The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Niveous wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:28 am

Okay we have got some Angry Vowl Sauce Sounds in the judging panel. Just need one more.

Sounds like four? Vom, Owl, Glen, and mo, unless I miscounted. Thanks for stepping in guys!

C'mon folks, I need one more judge.

If no one's claimed the last judge spot, I'll volunteer!

wooooooooooot

Great. We have 5 judges! Okay, all 5 of you need to start communicating and start thinking up titles and challenges. Last year, we used a Slack and that worked pretty well. Or I can open up the secret judging forum here if you would rather use that. Either which way, start up the thought process.

We're looking into it, but if there's anything useful in that secret forum (like a list of all the titles that have already been used or whatever) then let us at it!

Here's something I posted from the judging forum that folks may find interesting. Coming up with good challenges that haven't been done before can be hard. Last time around I went through all the previous Nur Ein challenges and compiled a categorized list of them, here they are:

Required Sounds:
hand claps, whistling
unconventional percussion, kitchen item, household item, garbage bin item
counting, whispering, non vocal mouth sounds, shouting, falsetto, choral voices, fast vocals
bass solo
silence, ambience
use provided sound sample, classical music sample
cacophony, flatline tone, gunfire, siren, animal sounds, chiptune/computer sounds

Technical:
time signature change, odd time signature, dynamics
diff tempos, dramatic tempo shift, accelerando
major/minor, vocal harmony, counter melody, crescendo

Song tropes:
call and response
backwards recording
round
starts and stops
spell words
spoken word bridge
through composed

Guests:
opposite sex vocals, guest vocals, guest rapper, duet, guest spoken word
guest <anything>, guest household item
previous contestant collaboration, non previous contestant guest
mom collaboration, guest family member, 2 or more guests
plagiarize from a judge
sampled vocal hook

Lyrical / poetic:
question
no rhyming, tongue twister
acrostic, mondegreen, non english phrase
sonnet, villanelle, assonance, alliteration
Name drop: actor/actress, SF song title, own name / band name

Subject matter:
epic story song
story from end to start
diss track
sell an imaginary product
news story, origin story, autobiographical, biographic
educational
two sides of an argument, two narrators

Limitations:
no guitars, no "real" instruments
voice & guitar only, voice & percussion only
> 6min long, < 2min long
no chorus, no rhyming
one sentence, lipogram (no use of the letter 'a')

Stylistic:
genre hop
obvious flaw
psychedelic, beatbox, waltz
3 part song, repetition, contrafact verse or chorus

Awesome, thank you, Chumpy!
Mike, clicking your link (on mobile at least) doesn’t produce anything particularly human-readable for me. Is there an easier way to read through that?

It’s JSON. I don’t have a nice front-end for it at the moment. I’m sure some enterprising developer can whip something up for us.

OK, well, in that case, here's the readable version. Thanks for posting the link to the data for us!

'97
3:20
After You
All Hail the Snake
Architect
The Average Circus
Banshee
The Best Place In Town Is Also The Darkest
Blame It On Ginger
The Blitz
Boilermaker
Brain Trust
Breaking the Ice
Brownie Points
Bullets and Lovers
Byron Bay
Cassettes
Cold Comfort
Color Me _________
Colourblind
Condescending Prick
Dogs of War
Don't Go To
Down to Under
El Balazo
Elevator Men
Elizabeth the Great
The End
Excuse Me
Fan Theory
Fast Lane Junkies
Fingers Crossed
Firestorm
First Blood
Full of Courage
Hazardous Waste
Headphones
Heart Of A Lion
Heart Shaker
Hit Record
Hold On
How Does She Do It?
I Don't Want An Answer To That
Internet Sensation
Kick Start
Kids
Last Call
Last Hope
Let Me In
Leviathan
Like a Villain
Looking Glass
Man of the Hour
Message Received
Million Watts
More or Less
Never Knew The Guy
The New Ugly
No Memory
No One Else
Not In This Lifetime
Now Get Out
Outnumbered
Patient Number 7
Pencil Me In
Pump The Brakes
Regime Change
Schadenfreude
See You In Hell
A Sense of the Absurd
Shock Value
Silver Tongue
Sister Cocaine
Sleep Tight
Sleeper
Sleepwalking
Sore Winner
Source of the Light
Spanish Lessons
Spider to the Fly
Standing On The Edge
State of Emergency
Stolen Diary
Stop (You're Killing Me)
Stranded
Survival
Teeth Marks
The Thing Most Easily Forgotten
This Is Not A Test
Ties of Blood and Water
Time to Panic
Tired of Talking
Trial By Fire
Two Day Shadow
Unexpected Guest
Unholy Alliance
Unnatural Disaster
Unnecessary
The Usual Bravura
Videoland
Walking On Eggshells
Watertight
We Need To Talk
We Should
Weekend in the City
Whale
What Once Was Grand
When the Time Comes
Where The Streets Have No Name
You Too
Your Light No Longer Shines

Y'all judges in position? If so, I'll post up a calendar and let's get this ball rolling.

We are all in contact, yes! Give us deadlines, make our brains work.

Let's do this!!!

Welcome to Nur Ein XV!

The Nur Ein is an eight round song competition. In each round, the participants are given a song title and a mandatory challenge and are given a week in which to finish that song. Then this year's group of Nur Ein Judges will listen to the songs and rate them from best to worst. Each round whittles down the field until we are left with only 1 competitor. Creativity x Skill x Time Management = Nur Ein!

Nur Ein XV will begin on Monday, May 4th with Round Zero. Round Zero is the way you enter the competition. The participants will have until May 10th at 11:59PM (Eastern Daylight Time) to create a song from the title and complete the challenge. When a competitor completes a song, it is to be e-mailed to nurein.sidefight which is a gmail address. The songs will then be posted at the Nur Ein website (http://nurein.songlander.com) and the next title and challenge will be announced at the same time.

The Judges will have the next two days to listen to the songs. They will rank the songs from best to worst. If there are more than 25 entries into Round zero, the judges will eliminate the lowest ranked competitors until we reach 25.

Here's the schedule:

Round 0:
May 4-May 10
Judging May 11 & 12
<X> bands, <X-25> eliminations

Round 1:
May 11-May 17
Judging May 18 & 19
25 bands, 5 eliminations
Judges favorite gets immunity

Round 2:
May 18-May 24
Judging May 25 & 26
20 bands, 4 eliminations
Judges favorite gets immunity

Round 3:
May 25-May 31 (the guest round!)
Judging June 1 & 2
16 bands, 4 eliminations
Judges favorite gets immunity

Round 4:
June 1-June 7
Judging June 8 & 9
12 bands, 4 eliminations

Round 5:
June 8-June 14
Judging June 15 & 16
8 bands, 3 eliminations

Round 6:
June 15-June 21
Judging June 22 & 23
5 bands, 3 eliminations

Final Round:
June 22-June 28
Voting June 29 & 30
2 bands, 1 elimination

The final round is a battle between the two remaining competitors with the votes of the eliminated competitors and the Nur Ein Judges choosing the winner (one vote per "act," whether you're a band or a solo competitor; if you're a duo, trio, quartet, quintet, or more, you'll need to discuss internally how to allocate that one vote).

The game is on. Nur Ein!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe you're still editing that post, but, the copied/pasted section says "XIV" when it should be "XV".

I have an idea. Let’s wait till after Mother’s Day. Just a thought.

The calendar hits both Mother's Day and Father's Day.

Niveous wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 11:12 am

The participants will have until May 10th at 12:01AM (Eastern Daylight Time) to create a song from the title and complete the challenge.

Here's the schedule:

Round 0:
May 4-May 10
Judging May 11 & 12
<X> bands, <X-25> eliminations

Before I go and put this all on the website: Are you intentionally cutting out Sundays this year? The last few years was Monday morning to Monday morning. May 10th at 12:01am is Sunday morning. Did you perhaps intend May 11th at 12:01am or May 10th at 11:59pm, or are we indeed altering the protocol?

Niveous wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 12:16 pm

The calendar hits both Mother's Day and Father's Day.

Not everybody celebrates both of those holidays, for various reasons, though. But it's hard (impossible?) to find an 8-week stretch that's not inconvenient overlapping any holidays.

Would it be possible to get the schedule to be updated to include times and time zones for everything in addition to dates? I'm assuming it's going to work like past years, things happen at 12:01AM Eastern on the dates given, etc. So e.g. round zero title+challenge go out 12:01AM Eastern Monday the 4th, the songs for the round are due 12:01AM Eastern Monday the 11th, etc.

Lunkhead wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 7:28 pm

the songs for the round are due 12:01AM Easter Monday

shit! Have I missed it?!?

Caravan Ray wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 11:07 pm

Lunkhead wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 7:28 pm

the songs for the round are due 12:01AM Easter Monday

shit! Have I missed it?!?

Yep! No need for you to look at this thread or sub-forum till next year.

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 7:14 pm

Niveous wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 11:12 am

The participants will have until May 10th at 12:01AM (Eastern Daylight Time) to create a song from the title and complete the challenge.

Here's the schedule:

Round 0:
May 4-May 10
Judging May 11 & 12
<X> bands, <X-25> eliminations

Before I go and put this all on the website: Are you intentionally cutting out Sundays this year? The last few years was Monday morning to Monday morning. May 10th at 12:01am is Sunday morning. Did you perhaps intend May 11th at 12:01am or May 10th at 11:59pm, or are we indeed altering the protocol?

May 10th at 11:59pm.