You've brought some great talent to this website and I am enjoying listening and learning. I like the overall design of the site. It's clean and uncluttered. I think the quality of the content is promising. Not sure what your business model is, but there are enough people out there who are into playing the styles of guitar that Duke and Corey teach that it could work. I've run across some minor things that seem odd, and I apologize that I haven't yet brought all of them to your attention. A lot of unexpected stuff is happening in other aspects of my life, so I'm dividing my time. I will be away for the weekend, but will try to provide more detailed comments on stuff next week.
Hi Bruce .. thanks for the kind words. Yes, Duke and Corey are great artists and teachers.
The vision for Sonic Junction is create a place where people can learn, hang out with and create with award winning artists. From a design / technology perspective, we're trying to keep the experience minimal and transparent as possible ... and focus on technology that can make the communication with Duke and Corey as rich as possible.
Would be great to get your feedback. We're still refining the experience and design ... so it's a great time to share your input. Thanks.
Mike,
Superb job in creating Sonic Junction. I hope you have great success with this.
As Bruce mentioned the site is very clean. I like the fact that you have given the ability to upload video, audio, pictures right from the text box area natively into your site. It keeps down the effort of posting to YouTube, or SoundCloud, or Picassa, then re linking. Plus I have seen when someone does a remote link, chances are later the native site will have missing pictures, etc over time as the hot links ineviteably change or are altered sometimes.
I noticed you have a personal blog. Will regular members be able to have a blog?
I would like to have the ability (If Duke has time) to share a short video of material I'm working on and get his feedback, like a remote private lesson. I'd pay extra for this service if he had the time and your site had the ability. I could envision a private link, like YouTube has a method of only being able to see the video if you know the link. Or if the member wished, he could have the video public and allow other members to give feedback as well.
It will be very interesting to see how you grow this site. It is a unique and fresh concept. As a businessman in the technology industry, I am very intrigued at what you are doing. Building revenue for the artists with this concept must be a creative and challening effort. I believe this type of forum will increase the artists brand awareness, as well as trigger sales to older recordings and promote live shows, (I would recommend there is a link to this stuff somehow for the artists). It's all in line with the new Social Media world we live in, and Sonic Junction is cutting edge.
PS: It's a great diversion to FB with a smaller subset of people with the same interests.
Steve Marinak
Mike,
I want to second the kudos from Bruce and Steve. This is one of the best and most helpful resources I ever encountered. I hope that you'll keep this going for a very long time. I certainly will be willing to pay generously for a service that provides lessons and access to personal feedback from greats like Duke Robillard. THANK YOU!
Hi Steve .. thanks for the thoughts and feedback.
Yes .. making things as simple as possible so we all can communicate as easily and richly with Artists like Duke and Corey is the #1 goal. We're going to continue working on the video and writing music into the web .. as well as look at ways to make things as easy and fun as possible to learn, play and create (so far .. we're still on the learn part of the experience).
Good question on the blog. The most likely route we will take is to have this be a way to share your practice and performane videos ... with your personal friends, music friends .. and Artists like Duke and Corey for feedback. Would be great to get your thoughts on what you would like to see.
For the feedback, you can get it now by posting the video in the Ask Duke section of the Forum. Right now all feedback is public as this is how we think we can create the most value for the community (i.e. my hypothesis is a lot of people can learn by watching the dialogue between talented musicians .. and who knows, even if someone is not as good a player .. they may have listened a lot and have unique ideas to share).
Yes .. it's quite a challenge .. but I think worth it. What would be more fun and rewarding than hanging out with and learning from the top musicians in the world? I know I've personally never learned so much so quickly as I've learned from Duke and Corey in the past 2 months .. and not just the riffs / songs .. but how to approach music.
I think there are some similarities to Facebook .. but I'm trying to design the experience so the conversation goes deeper, is more thoughtful and can have more back and forth (i.e. you can make a video comment, or even write some music in a comment). The challenge is rich yet simple .. just like good guitar playing!!
Hi Roger .. thanks! Yeah, I've learned a lot from Duke .. and every time I watch one of his videos I continue to be amazed by how broad AND deep his knowledge is. In one of the Memphis Grind lessons he plays this Curtis Mayfield / Jimi Hendrix riff that had me noodling around for 30 minutes .. and I was just laughing because I love Curtis Mayfield .. and bingo .. a little golden nugget just landed in my lap!
Enjoy Duke and thanks again for the feedback.
Mike,
Outstanding job. You mention "write some music in a comment"...so I'm testing this out with your template.
hmmm, the chord boxes showed up in the text box preview area when I typed it...but then when I saved the reply it reverted back to the text as you see above. trying again.
nope... what am I doing wrong?
Steve
BTW, this is extremely freakin coooool. I know it will work, I just need to figure out the code.
Mike I just came back to the site after closing my browser, now the text boxes are in my old notes. If you didn't change anything, then it's something to do with the browser not viewing the chord box upon the initial creation.
Steve
