Wow, people! Everything seems to be surging out of control of late! The price of “Steem/SBD,” along with the number of weekly entrants to the Open-Mic and Songwriters venues are all going thru the roof, which is a good thing!

However, this post ain't about the price of Steem or SBD, rather it's about what's real and organically meaningful, which I suppose is a reflection of the respective values assigned to all that we do here... So, aside from such speculative assumptions, here goes...

All of this recent growth in participation is wonderful, but it does present its own set of unique challenges and growing pains.

As a dedicated lover and supporter of the Open-Mic and Songwriters venues, I thought it might be helpful for newcomers and longstanding participants alike, if I were to post a series of “unofficial” entries that included some basic helpful hints insofar as submitting entries, and following some general “best-practices” when deciding to engage and participate in the Open-Mic and Songwriters venues here on Steemit.

At the very bottom of this post you will find my personal suggested list of “Do’s” as well as my list of suggested “Do’s and Don’ts” when it comes to you making that very serious and personal decision to submit a qualifying entry for the weekly Open-Mic contest or the Songwriters Challenge.

And, yes, in case you were wondering, @luzcypher and the rest of the Open-Mic and Songwriters teams have played a significant role in compiling these lists – so, I would strongly suggest that you pay very close attention to what is contained and outlined therein.

Within this series, I’ll typically include one of my “amateur performances” from the recent past and remark upon its merits, flaws, and overall level of “entry-caliber-material” status for the express purpose of sharing some fun and general entertainment, while at the same time providing some basic guidance in kind so as to make our collective experience here on the Open-Mic platform a productive, fun, positive, and loving one.

It is my hope that in doing so, as well as providing the aforementioned list of basic Do’s and Don’ts, that it will give everyone who truly loves this platform and the Open-Mic/Songwriters venues herein, a more solid foundation from which to share, grow, and enjoy all of our efforts for the long-term sustainable benefits that are very much possible for each and every one of us!

GUITAR PLAY-ALONG with original backing track

This week’s unofficial submission is “Breakdown” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It's a simple guitar play-along, nothing fancy, and nothing at all to write home about. I hope you like it and get some takeaway tips from my self-critique and brief appraisal of this prospective type of an entry.

Okay, so way back in 2015, this would rank as my maiden reintroduction to reconnecting with my musical roots post an amicable divorce a year earlier, in 2014. Is it a candidate for a top-5 selection in the Open-Mic venue? - No Way, Jose!

Would I submit this as an Open-Mic Entry today - YES! Why? Because in my opinion, this performance had a very specific meaning to me – that I’m proud of! No, it ain’t the best – but it was fun, and I put my whole body into making the rhythm pop - so yeah, I think it’s worthy of an Open-Mic entry for sure!

I made certain that my instrumental addition to Tom Petty’s classic was such that I appeared to be part of and blend with the band whilst still having my performance audibly standout – and I made sure that my instrumental guitar addition did not detract too much from the original track. I did my best to become part of the “Heartbreakers” band – trying my best to fit myself into the band to the best of my ability both musically and technically from a volume and mixing standpoint.

Technically, all that I used to make this video was an old Canon Digital Camera (which I'm still using by the way) set on a coffee table at the proper angle to capture the body of the guitar, and a Tom Petty YouTube Video playing through my televisions sound system - AND THAT'S IT!

I did not have any recording or mixing equipment at the time, so this was all a very raw bare-bones type production. All I had to do was fuss with adjusting the sound level coming from the TV's sound system to best blend with the natural volume the camera was picking up from my acoustic guitar. Easy-peasy!

Granted, a submission of this caliber would NEVER gain any traction in the overall rankings; however, in my opinion, such an entry may well indeed add some measure of positive value in that it provides a basic level of entertainment for listeners to draw from, and perhaps build upon.

And, YES, I did indeed post this to my Facebook page at the time, and I did in fact, receive quite a large number of positive responses to that post!

If I had the chance to do it over, I would have had the camera intermittently move up toward my left hand to capture my playing all of the chords - and preferably as well, I would like to have seen the camera pan upward toward my face and the rest of my body in order to capture the passion within my physical expressions as I was performing and playing along with a song that was fun to play and had so much meaning to me at the time.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope that you found this entry/post somewhat informative and entertaining all at the same time. I very much look forward to listening to each and every one of your future entries! And always remember, that I’m always listening!”

If you have any additional suggestions as to how to improve upon the Open-Mic and Songwriters Challenge experience, by all means, feel free to express your thoughts with regard to such in the comment section below. YOUR OPINIONS AND IDEAS COUNT!

Until next time, please review my best practices lists below in order to better our community, make the Open-Mic experience one of immeasurable pride and enduring value, and most importantly, to better and to maximize your prospects for long-term success both now and well into the future!

PEACE, LOVE, and JUSTICE for ALL

-DO-

• Do make certain that you have upvoted @pfunk for a witness! Do it HERE!

• Do make sure that you Follow ALL of the Open-Mic/Songwriter rules! READ THE RULES HERE, and HERE!

• Do make certain that you are a musician with a reasonably presentable level of skill! You must be able to either play an instrument well or carry a basic tune with your singing voice! Beginners are ALWAYS welcome but PLEASE make sure that your performances are generally somewhat pleasing to the ear!

• Do play your prospective entry for family and friends before posting it as an official entry. If they tell you wow, that’s pretty-good – then use it to enter!

• Do a trial run and post your entry on Facebook or on another social media site to see what your friends think of your performance. If your friends and family like it, chances are the Steemit community will like it too!

• Do post your entry using a YouTube link, at this stage; D-Tube entries remain unreliable.

• Do be patient as we go through hundreds of entries each week.

• Do become involved with the community in a meaningful and sincere way!

• Do use Discord and Facebook threads to promote your post!

• Do have fun! Let's not forget the fun! It’s all about having FUN!

• Do make sure that you Cover/Play/Sing the full song and not just parts of it. As such, any entry that is less than 1 minute is likely to be overlooked.

• Do keep your performing instruments in Tune – PLEASE - nothing ruins a performance like an out of tune instrument!

• Do double check your Volume Levels and all of the volume balances between vocals, instruments, and or backing tracks. Failure to adequately address these minor technical issues can make or break any given entry.

• Do listen to your performance several times before submitting it – redo it with some fine-tuning for sound balance and the like if need be.

• Do listen to and judge your own performance at least 5 times or more before you enter any submission. – If you truly like your performance and are proud of what you’ve just accomplished, then share it and enter it in the contest!

• Do make sure that your performance is as good as you possibly can get it before posting it as an official entry.

• Do work hard on your entries as if your performance were an interview for a very important job that you really need to land! Make it count and make it something that you can take pride in and be proud of forever! Whatever you do, make sure that your entry is truly ENTERTAINING! - no matter what it takes!

• Submit your entry because you’re proud of your performance and want to share it with the community – so that we can all be proud of sharing it too!

• Be selective in what you submit/post. Put your best foot forward with every entry!

• Skip a week or two if you haven’t been able to get a quality submission together that you’re happy with. Be patient, and just wait until you are truly inspired and proud to share your hard work and performance!

• Add more value to your entry by including information about your performance in your submission’s post! I often rely heavily on what artists have to say about their entries in order to make a full and comprehensive assessment as to the quality of their respective submissions.

-Do’s and Don’ts-

• Please DO NOT use the openmic tag or the songwriters tags for anything except QUALIFIED musical entries. EVER! There are plenty of other tags you can use to share your experimentations or post fun silly videos, but again, we are asking that you please NEVER USE OUR TAGS FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE OTHER THAN TO SUBMIT A FULLY QUALIFIED ENTRY, thank you for respecting our wishes, we all appreciate your doing so very, very much!

• DO NOT SUBMIT ANY KARAOKE OR ACCAPELLA (just singing - no music) PERFORMANCES. THEY NO LONGER QUALIFY AS VALID ENTRIES! Sorry, but that means NO MORE "Smule" or "Starmaker" Karaoke entries too!

• Do take a great degree of pride in developing and sharing your skills and talents! DON'T degrade and devalue yourself by submitting any old sorry take that you happen to record in the hope that it might earn you some upvotes or some Steem. SUCH A MINDLESS STRATEGY IS TOTALLY PATHETIC - AND YOU SHOULD AVOID ANY SUCH TEMPTATION LIKE THE PLAGUE!

• Do play your entry for family and friends before posting it as an official entry. If they tell you wow, that really kinda “sucks” – won’t you be “embarrassed” if people see that? If you get that kind of response, then don’t post it because it’s likely that the Steemit community will think that it sucks too. We don’t want to listen to sucky-shit here, OKAY! - Got it? - Good! - Moving on…

• If it sounds like crap to you – then DON’T submit it. PERIOD!

• NEVER, EVER, EVER submit an entry simply to get votes or rewards – doing so is like Spamming - it is often obvious and highly unappealing. DON’T DO IT!

• Garbage-In / Garbage Out: Bad or blatantly lousy and non-entertaining submissions reflect badly on you, YOUR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, and the community at large. We’ve all got trash to process – but PLEASE let’s keep ALL of the garbage in the trash heap where it belongs and not in the live contest feed!

• NEVER spam the comment threads with any sort of promotion – self-promotion or otherwise. Same goes for copy/paste type comments and irrelevant/empty replies, all of which are forms of spam as well. Spamming of any type is highly frowned upon all across the Steemit Community and especially here at the Open-Mic and Songwriters venues. DON’T DO IT!

PEACE, LOVE, and JUSTICE for ALL