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: Scarecrow (video)

This is the updated video for Scarecrow. The changes for this might not be as noticeable on computer speakers as the remastered audio from Revelation Dream, but if you get the free download from Bandcamp you'll definitely notice a difference when you play it on a real stereo. The bass is deeper and the kick drums are improved. The vocals are a little louder too, which gives them more clarity and makes them sound 100x better.

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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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How To Become A Better Songwriter

Before I begin I have to get this out of the way: Most music sucks. There's no sense in making it worse, so stop.

I've been listening to my recently created Last.fm radio station and as an unsigned indie artist, most (read all) of the similar artists that get played on my station are the same. *NOTE* I don't choose who the "similar" artists are on Last.fm - they do all of that. So when I listen to the radio station, I'm hearing all of these bands for the first time. And most of them suck.

The first thing I've noticed is that most of the songs are well over five minutes long. I don't have a single song that I've recorded that's five minutes long. Because that's too long. There is a reason why radio stations don't play a lot of long songs, and it's the same reason most big labels don't usually let their artists put out long tracks as their lead singles. That reason is simple: People have a very short attention span.

If you're writing a song that's five or six minutes long you better change things up a lot. I mean Stairway To Heaven a lot, or Paranoid Android a lot. When people sit and listen to the same riff playing over and over it becomes more annoying than anything else - especially if it's not a very good riff (and most indie songs don't feature a lot of great riffs)

The radio stations don't want their listeners to change the station because the same song has been playing for ten minutes. They also don't want to play a single song and then have to go to commercial break because the song took forever.

It doesn't really matter weather you're talking about an FM radio station or an internet radio... people's short patience for songs that drag out doesn't change, so keep it short and simple please.

I could go on forever about this (which would be ironic) but there's a football game on! And besides, if you don't get it by now I can't help you.

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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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Revelation

This is another song I wrote. This is just a preview of the backing track until I can get the equipment to add the guitar and vocal tracks.

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Blazing Son

This is an early backing track (incomplete) for a song I wrote. There are two guitar tracks and a few vocal tracks that I can't add until I get the equipment. It's meant to be spelled "Son" instead of "Sun"

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Scarecrow

This is the backing track for a song I wrote. There are two guitar tracks, lead and backing vocals that I haven't added yet because I don't have the equipment. (unless you want to make a donation)

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