Posts by jhunger

For me, mostly acoustic instruments for the main parts (acoustic guitar and ukulele) and percussion whenever possible. Backing tracks are MIDI (bass, piano, electric piano, organ, drums, etc), but mainly because I don’t have physical space for all these things, though one of my next purchases will be a bass guitar.

I use Native Instruments for most of my virtual instruments, which is not top of the line but is passable for most applications that apply to me.

My compositions are generally pretty simple, and a typical one minute loop including 2 or 3 acoustic tracks plus maybe 4 MIDI layering tracks (bass, piano, electric piano, something else) plus some sort of acoustic percussion might take me 2-3 hours from inception to mastering. I try to get things right on the original takes so I don’t have to do a lot of editing after the fact.

Those are the ones that go well. Other times I just can’t get the timing right on some finger picking or something and it causes churn, but most of those get abandoned and just take up space on my hard drive.

Sometimes I take a little longer and am more formal, but generally I take the philosophy that perfect should not get in the way of good, or done. In fact, to my ear perfection sounds wrong in the type of music that I like to play and listen to, so I’ll leave in stuff like fret buzz or finger noise unless it’s really egregious.

And then yeah, it’s the uploading, keywords and other maintenance that can be a time suck. This is the price we non-exclusive guys/gals pay because it’s not just one site that we’re working with.

Hey Derek,

I like that idea, and it could drum up some decent revenue from AJ alone.

I don’t know if my style of music would mesh with what you’re thinking of, but if you think a track similar to what I’ve got in my portfolio would work count me in.

EDIT – oh, just read the thing about contacting you through your profile I will drop you a line in a bit.

—Joel

Glad to know others share the uke love!

@BeatheBeat: I wish I was better equipped to give you some advice, but I’m uncertain myself on what to upgrade to. I will say that although Kala makes some lower end stuff, I got a chance to test out several higher quality Kalas (in the $400 – $800 range), and found some of them to be really well made with nice tone. One I was partial to was a solid mango uke, very unusual looking but felt and sounded excellent, and I think was around $500 in a Kona shop. The Kala I currently have is a cheaper model but is solid Acacia wood and has not had any intonation problems (yet).

I’m not sure if it’s okay to put a link in the forum, but here it is anyway: check out Ukulele Underground (for the truly devoted): www.ukuleleunderground.com. There’s a ton of good information up there (probably too much).

@Gareth: BTW – I don’t want you to think I took offense to the uke + clapping comment in the other thread. On the contrary, that was my favorite part of that thread .

I’m starting this thread as a shout out for the mighty ukulele, which sometimes gets a bit of a bad rap

I may be a very lonely voice here, but I absolutely love the sound of the ukulele, and have been playing one on and off for more than a decade. Yeah, they are often associated with that clinky clanky retro sound or the somewhat better (but overplayed) Somewhere Over The Rainbow cover a few years back. Or apparently these days accompanied by clapping?

But I’ve found them to be extremely versatile in other ways, especially when layering them over acoustic guitar to make a nice and airy feel that you might not even recognize as coming from a ukulele. I’ve even used them for bluegrass – they sound nice and woody and fit just right in some situations.

Also, just like any other instrument, playing a real quality uke is eye opening. My wife is from Hawaii, and when we go back to visit her folks I try to make time to check out a couple of the local shops around Kona. Last time I was sorely tempted to lay down almost $1000 for a used Kamaka tenor that just sounded so damn good, and unfortunately I didn’t make the leap . Maybe next year.

Anyway, I was curious to see if anyone else had a passion for ukuleles, and if so what do you have, what do you use it for, how do you record it, etc? I have a Lanakai tenor and a Kala Acacia concert currently, and find that recording them with a bright mic (AKG 451b is what I’m using) can yield a great breezy tone.

Anybody? Or am I hopelessly, utterly alone?

There’s been a few different responses but I actually agree with everything that everyone has said.

Pragmatically, sure, it’s a marketplace – I attempt to provide a product the best way I know how, and buyers are coming looking for something, and when the stars (and the search engine) aligns we both get a little something out of it.

But yeah, I’m still in utter amazement after nearly a couple of years that people will pay to use my music. Of course the $$ are great, but it’s really a lot more than that. I get excited over and am grateful for every sale, because I’ve always loved creating music and now I’m able to share it in a way I never thought possible.

You’d think that I’d calm down after a couple of years, but I’m still constantly logging in to see if there are any new sales (especially since Leaflet stopped sending me notifications :)).

Also, probably the best thing that buyers have done for me is to give me new motivation to create more and more music – before posting to AJ a couple years back, I had been lagging creatively, and now I’m playing and writing more than any other period in my life.

Got me laughing . I love the deadpan style.

I hate to be a buzz kill, but I’m putting in a vote that we don’t post any more of these.

Ane – I totally get your point, I really do, and I know you’re just pointing out the limitations of listenable music that we’re all subject to. But it seems like we’re calling out specific authors in what could be construed as a negative light.

I don’t want to speak for Soundroll, SoundProdigy or Hamditheone, but personally I wouldn’t be okay with one of my songs being compared to a well known piece on a public forum, even if the intentions were good and in harmless fun. Maybe a comment on the song itself, or better yet a private email.

I’m perfectly willing to eat crow if I’m the only one who feels this way, in which case feel free to outvote me .

Most excellent

To basically repeat what everybody else just said, I’ve had these lulls as well, especially when first starting out, and sometimes even now I’ll go for several days without a sale. It’s very easy to get a bit depressed and think, “well, it was a good run, but I guess it’s over.” But keep in mind that the fact that people were buying your songs before the sales stop means that your songs are marketable, and therefore it’s inevitable they will sell in the future given that AudioJungle retains the same number of buyers (and I believe that the number of buyers is increasing daily).

Anecdotally I agree with SonicCube in that it seems like the end of the month tends to be slower than other times, though I haven’t ever gone through my sales stats to back this up.