Helen Sventitsky 14

@bigstarlet

85238 DE   Jan 2014


Artist Bio

Influences:   Kate Bush, Depeche Mode, Chemical Brothers, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Daft Punk, the Carpenters, OMD

In my dream life I am an adventurous yet successful singer/songwriter. In real life, well…humor me.

March 1, 2022: On the one hand, I cannot believe I made it, but on the other I have a few confessions to make.

1), While all fourteen spots are spoken for on my page, 4 of them are instrumental backings uploaded as place holders, so, in reality, I only completed 10 tracks, and even that might be overstating it, as most of these 10 tracks are half finished (1 verse, a pre chorus and a chorus, repeated ad infinitum due to my running out of time).

2) I called time on my efforts at 2:00 this morning CET due to my brain being fried and my voice being shot, then spent the next hour finalizing things (though I wasn’t up to updating my texts until now, 11:50 AM CET). I was able to take advantage of the time zone difference between where the site is hosted and where I live to finish up my songs. Sure it didn’t help much, but it did give me some time to clean up.

3) These are probably the sloppiest recordings I have put together in a very long time. I got a couple of new portable recording interfaces and I wanted to see how they worked. Half the songs I sang on used a Centrance MixerFace 4 connected to an MXL 900 Condenser mic. After my husband went to bed, I reverted to an Rode A1 Micro interface and a lavelier mic. Both of these were plugged again into a (again new) IPad Mini 5 (I was seriously impressed with what it could do on this thing) and used the Audio Evolution Mobile app, which has been my go-to for quick demos since my Android days (or 2012).

As far as instrumentation, due to ease of use (for me) I went back to my old trusty Chordbot app and tried some new time signatures with it. I kept it simple as I expected to export the midi files into something like, say, Cubasis or FL Studio and go hog wild with the arrangements. Unfortunately, I ran short on time, so you now have 14 piano ballads (or 10 ballads and four instrumentals) from me.

I think the upside to all of this is that I am actually pretty proud of most of the songs I finished (or tried to finish) this year, as opposed to previous year, where if I was happy with one of them, I considered that a win. I hope to finish the instrumentals with toplines and lyrics and give myself enough an incentive to do further work on the other ones.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for your comments thus far. I will do my best to participate further in the forums and hopefully plan better and do a better job next year.

Keep writing, keep playing, keep singing, stay sane, stay safe!

BR

Helen

P.S. This year, I am housing my MP3s on my OneDrive account. It just seemed less embarrassing for me than throwing all my wonkier tracks onto my Soundcloud. It shouldn’t be a problem for anyone to access and the links are all public, but if anyone has any issues accessing these songs, please let me know.

Soundboard

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  • @nadine Mar 2022

    ... and thanks a lot on "Rendez-Vous". There will be tons of work ahead!

  • @nadine Mar 2022

    Thanks a lot for listening and commenting! I'm glad you enjoyed my drafts :) Thanks for your kind words on the lyrics and signature changes.

    My FAWM demos are all drafts with VST programming, because I neither own / perform drums, bass nor electric guitars. I would never call myself a singer, my piano playing is basic and I just started to learn acoustic guitar some months ago. My strong suits are composition, arrangement and production. So I team up with FAWMers for virtual bands to rerecord them with real instruments, better singers and do a proper production.This will keep me busy all year. If you want to hear the final versions, you should visit SoundCloud or YouTube in some months.

  • @katestantonsings  Mar 2022

    I love each and every single one of your influences :) As a hardcore introvert, I tip my hat to you for writing 'Some Introverts'.

  • @bigstarlet Mar 2022

    Hi Andy, thanks for your feedback. As you can see, I took it to heart. :)

  • @andygetch  Jan 2022

    Hello Helen and welcome to FAWM! I hope that you find some songs and I look forward to what you create. Side note and to answer your question below. People only see your soundboard (or your bio) when they visit this page, usually to check out your songs, or perhaps to leave a brief message. Like my brief message could be "Hi, I am a fan of Big Star and wonder if you are too from your username". Some have used the bio to post short updates.

  • @bigstarlet Jan 2022

    Can I use the soundboard as a mini-blog during the month of February? I think I can use the soundboard as a mini-blog during the month of February!