I'm going to go back in time a little with three selected songs I wrote when I first started recording seriously.

A few years ago I wrote and recorded 9 songs in about two weeks with a very talented guy called "Mick Paul".

Mick is a fantastic bass player and has done a lot in his career to date. He also runs his own recording studio, and the nine songs I recorded with him, were done in that studio.

I've selected 3 of those 9 songs to put on youtube, and this one is the first of those choices.

This one is called "Amber falls". It's a pretty dark song. I wonder if you can work out what the song is about, before the video tells you near the end.

Here it is:

I have put some snippets of info about Mick in this first video, and I will be adding more to the following 2 videos. There may be a name or two that some music lovers might recognise.

I put a warning in the video description of this song, because the song contains what is known as "Speaker busters". They are very deep and loud bass hits, that can possibly cause some damage to a bass speaker when it's on high volume. So be warned :)

Now for a youtube update.

I only need another 10 subs to get to 700. So the current figure is 690.

The channel viewings have increased to 15,424.

My total video viewings are 235,621. At this rate, I might get to the quarter of a million by the first anniversary of my first video upolad to youtube.

Coming next is the second of these three old original songs.

It has been a mad rush week. I've done some work on my own website, so that I can get it ready for the release of the album. I've updated some of the info. Added some links. I've also put an email registration on my home page, so that people can register for updates on the progress of my album.

I pointed out that the email address will only be used for album updates, and will not be given to anyone else. I have also added that same registration feature to another website I have a page on.

So now I can finally give out my website address. I've had it for a few years already, but it's just been sitting there :)

So here it is. My own website:

Jeffs music

There is a music player on there that has got a selection of songs that I've created over the last 4 years. I could have removed them, because the recording quality is not very good on some, and the vocals are less than perfect on a number of them. However, I want them to stay there for a while to show how everything started. Including all the mistakes and flaws.

The next bit of news is really interesting. I was contacted by a friend on Youtube, who had started up a live internet TV channel, and he asked if he could feature my tracks on his shows. I agreed, of course. He informed that when the first show aired, it received over 1,000 viewers in the first 3 hours!!!

This is a link to that channel:

Music for you - Live channel

This guy needs some more original music videos for his channel, so if you write your own stuff, and want it aired on a live internet broadcast channel, then go to the link above and contact him via his email address. It could provide you with some essential exposure, just like it has for me :)

Last but not least. The Youtube number counts.

I gained 2 subscribers, but then I lost 2 :( So it's still 681.

The channel views are now at 15,146.

Another increase of a few thousand on my total video views. The are now 229,501.

There's been another cover version of one of my original songs. The tune this time is "Broadcast fantasy".

It was performed by "PetesBehr" on Youtube. His recording of this song is a bit like an unplugged version.

He has done a cover version of one of my songs before.

This is quite different from the original, but I like it. It's interpreted in a completely different way, and that is something I really like hear people having a go at with music. Especially my songs. Putting their own influence into it.

First of all, here is the original version:

Broadcast Fantasy - Jeffstunes

Now you've heard the Original. Check out his cover of it:

It feels good when other people like your songs enough to want to record their own versions. It makes me think that I must be doing something right :)

Now, the regular Youtube digest:

I have now got 681 subscribers. Only another 19 to go to get to 700.

My channel views have raced forward to 15,037.

The total viewings for all of my videos are 227,028. Only another 23k to the quarter of a million, and it's moving at about a thousand a day at the moment.

I've been working on my own website recently. I thought that if I'm going to release an album, I might as well bring my site up to date. So I'm updating the info, and changing a few things around. I'll be pumping out the URL when I'm happy that it's ready, for anyone who may be interested :)

I decided to take a few days break from putting the album together, and I recorded a requested song, from a while ago. It's one I've always wanted to do because on the surface it seems such a simple song, but it has so much room for expression. The song I'm talking about is "No surprises" by "Radiohead".

The making of the vid was pretty easy. Not much going on in it. I'm just sitting in and out of a shadow, through the entire song. The video of the original is just the man's face in what looks like a space helmet, filling up with water. I didn't use any water though.

Instead, I concentrated on bringing moments of my life to mind that have strong emotional connections, so that there would be subtle changes in expression.

Here is the result:

As per normal. Here is the latest news on my Youtube account statistics.

677 subs.

14,891 channel views.

224,885 overall video views.

It would probably be a good idea for me to get back to making the album now :)

Right. This is my first album update, and also a nice little tip for musicians on Youtube :)

I've decided to select 4 tracks from my Youtube uploads. I've chosen 3 already, and those songs are as follows:

Broadcast fantasy - Jeffstunes

Don't wish it away - Jeffstunes

Sight Or Sound - Jeffstunes

I'm going to make a short list of three other songs and put them to a vote. So effectively, the fourth will be chosen by voters.

I have finished two of the other songs up to now. The titles are "You think it's all over". Which is a different version of a song I wrote 2 years ago. The original version of this song was played on Spirit FM several times, which covers West Sussex in the UK. The 2nd of the new songs songs is called "Soaked to the bone". I completed that one yesterday.

So I have got 4+ songs left to prepare. I've got some numbers in my mind. Some of them have been half constructed already, so hopefully it wont take too long to finish them. It would be nice if I could finish them by the end of next week, but it will probably take me longer.

OK. Here's that tip for Youtube.

If you upload your songs in stereo to Youtube, and get frustrated when the sound comes out in mono, and reduced quality. You might find it interesting to know that Youtube do have a higher quality version of your video.

When you provide a link for your video, you will normally specify a URL. To get the higher quality version, all you have to do is append "&fmt=18" to the URL. I suppose it's possible to do that with the embedding as well, but I haven't attempted that yet.

Here's an example for you. This is a link to one of my original songs:

Don't wish it away - Jeffstunes

Now the same song, but I've added "&fmt=18" to the end of the URL

Don't wish it away - Jeffstunes

Notice the difference?

Now for my regular statistics update.

My subscribers are now at 670.

My channel views are moving faster now, and are currently at 14,702.

My total video viewings are increasing by over 1,000 views a day now and are now at 221,328.

More updates on the album progress coming soon :)

I was looking for ways to increase my daily viewing figures on Youtube, when I came across a tool that is in Beta stage at the moment. They call it "Annotations".

It allows you to add linking text or hotspots to your videos. I know from experience that when I go to view videos on Youtube, I pay little attention to what else is on the page. As a maker of videos myself, that is not very encouraging. However, with this tool, I can make a link pop up on the video, and that is more likely to be noticed.

So I ploughed through a lot of my videos and put on the annotations that link to my channel. It took me a long time. They've only been on for a day, but I've already seen a hike in traffic. Especially to my channel viewings. So it appears that it is working so far.

Here's a link to my Youtube channel:

Jeffstunes Youtube Channel

So here are my latest Youtube figures, followed by some news :)

My subscriber count is now at 662.

The channel viewings are moving now and currently stand at 14,509.

The total video views are now at 216,799. It's looking like the quarter of a million figure will be passed before the end of July.

Now for a bit of news. I'm releasing an album!

It's going out on digital release only to start with. If things go well then It will also be released on CD.

The album will contain some songs I've uploaded to Youtube, and a good number of new songs that haven't seen the light of day yet. I'm feeling quite excited by it all. Just the fact that it's being released. I'm going to be updating my blog with the album progress, as I lead up to the release date. Giving info on selected tracks etc :)

This is a bit of an update on the last post I put up. The last song I uploaded to Youtube did much better than I expected. The title of it was "Broadcast fantasy". It was an amusing view of TV addiction.

My honours for this video were more than I thought they would be, and there were a couple of firsts too. Literally.

Youtube runs an honours system. Which calculates on a daily, weekly, monthly and all time basis. There are top 100's for Most viewed, Top rated, Most discussed, Top favourites, Most responded, and some others too. There is an overall set of top 100's that are worldwide, and then there are those that are divided into countries. These are also subdivided into categories. So you could be in the top 100 Most discussed of all videos in the world, or you could be in the top 100 most discussed Music video in the UK.

Getting into the top 100's in som countries is easier because there are less Yuotube users in those countries. The U.S. is the most difficult, and the U.K. is quite difficult as well. Which makes my achievement better in my eyes :)

I regularly get honours for each video I upload, and this is because I have a decent amount of subscribers and friends to my Youtube channel, but what I got with this latest video topped it all. I got my first number 1. Not just one, but two!

#1 - Top Rated (Today) - Music (United Kingdom)

#1 - Most Discussed (Today) - Music (United Kingdom)

That was on the 4th June. I was so pleased with them, that I put them in the video description.

Here's an update on my Youtube statistics.

Subs - 651

Channel views - 14,196

Total video views - 211,513

I've got some interesting news coming up in my next few posts. Something I'm getting quite excited about :)

I was in the middle of writing another song when I came up with the idea for this one. So I halted progress on the initial song to develop it. It's a song called "Broadcast fantasy".

Well, i've just gone past the one year membership on Youtube, and I thought this would be a really fitting song to upload in celebration of my first year. The song is an amusing poke at addiction to television. As Youtube is all about videos, it seemed the perfect choice.

The style of this song is again different from my previous compositions. This one is a bit more pop than I'm used to writing.

I hope you enjoy it like I did:

I put this video up less than a day ago, and the reaction so far is excellent. The daily honours have been building nicely :)

So back to the numbers. Here's the Youtube latest.

I've now got 639 subscribers on my Channel.

My channel has now been seen 13,842 times, and the combine viewings of all my videos are now 205,218.

I'm hoping my next upload will be the song I was originally working on. Though I have a habit of changing my mind at the last minute :)

I'm going off line here to discuss a certain European song contest. Music being my focus.

I watched the Eurovision song contest yesterday evening. My main reason was to be entertained by the commentary of Terry Wogan.

Those not in Europe may not be aware of this competition, but in Europe, it's normally a big event.

I have to say that the general outcome was really no surprise at all. With neighbour countries having a habit of casting votes for each other. None more that what I like to term as Eastern Bloc Europe. So Russia were the victors this time around. How surprising!

I laughed when one judge quoted "The best song in Europe", and one of the judges unwittingly got close to the truth when they said it was a "Great concert", because a concert is all it was. It certainly isn't a fair competition any more. Terry Wogan said something like that. He is even considering not commenting on the competition next year, I mean concert :)

Am I sore that the British entry came joint last with votes from ony 2 countries? No, I'm shocked though, because it was in my top 5, and I know a bit about cutting edge music.

It's even more astounding if you look at all the European music charts. There's always British and American songs in there somewhere. And why is that? Well, because it's cutting edge.

I thought it was between Turkey and Norway for the title. Turkey's song was a modern sound, that was not too far removed from a band called Muse, and for pure songwriting craft, you have to give it to Norway. Well at least those two got into the top 10. The British composition was a pretty good one this time around, and deserved a top 10 placing too. Commiserations to Poland and Germany too (I liked the Polish entry) who were joint bottom with us. The rest of Europe must see them as having close political links with us. Political, you hear me say?

That's right. The competition now has a new name for me. The Eurovision Political Popularity Contest. Well, it's certainly not about the qualities of the songs. I think that was made quite clear last night.

So what are my thoughts on Europe?

I adore it, and would love to travel to all the European nations in my life, and enjoy time with indigenous population. I'm just a normal individual who loves people and doesn't colour them for the deeds of their fellow countrymen.

You can choose to agree or disagree with what I say. I'm not really qualified to comment on such an event. After all, I'm just a Songwriter :)

Well, it's nearly a year on Youtube now, and I've been thinking about what achievements I've made to date. In my opinion, it's been very little. In relation to many others, the Youtube stuff is probably quite successful, but not in my objectives. I'm only about 250 subscribers outside the top 100 UK musicians of all time. That appears to be great, but it's not supported me financially at all.

I'm a singer/songwriter. I write what I think are pretty good songs, and that's been confirmed by some good friends and music industry professionals. I consider that at the age of 42, I'm not a teenager anymore. So I'm not aiming to be a performer. The logical route is for me to write songs, and then push them out to signed bands. In the hope that they would want to record some of my material. It doesn't matter what age you are. As long as you write good songs that people will want to sing.

This reflection came about from watching the Jonathan ross show last night. The main guest was Neil Diamond. He started his career as a songwriter. Writing great songs, such as "I'm a believer", which was a hit for "The Monkees". It would be nice to have 1 percent of his success. Out of all singers in this world. My voice has been compared the most to Neil Diamond.

So I'm not giving up. It's true to say that the longer you make that effort. The more credibility you have in the industry. The more tunes you compose, the greater the chance of someone important wanting to use them. I've recorded over 100 songs now, but I've only put out about 20 of them. I'm even in the middle of writing a new song at the moment!

Here's some advice for aspiring songwriters. Don't ever give up. You might achieve nothing, but at least if you make an effort. You'll know whether you could have had success. That's better than not knowing at all, and looking back and thinking what if?

If money is an issue, then it can be an enormous sacrifice. You can get to a point where you have almost nothing at all. If you are determined, then you will not let that affect your efforts.

I'm going to finish this post with a link to my Youtube channel, and the current Youtube stats.

Here's my Youtube channel. You can check out some of my original material on there.

Jeffstunes Youtube Channel

Current Subscribers = 621

My Channel views are 13,352

My Total video views are 195,657

I'm going to be building the basic structure around my new song today, so I'll enjoy that.

Until next time :)