A song i wrote, have a listen please?!

[YaYo]

Now some critical points (which you may ignore of course - the criticisms are based on my personal tastes and not objective faults). I thought the places where the main riff goes on without any solos needed something - either some embellishment, or the opposite: less rhythmic steadiness and looser picking patterns, played subtly and with more expression/understatement before leading into the more rhythmic parts where the solos begin. The Opeth-ballad drumming style, while written professionally and with care toward details, also tends to square things up (if this phrase means something): I'd prefer a looser drumming style for this song, with less metal influence (no double-bass fills, no speedy hi-hat runs, more diversity with snare accents and looser syncopation - less focus on a steady "beat"-pattern) - the same thing I'd say about the drumming of Lopez in Opeth's mellow parts, so if you have no problem with Lopez, ignore this. But these are minor things. You're a true talent, and from now on I'll be downloading every song that you record.

Somehow i knew that you would provide me with the best suggestions and i hoped that you would be downloading this! You seem to think along the same lines musically, although ive found a few differences in our tastes. Yes the main guitar is pretty boringly picked out for the most part, but for this song i was concentrating on other elements of the song on purpose(eg the progressiveness mainly). I think you're definitely right with most of your points. The drumming isnt exactly what i want, ESPECIALLY during the acoustic solo, i have some really jazz influenced drums in my mind for that but no clue how to make them. So yeh for the most part ive had to settle with what i know how to drum out because im no drummer.

Now, what do you think about recording a whole album of similar stuff? Because these two songs are completely on the high level of the best "name"-bands and your album, if the quality would be kept consistent with what you've already displayed, would be better than 95% of the stuff that is released right now in the rock/metal scene.

BTW, how long have you been writing music, and how many songs have you written before?

I have no band to play this kind of music in, which disappoints me because ive only recently realised that this is where i want to be, i love metal but my best songs come from my acoustic riffs with only small metal influences. My current band im the secondary writer, i write songs/riffs to suit the main writer's style, I still love them but they arent fully me and sometimes riffs i write arent me at all. So getting a band together to play this softer stuff, and having musicians to complement me instead of me complementing others would be great, and its something im really starting to look into.

I wrote my first song probably 6 years ago? But my style has changed so much over the years. Ive only started writing good quality songs in the past 2 years i guess but still there was a long way to go. For about the last 2 years ive been experimenting, every song i write is better in at least 1 area than the song before and thats been my full intention, each song i concentrated on one particular area and tried to fix that. And its only the past 2 months or so that ive finally got to the stage of writing music i really love and connect with. But ive still got a few more things to concentrate on, mainly now ive gotta work on putting all my skills together at once. So yeh, writing music for a long time, have a 100 minutes of music on my computer, probably 80 minutes worth of really old stuff. But only a few of those are any good.

Really nice songs man! I have to ask, what are your influences? Vai, is obvious from your name but I could swear I hear some Fates Warning influence in Softly but I could be wrong... Keep up the good work...

Vai influences my soloing only. Metallica/Megadeth and 80s metal was where i started so there's still some influences there, although maybe not as obvious. Opeth obviously have an effect and radiohead and Tool, probably the 3 biggest influences on my writing style, although not all would be obvious. Never heard Fates Warning so they arent in there!!

All I know is that "Softly"
makes me feel something )

And thats whats important!!

thanks one and all!!!!!!