Covering random songs from the archive

Discuss the many little competitions/projects that spring up amongst the Song Fight community.
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Lunkhead
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

Chumpy wrote:
Lunkhead wrote:Not curated, you just got lucky. ;)
Heh, Cygnet got lucky. I'm a bit scared of this challenge because I can't reverse engineer music to save my life. I have some software that can pick out chords from recordings, but it's not great. I transcribed the lyrics because I really like them, and want to play along.
Oh wow, right, I got completely mixed up there, my bad. Thanks then for jumping in and helping out by transcribing those to the lyrics archive. I will name that half point bonus in your honor, it will be the "Chumpy Bonus". :)
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

iVeg wrote:automation
It could be fun to automate it. I wanted to wait and see if people got into it and also wait a bit to let the rules gel.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Rabid Garfunkel »

My track record for this sort of thing is abysmal, but what the hell... hit me, Doctor Rhythm!
"Urban cartoon music." -- Paco Del Stinko
Be my friend? --- Song of the Day
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Lunkhead
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

Rabid Garfunkel wrote:My track record for this sort of thing is abysmal, but what the hell... hit me, Doctor Rhythm!
OK, here you go!

http://sfjukebox.org/songs/livin_at_the ... 20TV%20Set
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Rabid Garfunkel »

¡Graçias! (I think?)
"Urban cartoon music." -- Paco Del Stinko
Be my friend? --- Song of the Day
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by iVeg »

Ok. The Luke Henley track is only 12 seconds long. I get the Chumpy bonus. I don't like the song, and I don't think it's fair to everybody else to submit as is, so I will use it as the intro for a longer original piece.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by j$ »

Go on, then, hit me up.

You may have covered (arf) this and I missed it but what in the case of that random pick being one of your own? Statistically it's possible. If that were the case then I'd be happy to take on redoing one of mine better or differently. I would hazard a guess (given I am there in so many different guises and collabs) that there's a good 3% chance of that happening :)
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

j$ wrote:Go on, then, hit me up.

You may have covered (arf) this and I missed it but what in the case of that random pick being one of your own? Statistically it's possible. If that were the case then I'd be happy to take on redoing one of mine better or differently. I would hazard a guess (given I am there in so many different guises and collabs) that there's a good 3% chance of that happening :)
If it's one of your own you get a free skip, although I guess if you wanted to redo it that would be fun to hear also. I'll amend the rules in the first post.

Here's your random song. It's a doozy!

http://sfjukebox.org/songs/shreds/Marcus%20Kellis
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by iVeg »

Here's the Luke Henley song, with my "Welcome to____" inspired loosely by it.
Attachments
iv-Welcome to ____.mp3
(3.79 MiB) Downloaded 58 times
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by fluffy »

I'm ready to be challenged.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

fluffy wrote:I'm ready to be challenged.
Here you go, fluffy:

http://sfjukebox.org/songs/crashing_car ... 20Westlake

I'm on vacation and I probably won't have time to get the leaderboard started till I get back home next week.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by fluffy »

Ooh, that's a good one.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by user »

I'll give it a shot.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

user wrote:I'll give it a shot.
Here you go!

http://sfjukebox.org/songs/please_the_p ... Big%20Face
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by user »

Oh snap. What are the odds of getting a top tier song? I was expecting to be assigned something with lots of room for improvement!

So hey, I didn't see this until, hmm, say next Tuesday? For the purposes of the 24-hour bonus. ;)
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

Yeah, these last few random songs have been surprisingly good. We'll see how long that lasts. ;) And sorry but the 24-hour window is from when I post your song to cover.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by fluffy »

I'm not sure how the 24-hour bonus actually helps anything - doesn't that incentivize people to convert crap into more crap?
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Lunkhead »

It's a very small incentive to actually get your cover done, in a defined time period, which may just be enough to get some people to actually finish their covers instead of start them and not finish them. But it's just a small incentive. I don't personally have any expectation around people "improving" the songs they get somehow. Whatever happens, old songs will get some new listens and we may discover some buried treasure, and if somebody makes a good cover of a bad song that's a nice side effect. ;)
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by fluffy »

Wouldn't the fact that finishing a cover allows them to do another cover (and therefore get more points) be incentive enough?

Also it'd be cool if there were a rating system for the submitted covers, and you get a point bonus based on the number of upvotes vs. the number of downvotes (maybe on a logarithmic scale and a point cap to keep earlier submissions from getting too much of a natural advantage).
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by Chumpy »

iVeg wrote:Here's the Luke Henley song, with my "Welcome to____" inspired loosely by it.
I really like how you incorporated the original song into your intro, seems like a very sensible way of going about it. That little guitar note at the end of the original song is a nice touch, and I love the way you return to it near the end. You should get a bonus for bolstering the song with your original material, which I quite like by the way. This doesn't sound like anything I've heard you do in the past, so points for being outside of your comfort zone. Your singing voice seems really suited for this style of music, had I not know anything about you prior to listening, I would have thought this was your preferred genre. The whistling solo is right on point, and I didn't notice right away, but I hear that synth you stuck in there, heh, very nice. On later listens I heard it in the mix softly in other places, subtle.

You probably did this in a bit of a hurry, but what I didn't like about this song is the way I can hear some editing artifacts, the worst being right after the whistling solo, where it's pretty obvious that you pasted a chorus. I think it would have been better to just end the song there. I think you can hear an edit in at least one other place. Minor nits though, excellent work!
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by iVeg »

@Chumpy: Thanks for review. Whiny drunk isn't within my comfort zone, but whiny is. :) Glad you liked it
I don't remember if the last chorus was a paste-on. I fight Garageband for iPad all the time - I like lead-in notes, or pushing the beat sometimes, [or trailing off into the next section] and GB hates it and cuts it off. I didn't catch that one. Originally when I was thinking of going from Luke's song into mine, I was going from his ending into my chorus. It didn't make sense story-wise, so I did it at the end of the song instead.
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Re: Covering random songs from the archive

Post by fluffy »

iVeg wrote:@Chumpy: Thanks for review. Whiny drunk isn't within my comfort zone, but whiny is. :) Glad you liked it
I don't remember if the last chorus was a paste-on. I fight Garageband for iPad all the time - I like lead-in notes, or pushing the beat sometimes, [or trailing off into the next section] and GB hates it and cuts it off. I didn't catch that one. Originally when I was thinking of going from Luke's song into mine, I was going from his ending into my chorus. It didn't make sense story-wise, so I did it at the end of the song instead.
The iOS version of GarageBand is pretty terrible about that stuff yeah. I have no idea how anyone can have the patience necessary to actually build a whole song with it - I find it hard enough to use it as a musical scratchpad.
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