riffs and neck-breaking solos. But if you like singer-songwriter / folk stuff, it might be something for you. .

You can listen to the whole album on Youtube:

Feel free to visit my bandcamp site and my blog.

Feedback is appreciated, and of course you may also tell your friends and pets about it. (if you like it)

0x64

Finland4593 Posts

September 16 2013 17:21 GMT

Playing now it in the background, I like the sound and style but now back to work!

scypio

Poland2127 Posts

September 16 2013 17:31 GMT

I listened to the whole thing and enjoyed it. Well done!

Xophy

Germany79 Posts

September 16 2013 18:54 GMT

yeah, nice one ... would fit very well into the "haldern pop"-line up next year (albeit there isn't one yet, but the style fits ...)

ASoo

2864 Posts

September 16 2013 19:29 GMT

Hahahahaha I just got to track 3 and it sounds like German Johnny Cash doing a guest-vocalist stint for Fleet Foxes. Which, to be clear, is not a bad thing.

Seriously, though, this album kicks ass so far. I'm extremely impressed. I'll try to write more about it after I've heard the whole thing.

virpi

Germany3599 Posts

September 16 2013 19:42 GMT

On September 17 2013 04:29 ASoo wrote:
Hahahahaha I just got to track 3 and it sounds like German Johnny Cash doing a guest-vocalist stint for Fleet Foxes.

oh my god, this is pure gold. thanks!

Amestir

Netherlands2126 Posts

September 16 2013 20:05 GMT

Really like it so far! Nice work mate :D

pebble444

Italy2499 Posts

September 16 2013 21:01 GMT

Nice :D

my feedback:
Even do i personally don' t love folk or single guitar albums i listened to yours. The intro is calling towards me. Your voice is warm and nurturing and your lyrics and the things you talk about are interesting and i can relate to them. I don' t like only the guitar in this album. Some parts there is to much sliding noise. But thats all normal to these types of music.

a girl is born this is my favorite song in this from the top of my head. Some parts i would have preferred hearing a classical guitar and maybe a bongo.
Keep up the hard work and thanx for sharing this

virpi

Germany3599 Posts

September 16 2013 21:34 GMT

On September 17 2013 06:01 pebble444 wrote:
Nice :D

my feedback:
Even do i personally don' t love folk or single guitar albums i listened to yours. The intro is calling towards me. Your voice is warm and nurturing and your lyrics and the things you talk about are interesting and i can relate to them. I don' t like only the guitar in this album. Some parts there is to much sliding noise. But thats all normal to these types of music.

a girl is born this is my favorite song in this from the top of my head. Some parts i would have preferred hearing a classical guitar and maybe a bongo.
Keep up the hard work and thanx for sharing this

thank you. the whole album is a low-fi experiment, so I decided to use only a single guitar, which happened to be a steel-string guitar - and there the sliding noises are really devilish sometimes. The production surely isn't state of the art, but I can live with that. I didn't want to spend weeks in the studio for this one.

3772

Czech Republic434 Posts

September 16 2013 23:42 GMT

#10

Sounded pretty good. Your voice is likeable.

beg

991 Posts

September 16 2013 23:48 GMT

#11

nice

sometimes the lyrics were too plain for me in an awkward way. maybe i was weirded out cause they described my life too well, but i listened to a lot of depressive songs and never felt like that.

also, dont listen for the album for 3 months so you get a more objective perspective again and then try to remaster it

ASoo

2864 Posts

September 17 2013 02:31 GMT

#12

On September 17 2013 08:48 beg wrote:
sometimes the lyrics were too plain for me in an awkward way. maybe i was weirded out cause they described my life too well, but i listened to a lot of depressive songs and never felt like that.

Having listened to some more of it, this is my only criticism. I think it's a second language thing. I mean, the OP's English is obviously super fucking good, but there's some little things here and there that aren't incorrect, they're just not the way I would say it, and it leads to some awkwardness, often when things are phrased too directly.

Examples:

Fear of People:
-Most of the song kind of feels like it's trying too hard to rhyme.
-"this and my ignorance scared them" is just an odd turn of phrase. I think it's because native speakers don't usually start a compound noun phrase ("X and Y") with "this" or "that" unless they're responding to and adding to something somebody else just said.

Termination:
-Fourth verse feels very unsubtle, too direct.
-"cause I wanted to meet/you in between blankets" is weird. Lots of songs do use euphemisms for sex without rubbing me the wrong way, but this one feels off to me. I think it's "in between blankets," I would probably say "between the sheets" or "under the covers," which are stock phrases in English. But that would mess up the scansion.

Counterexample: The lyrics to Amplified Breathing are great, and don't feel awkward or too direct to me at all. The only line that doesn't quite work is that I have no idea what it means to "conclude yourself."

-----

Other thoughts on the album:
-Your voice is fantastic. There are, like, no bass vocalists in pop music, besides The National. Way to be.
-I really like your sound. I was being a little flippant with the Fleet Foxes comparison earlier, but it really does hold true for the whole album.
-If anybody listened to this on speakers and liked it, give it another try on headphones. The space afforded by dual-channel audio is used really well. The first mini-track (and the final track), for instance, could have been really boring and one-dimensional (it's just the same lyrics over and over), but dividing the vocal parts between channels really makes it work.
-There's a spot at 1:11 in the final track where, just for a moment, you strum the guitar on both the down-stroke and the up-stroke, and it sounds like it's about to resolve into a rhythm guitar part. The song is perfectly fine without doing so, but I got really excited when I thought that was going to happen, because it would work as an amazing intro to a more up-tempo song. Similar in feel to 0:46 in Helplessness Blues. Sorry to keep harping on the Fleet Foxes thing.

Overall: Great work. I enjoyed the album a lot.

virpi

Germany3599 Posts

September 17 2013 08:35 GMT

#13

Nice feedback, Sir.

yeah, the lyrics are pretty direct, that's true. Usually, I don't write lyrics like that, but for this album, I wanted to do something simplistic. This may cause strange feelings, because normally, folk music tends to be very image-heavy and lyrics-based. I think there's nothing wrong in being direct. Artistic nonsense only matters if it fits to the message of the song.

the "this and my ignorance" verse definitely suffers from my German background. Thanks for that, I think I might actually try to fix that.

The "blankets" thing is supposed to sound that strange, though. It's not really about sex, even though it's easy to think that.

I was thinking a lot about the final track's structure. It really is the same progression over and over again. There exists a second part for the song, but I decided not to record it, because I wanted to have this mantra-like feeling. The lyrics are some kind of "last words", I was picturing an old man singing them.

MidnightZL

Sweden203 Posts

September 17 2013 10:42 GMT

#14

Sounds very nice and professional so far imo, only heard a few songs yet tho, i never listen to this kind of music but i can appreciate it too, maybe feedback on vocaldelay could be shorter on some places ;D heard just now when i typed.