NSAI Song Evaluations - Nashville Songwriters Association International

I joined the NSAI recently to see what it has to offer.  One of the services that they provide for members is song evaluations, purportedly by industry professionals with songwriting experience.  I decided to submit a few songs to get a feel for where I'm at in the eyes of such folks and to see what they think I need to work on.

They ask you how severely you want to be judged, ranging from 'be gentle, it's my first time' up to 'don't hold back, give me the brutal truth'.  I chose brutality.

I didn't have any 'real' demos to send in, just some rough ones I made for a completely different purpose (to familiarize myself with scales and playing lead guitar) that have way too much guitar and way too little volume in the vocals.  I tried to explain this in a note to my evaluators, in the hopes that they would just look past it and focus on the underlying song.  It didn't work out that way, though, and I ended up with reviews that spent most of their time talking about too much guitar and not enough vocal volume.  Regardless, even when you remove those portions, the NSAI evaluators still shared some valuable comments, and I am thankful for their time and thoughts:

Schopenhauer's Hour --

"Hey James, what a cool approach to a tough topic. I think you're on the right path to being a cool songwriter, and you should be trying open mics and getting on stage. Would love to hear more from you - please turn that vocal up! It's clear you have a songwriter's mind."

Hopin' Heaven Has A Backdoor --

"This one has AWESOME lyrics."

The Only Women I Like -- 

"This one is your strongest melody yet. Again - great lyrics, a poet's eye."

The thing I was most surprised about was that they didn't judge/grade the musical side of the song at all (other than to say 'less guitar, more vocals'), and instead only focused on the singing part.  To me, the music portion of a song is just as important as the vocals.  A catchy guitar riff can make a song, and I try to make songs that have something catchy and interesting going on in both the music side and the lyric/singing side, especially since singing is my weak point.  But after getting my evaluations and reading some other evaluations online, it appears that the NSAI places very heavy emphasis on the singing side, meaning that you could probably submit your songs without any backing music at all--just you singing the tune--and still get similar feedback.

- James Wesley Sperman