what i have and heaven-held

Love the stripped down recording. Read from your comments, it seems you’re feeling limited by recording tech, but I think it’s an honest take – picked notes and a clear smooth vocal. Love it.

This feels like such a pure acoustic piece/recording that I almost don’t want to comment on adding more instruments so that you don’t lose this quality.

However, there’s so many options with recording DAWs that I would just suggest using something that is readily available, learning it’s limitations concerning what you want to accomplish, and then researching which programs would be best suited for that. Personally I use Ableton and I love it, but I started on Audacity and then transitioned to Reason essentials (with a brief trial on ProTools) before landing where I am.

So many great vocalizations in this track. Little moments like at the end of “I’ll swallow it all”. This whole thing has a warm melancholy to it that is just lovely.

Love that everyone is encouraging you to jump into Logic. I couldn’t possibly recommend it more. Really opened up music-making for me. That being said, I think this exact recording, for this song, is perfect. So once you do make the plunge into multi-tracking, try not to lose the ability to bail on it or use it sparingly when it’s best for the song. Because this is special.

This definitely has some emotional resonance, especially I wake up in the early night // I see you and I sigh. Also, your performance is strong. Those nice crisp vocal walkdowns on things like “s-i-igh” are wonderful.

Glad you’re committing to the assignments despite the recording setup, kudos to you. And hey, I know you, you’re a pretty smart guy. Wouldn’t be long before you had a useful understanding of the fundamentals in GarageBand. Do you have mac? While there are a lot of tools and options that you can eventually familiarize yourself with, those can wait! With a simple youtube tutorial on getting started, it’s pretty easy to get in there and utilize the basics. Good luck, cowboy!

I’m certainly not an expert at recording and all that, but I find Logic pretty intuitive to use. I’ve messed around in a bunch of DAWs at this point, and Garageband is definitely a great place to just get started. I found ProTools harder than Logic, fwiw. As @@Carseatsaod. I don’t regret plunging into the rabbit hole, even though I still can’t really mix/produce/record full on tunes like some of the other folks here – even just a bit of comfort helped me make (still basic) but more complex tunes.

I really love the line “I wake up in the early night” in a song about dreams – feels kinda like waking up into a dream. This song feels evocative to me, but I’m not sure of what. Reading back to the lyrics while listening again, it gave me the feeling of trying to fill a hole inside myself with a person or a memory.

Ouuuughhh. I love this. You dug into the dynamics at the perfect moments; I could so see you digging into it more and creating a deeper rift in some spots.

As for working in software, I started in Garageband and made my way over to Pro Tools — they’re both a little intimidating at first, but the more you create and mess around in them, the more comfy you get. Definitely don’t regret plunging into that rabbit hole!