# Journal of an Unknown Musician



## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

Dear Moderators: If we're not allowed to post off-topic journals in this section, then you can remove this. It's fine.

So, my friends and I started a band called "Your Options @re" awhile ago... And so far we've made LITTLE progress. I'm the guitarist, and we have two singers and a drummer as well. Sadly, we need a keyboard player and I only know one person who plays bass, but he's in another band.

A couple days before Christmas, we had our first studio meet (and the "studio" was my basement lol). Unfortunately, Dev, one of the singers, couldn't make it because her mom was getting married to her new boyfriend that day, so there were only three of us. We managed to record one demo. However, Lauren (the OTHER singer lol) wrote it, and it was literally about the TV show Glee and about how much she loves it. The song was called "Confessions of a Glee Fangirl" and we put it on YouTube for the whole world to see... I think we may be off to a rocky start (no pun intended).


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## rubinthebetta (Oct 9, 2012)

Maybe you should hire a songwriter...:lol: Not that there's anything wrong with a song about a television show, but I'm not sure that'll make you guys famous.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

rubinthebetta said:


> Maybe you should hire a songwriter...:lol: Not that there's anything wrong with a song about a television show, but I'm not sure that'll make you guys famous.


Lol. Well, we dont normally write love songs or anything "normal." And Lauren is actually a really good songwriter. Normally, however, we write songs that satirize pop culture and normal pop music. We are kinda trying to go against what's popular at our school, because we dont agree with the popularity polls, cliques, etc. as well as the mass consumerism and trends in popular culture and music. I know it sounds like were those kids who rebel to everything to seem cool, but we do feel strongly about this stuff. We're working on a few songs actually ABOUT that though. :lol:

That, and we are kinda a weird band either way. We played at a school talent show awhile back, and I made this GENIUS decision to end the performance by smashing all the sound equipment and Alex's (our drummer) drum kit with my guitar... And the judges STILL gave us 2nd place trophy! Many kids at our school were scared of me when I jumped off the stage and threw stuff into the audience though... Yeah, I need to chill out with the stage antics.

Sorry this was so long, I guess I had a lot to say.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

I figured out today that a good amount of kids at school found out about the Glee Fangirl song. Tuens out Lauren put it on Tumblr... lol


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

Wow, I just remembered this journal. Well, I've actually switched to playing bass, an we currently have 2 singers (stage names Gleek and D3V), a drummer (La'Taniana), a guitarist who is possibly joining in, and me (Shaniquah Fo'Shiquah). Yes, I'm aware we sound like Marilyn Manson rejects. We were just sitting around recording a demo, and this came up.... And now we also have some REAL songs written (quoting D3V, "I wrote a breakup song... Not because I've had a breakup before, they're just easy to write).


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## Fenghuang (Dec 28, 2012)

You know, for a song about Glee (yes, I just looked it up), it isn't half bad. I like it. Keep it up.


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## NeptunesMom (May 4, 2012)

I went and listened to it too. It was interesting. It wasn't bad, but I couldn't understand your singer, or hear her really at all.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

NeptunesMom said:


> I went and listened to it too. It was interesting. It wasn't bad, but I couldn't understand your singer, or hear her really at all.


Yeah, that was just a joke recorded in my basement really, and the mic I had at the time sucked horribly and I couldn't fix the sound levels without distorting it further. We really have just been focusing on being able to play our instruments and kinda dropped the recording process for awhile, honestly.


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## NeptunesMom (May 4, 2012)

CrazyFishDude said:


> Yeah, that was just a joke recorded in my basement really, and the mic I had at the time sucked horribly and I couldn't fix the sound levels without distorting it further. We really have just been focusing on being able to play our instruments and kinda dropped the recording process for awhile, honestly.


I think you guys do have a lot of promise. I don't know if she's still your lead, but she had a very unique sound. One that I think with practice she could use to attract a lot of people to your music. Also, I think a little fine tuning with your playing and you'll all be amazing. It was far better than several of our local bands around here who have gotten recording contracts.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

NeptunesMom said:


> I think you guys do have a lot of promise. I don't know if she's still your lead, but she had a very unique sound. One that I think with practice she could use to attract a lot of people to your music. Also, I think a little fine tuning with your playing and you'll all be amazing. It was far better than several of our local bands around here who have gotten recording contracts.


Thanks! And in some songs she's the lead (that singer was "Gleek"), and in others D3V is. Ironically, I've only been playing bass for like 2-3 weeks and I've already wrote better riffs for bass than guitar (I had a good bit of skill and training on guitar, but all our band played was power chords, I feel a desire to change that). On that channel we also have a performance at D3V's school of one of our REAL songs. It's hard to miss, considering its the only other video on the channel. The sound mixing sucked so you can barely hear the guitar at parts, and "La'Taniana" (the drummer) didn't come for some reason which I forget, but other than that it was ok lol.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

We have a possible candidate for a guitarist. He is one of my friends who says he's been teaching himself how to play guitar for awhile. Hopefully we can "audition" him and have an official guitar player. In the meantime, I am recording demos of some songs the band has already written (we have about 2-3 besides the Glee song lol) playing both bass and guitar parts, as well as producing with our drummer La'Taniana. Maybe we're actually going somewhere...


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## NeptunesMom (May 4, 2012)

CrazyFishDude said:


> We have a possible candidate for a guitarist. He is one of my friends who says he's been teaching himself how to play guitar for awhile. Hopefully we can "audition" him and have an official guitar player. In the meantime, I am recording demos of some songs the band has already written (we have about 2-3 besides the Glee song lol) playing both bass and guitar parts, as well as producing with our drummer La'Taniana. Maybe we're actually going somewhere...


Have you done any covers? You guys may want to find a song that you can cover and blow out of the water. If you post it on a site like YouTube, it'll give you more traffic to your other songs you post (if you post on YouTube, which has become the new way to market yourself to the entertainment industry). People won't know to search for your songs, but they'll know to search for an already popular song. They'll find you, and if they like your cover they'll look at what else you've done. 

I'm incredibly impressed if your friend taught himself guitar. It is a hard instrument to learn. I play flute and piano and I've had professionals try to teach me guitar and I still can't play it.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

NeptunesMom said:


> Have you done any covers? You guys may want to find a song that you can cover and blow out of the water. If you post it on a site like YouTube, it'll give you more traffic to your other songs you post (if you post on YouTube, which has become the new way to market yourself to the entertainment industry). People won't know to search for your songs, but they'll know to search for an already popular song. They'll find you, and if they like your cover they'll look at what else you've done.
> 
> I'm incredibly impressed if your friend taught himself guitar. It is a hard instrument to learn. I play flute and piano and I've had professionals try to teach me guitar and I still can't play it.


Well, EONS ago, we had a completely different singer and our band was under the same name, and we did a cover of "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. I'm not a big fan of Green Day, but basically everyone else in our band (even with our current members) LOVES them lol. So I guess we could bring that back. And I haven't actually heard my friend play the guitar much... So that's why I'm going to record some demos and then audition him.


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

I just had a random thought recently, remember in a really old post on this journal where I said that we played at a (different, not the one already on YouTube) school talent show? There's footage of that at my school, and my mom happens to be an administrative office worker there, so I kinda want to find the video for some reason...


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

(Wow I haven't updated in awhile) So I finished the instrumental of a demo of our song "You Say, I Say." This is now officially our only fully written song, unless you count the Glee Fangirl one LOL. Also, since the person who said he wanted to play guitar for us doesn't really know HOW to play, looks like we're holding auditions... Anyone here around 14 years old, play guitar, and live in Central Ohio??


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

Yes, it has been three months since I updated here...

Well my band has one official song (the Glee Fangirl one doesn't count, we've decided...), that "You Say, I Say" one. There is a rough demo on our YouTube channel, YOAOfficial, and a better sounding remastered version that DOESNT sound like crap that I have on my computer... Keeping it secret... Loljk I'm just still working on it. We're also writing some more songs but nothing else has been recorded, and we're thinking of doing a cover of "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.


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## Tolak (Nov 13, 2012)

CrazyFishDude said:


> and we're thinking of doing a cover of "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.


Let me know how that lead break works out for ya! :-D


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

Tolak said:


> Let me know how that lead break works out for ya! :-D


Lol yeah that might get changed for the cover. My guitar teacher told me, and I quote, "See, Eddie Van Halen did that guitar solo. Don't try to be Eddie Van Halen. Nobody should try to be Eddie Van Halen," when I told him about the cover idea. I know how to play the rest though... Lol


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## CrazyFishDude (Dec 31, 2012)

Ok well time for an update that nobody cares about! (yay)

So we no longer have those awful stage names (I forgot about those until reading the early posts), I'm sticking to playing guitar, and we have a new and MUCH better song called There's Something. We also have many more songs (and covers) in the process. 

Also, here's a video of our latest performance (well like 2 months ago anyway). http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RFzRX9heeuE

P.S. Once we finish all our new songs, we need some places to perform them. Anywhere in central Ohio that's not 21+ that we could play like two or three songs at? Because that would be fab.


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