The Song Fight Bulletin Board

How much do you listen to your own songs?

I listen to my own songs when I'm feeling very self-deprecating about my musical skill. Sometimes it helps and I'm all "Wait, I made that! I can do it more!" and sometimes I'm all "UGH THIS IS SUCH SHIT WHY DID I EVER THINK THIS WAS GOOD AND SOMETHING I CAN DO"

Usually it's the latter.

I listen to them quite a bit. Working on a new song, or putting things online, or redoing the mixing of a song, or just seeing where I was a few years ago, or just-- yes-- listening to a song I made that I think kicks ass.

Some more than others, but in general I listen to my own songs a lot. Along with lots of other stuff.

JB

This is one of those questions like "How often do you check your appearance in a mirror?" or "How often do you touch yourself?", in that most people will give very, shall we say, modest estimates. That said, I'm so conceited I will find a new song and add a track of me just humming or clapping or going "doop-dee-dooo" in the background, just so I can enjoy it more now that I'm a part of it. That may be a slight exaggeration, but yeah, I do it all the time.

I'm with you user. When I have just completed a song, I listen to it CONSTANTLY. I made it the whole way through, and have a completed work of art, and I'm f-ing proud. I obssess.

JB

Oh, when I'm proud of one I've just finished, yeah, I listen to it a lot. Mostly to make sure I didn't screw something up or whatever. I took Niveous's question to mean, how much do you listen to your own stuff in the course of normal music listening?

fluffy wrote:Oh, when I'm proud of one I've just finished, yeah, I listen to it a lot. Mostly to make sure I didn't screw something up or whatever. I took Niveous's question to mean, how much do you listen to your own stuff in the course of normal music listening?

That's what I meant. I've found that in my normal everyday music listening, I don't listen to my own stuff that often (except perhaps the stuff I've done with Berkeley Social Scene or "Strangers" by J.A.N.). It's made me question what I'm doing. I should listen to the music that I make just as frequently as I do other people's music if I really love it, right? Make the music you wanna hear in the world? Then again, I don't listen as critically to everyone's else as I do to my own. I'll sit there and pick things apart and thus I lose some of the enjoyment when I'm listening to my own music.

Guess I'm mentally at some sort of crossroads today.

I don't listen to my songs very often, but when I do, I usually go on a marathon and listen to them all.

Well, other than on my self-hatred binges I do listen to my own stuff with the same frequency at which I listen to other peoples' stuff. Which is to say very rarely - but that's just because I have over 200GB of music and my listening approach is to have iTunes randomly choose an album and play it all the way through. It's pretty rare that I specifically choose an album to listen to unless I'm in a particular mood that can only be handled by a specific album.

I listen to my own music more the more actively I am making it, and the happier I am with what I've been making.

According to iTunes I've listened to Jerkatorium's Deterioration 15 times, which is about as many listens is we have on Soundcloud, which is probably all me. I'm sure the songfight.org HTTP logs would my IP has probably twice that in listens, making me a possible narcissist. Sometimes my own voice makes me cringe (Unsubscribe in particular) so those songs I avoid. I've probably listened to Meeting Street the most, which is the only fight I've participated in where I wrote, performed, and recorded the entire song.

jb wrote:I'm with you user. When I have just completed a song, I listen to it CONSTANTLY. I made it the whole way through, and have a completed work of art, and I'm f-ing proud. I obssess.

JB

Yep. According to my iTunes account - "Caravan Ray" is by far the most played artist.

I listen to myself everyday. Mind you there are thousands of songs I've recorded over the last 20 years, I only listen to maybe ten in a day.
I listen to all you guys all the time too!

Sometimes I get a hankering to listen to my own songs. This tends to happen when I'm near my studio and in an altered state of consciousness that lends itself to listening -- not often, maybe once every six weeks on average. Then I'll binge, listening to at least a dozen. My favourites change with time.

Immediately after a fight, the most recent song loops in my head 24-7 for many days. This is especially true if I've spent a lot of time recording and mastering it.

hmm, my scrobbling is currently broken, but as of last.fm last time working, it shows my own music scrobbled the most. hah.
my music listening these days is so scattered that's probably not accurate, though.
the most-played things on work itunes are little 4-23 second loops of songs i was working on, listening on repeat to try to work out lyrics.
the most-played song is pillar of paprika's "hardly a moment" which is a song i did with idiot kings, so yeah, that too.
-bill

Whoof, at least I made #5 on my own (desktop, iTunes) listening list.

Evidently I listen to a lot of Tom Waits, heh.

Top 25:

I sing my songs more than any others, whether it's in my head only, or aloud.
I usually don't listen to my Songfight songs after I vote, for a couple weeks or months.

I rarely listen for entertainment purposes. Generally it's a self conscious thing, trying to remember if the stuff was any good. Or sometimes I'll pour through old ideas seeing what if anything I can develop from it. Once in a great while I will throw something in and listen more or less normally.