What goes on in The Recording Journey forum? Pretty much anything related to music, especially making music. There’s no rules: people just create topics that are of interest to them and others join in as they want to. There’s some areas of the forum that are particularly busy on a regular basis, though.
Post your music
The cornerstone of the forum is the mutual help with writing and producing music. When someone’s ready, they post a song in progress and people can chip in with ideas for improving or changing the song, from structure to mix, lyrics to soundscape.
This is all done in a friendly and respectful way. Everyone would agree that their music benefits hugely from this process.
We regularly hold fun challenges on the forum. Every month or two someone selects a few songs from published musicians and the other members vote on the one they’d like to cover. Anyone is then free to produce a cover version of the chosen song. And we have gotten some really interesting submissions.
Sometimes it’s a stripped-down live version. Sometimes in a style completely different to the original recording. It’s a great way to try something new, without the pressures of writing and wanting to produce something of publishable quality.
And once a year we have a special competition we call Bandball. People put their name on a list and bands of three or four people are created at random. The groups then have a few weeks to write, record and produce a song. At the end, everyone on the forum gets to vote for the “winner”. Once again, this is another great way to do something different, interact with fellow members and just have some fun!
Challenges
Music chat
There’s a whole range of chat about music. Sometimes it’s about music production – maybe about a technique, some new equipment, software, etc. Sometimes it’s about musicians – maybe highlighting a new artist someone has come across, or discussing an artist’s best output.
Some of these discussions get into real detail; people can explore some specific niche, or range far and wide.
People on the forum love to create music and this extends to helping out other members with collaborations. It could be adding a lead guitar break, or a backing vocal to someone’s song they’re crafting. Maybe someone will do a mix for someone else’s song.
Sometimes the collaborations go further and people work closely together to create something special, that neither would have produced on their own.
Collaborations are another great way members can try out something different, in a safe and encouraging space.
Collaboration