The Four Suns - Storm of Crows LP

 My band's most recent album, 'Storm of Crows', is on Bandcamp. It started out as a concept album but at some point I dropped the idea. I still think it's the best album from the band, though, especially when it comes to the guitar tone and mixing quality. Lyrically, it's maybe not as "complex" as The Art of War. I also think toning down the sarcastic nature of the lyrics was a better choice this time around.


 Some of my favorite songs on the album are 'Kara Sells Dreams', 'Weather the Storm', and 'The Raven'. You can download it for free (or name your price) from the links above.

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The Four Suns - Weather the Storm

This is one of my favorite songs from my band's most recent album 'Storm of Crows'. There's a weird effect on the lead guitar that I don't remember how exactly it got there. I must have been messing with the effects in Fender Fuse before I started recording and just forgot to reset it. I liked the way it made the song sound "older" though, so I kept it.

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New Album From My Band The Four Suns

My most recent album: 'The Four Suns - Storm of Crows'

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The Art of War - (The Four Suns)

This is the first song off my upcoming album 'The Art of War'. The song is of the same name. It's a pop rock song you can dance to.

Looking back on my first album, Blazing Son, I feel like all of the songs are a little slow. Good, but slow. So when I was writing the music for this album my main focus was making it more upbeat and energetic. This song might exemplify that more than any other track on the album.

I hope everybody enjoys it. (And shares it with their friends!)

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Update Time!

I've been pretty busy lately working on a new rock album for my virtual band The Four Suns. It's a concept album that's a little more ambitious than Blazing Son. On that album, I just used the concept of the virtual band itself be the concept of the album (basically). This time it's a little different.

The title of the album is 'The Art of War' and every song takes place in an alternate reality caught up in World War III. But it's still not a straight up rock opera. It's somewhere in between. I'm also using a lot more electric guitars on this one.

I've completely finished four songs for the album and completed the instrumental arrangements for just about every song. I've got about 30 songs all together, but I'm gonna cut it down to around 14 for the album. Hopefully it'll be finished by the end of February.

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The Four Suns - If There Is A Day (lyrics video)

This is the last new video I'm posting today. This is a completely remixed version of If There Is A Day. The original version is here if you want to compare the two versions. The biggest change is that the new version adds an electric guitar, the first chorus loops a second time and the middle section is completely different.

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The Four Suns: Revelation Dream (Lyrics video)

Here is the updated lyric video for Revelation Dream. I finally got my head around the mixing process and you can tell when you listen to th new audio.

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The Four Sons - Blazing Son

I finally got a Bandcamp site for my music. And I finally got a band name too! 'The Four Sons'

I know there's only one of me... but the album, like most of my music, is heavily inspired by the 60s sound. And I've always loved all of those old bands with names like The Four Tops and The Four Seasons so I figured I'd go with something like that. Besides, just using my screenname (Shanny Boy seemed a little confusing. It sounds more like a rapper's nickname than a rock band/musician.

Then there's the whole "virtual band" aspect. The Blazing Son album was written as a concept album about a band of fictional characters in a fantasy world, so why not just make them the band?

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Scarecrow Video

Here's a new slideshow video for my song Scarecrow. The slideshow is made up of a bunch of paintings I did of the Scarecrow character from the virtual band on Blazing Son

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How To be A Better Songwriter: First Impressions

Have you ever been listening to a song that starts off with some long drone or a quiet background noise that just carries on and on? It sounds like the song is building up to something really great... but it never happens. You keep waiting for the song to start but it never seems to. It drives you crazy and you change the station or skip to the next song, don't you?

That's because it sucks! It's annoying and people don't generally like it. Some people may approach this discussion from an artistic perspective and try to defend the artists with something like "well people just have a short attention span" or something like that... but that's not really true. It just sucks. Plain and simple. And most people won't sit and listen to something they don't like. Don't make excuses.

So when you write your own songs, don't do it! If you like the mellow, ambient, droning sounds to set the mood for your laid-back, mellow song... hurry up and get it out of the way. Trust me - dragging it out isn't gonna change anything. If it doesn't work within the first few seconds, it's not gonna work in the first minute and a half either.

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New Demo: Destiny Song

This is just an acoustic demo and the sound quality isn't studio perfect. It's just me with an acoustic playing the rhythm and singing the lead vocals.

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Revelation Dream (Recurring)

Revelation Dream - by Shanny Boy - The best home videos are here

This is the last time I'm gonna re-make this song/video... I promise! I re-recorded the vocals and then completely remixed the music and I think the whole thing sounds better now. The new video is a higher quality and the music is in WAV format so it shouldn't lose as much quality when it uploads to youtube and metacafe. (That's if the fucking youtube video even uploads. I swear I've tried to upload it 3 times now and it fucked up the first two times and is still "processing" now... If you've ever uploaded a video on youtube you probably know what I'm talking about.

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Revelation Dream (YouTube)

And here's the Youtube version. I'd prefer you watch it here because YouTube doesn't destroy your audio quality as much as Metacafe (which even that site isn't even close to as bad as Yahoo Videos)

For the best audio quality go to Last.fm and listen to the audio only version. (the youtube video is embedded on the last.fm page, too)

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Review: Maintaining Bohemia (Zuda)

Maintaining Bohemia**

Who keeps order in the land of total indulgence? The janitorial and security staff of the New Academy of Art and Design are all that stand between clean, well-maintained hallways and pseudo-intellectual chaos.

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The premise of the story is the art school janitors sit around on break all day talking about how weird the students and their art are... the punch-line is they could just as easily be talking about themselves...

The best part of the comic is the scene at the beginning where one of the students presents a self-portrait short film that mocks the self-loathing emo culture by showing a puppet commit suicide by throwing a radio in the bathtub. Call me a bad person, I thought it was fucking hilarious!

From there the story turns from kinda funny to pretentious nonsense. In one panel, the lead character goes on a forgettable rant that came off as the writer trying to say more than he knows about shit nobody cares about... and on top of that it feels like he's doing it for the sake of doing it.

The art is ok. I wouldn't call it my favorite but I wouldn't necessarily say it's bad either. It's kinda like graffiti caricatures. The only thing I don't like about the art is the way every character has this creepy smile that looks like the Joker raped Joan Rivers. 

Overall, it's ok I guess. It's not something I'd enjoy, but at least it's not as bad as last month's Indie entry.

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Review: Indie (Zuda)

Indie

Somewhere in Middle America, a group of childhood friends turn their hometown into the hottest indie music scene in the country.

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It seems like every month there's one comic on Zuda that I really dislike more than the rest. Looking back, I think I was a little harder on 'Lifespan' than it deserves (although I still think it is a bad premise) But this month is different. I don't dislike any of them... but I fucking hated this piece of shit more than just about any webcomic I've ever read, and believe me... there are some really fucking stupid webcomics out there.

It felt like I was reading a slide show with subtitles. Stupid, boring, emo subtitles.

It looked like those ridiculous "special effects" photos people put in their "artistic" folder of their MySpace page.

This dude is whining about his childhood "indie" band or some shit...

It reminded me of a cross between a Charles Schwab commercial and KIDS In-fucking-corporated

Then he starts whining about making it big... I thought that was the fucking point! INDIE isn't a fucking genre - it's what you are before you become successful.

The ending seriously reminded me of the episode of 'Saved By The Bell' where they form a band and Zack goes solo... don't act like you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Overall... Please! If any of you are thinking about starting a new webcomic, PLEASE! Don't do anything even vaguely similar to this god-aweful atrocity, I'm begging you!

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