Nur Ein XVI Round Four "Waiting For The Sun To Fall"

[Niveous]

Over the half way mark!

Submit an original song by June 13th at 11:59 PM (EDT) that fits the following criteria

Title: "Waiting For The Sun To Fall"
Non-optional challenge: Rondel

Send your MP3 to nurein.sidefight@gmail.com

Good luck!

[crumpart]

What an interesting challenge!

[furrypedro]

Oh no, this is gonna be Cassettes all over again. Please let Grumpy Mike through or we'll never hear the end of it

[sailingmagpie]

Cue the sound of everyone googling the word "rondel."

[furrypedro]

At first I was thinking "is that like yodelling?"
Cos I'm sure that's what the judges would really want to hear. 15 bands yodelling.

[crumpart]

<Consults bible>

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[glennny]

Any Mac Gerdts fan (you're a board game geek if you know who that is) immediately thinks "Should I do a song about Imperial or Antike?"

I have to look up what the judges probably mean by rondel, I'm guessing it's not the game mechanic made famous by Mac.

[vowlvom]

I believe the judges will be requiring us to build a Neolithic circular enclosure for this round. I have already begun work on mine - the distinctive ambience it creates should propel me to an easy victory.

[sailingmagpie]

I believe the judges will be requiring us to build a Neolithic circular enclosure for this round. I have already begun work on mine - the distinctive ambience it creates should propel me to an easy victory.

Wait, so we're not writing songs about a circular piece of steel, as part of an armour harness, that normally protects a vulnerable point!?!

[vowlvom]

I believe the judges will be requiring us to build a Neolithic circular enclosure for this round. I have already begun work on mine - the distinctive ambience it creates should propel me to an easy victory.

Wait, so we're not writing songs about a circular piece of steel, as part of an armour harness, that normally protects a vulnerable point!?!

Haha, the very idea.

Although that would offer you good protection against a type of stiff-bladed dagger in Europe in the late Middle Ages (from the 14th century onwards), used by a variety of people from merchants to knights.

[sailingmagpie]

I believe the judges will be requiring us to build a Neolithic circular enclosure for this round. I have already begun work on mine - the distinctive ambience it creates should propel me to an easy victory.

Wait, so we're not writing songs about a circular piece of steel, as part of an armour harness, that normally protects a vulnerable point!?!

Haha, the very idea.

Although that would offer you good protection against a type of stiff-bladed dagger in Europe in the late Middle Ages (from the 14th century onwards), used by a variety of people from merchants to knights.

This shit writes itself!

[noma]

OK, so for clarification: does "rondel" mean that the entire lyric has to be a rondel, or does it just need to contain a rondel? I'm asking because Google says a rondel isn't a particularly long form of poem, three stanzas, 15 lines, so if the entire song has to be a rondel I'll probably try to write something with a catchy instrumental chorus, like Baker Street. If not, maybe I'd have the rondel part as an introduction to the rest of the song. I mean, a full rondel can be read out/sung in under a minute, and just repeating the whole lyric afterwards is kind of lame IMO.

[j$]

Your call, I think.

j$

[grumpymike]

Oh good, I was concerned I wouldn’t have a reason to bring up the villanelle incident this year.

Oh no, this is gonna be Cassettes all over again. Please let Grumpy Mike through or we'll never hear the end of it

9 years ago! That’s crazy!

[furrypedro]

Oh good, I was concerned I wouldn’t have a reason to bring up the villanelle incident this year.

Oh no, this is gonna be Cassettes all over again. Please let Grumpy Mike through or we'll never hear the end of it

9 years ago! That’s crazy!

Was that 9 years ago?! Daaamn. Where did it go.

[noma]

Yet another TMBG song. This one's from 2015; maybe they will release a song named "Hate the Rondel" three years from now, who knows.

[JonPorobil]

OK, so for clarification: does "rondel" mean that the entire lyric has to be a rondel, or does it just need to contain a rondel? I'm asking because Google says a rondel isn't a particularly long form of poem, three stanzas, 15 lines, so if the entire song has to be a rondel I'll probably try to write something with a catchy instrumental chorus, like Baker Street. If not, maybe I'd have the rondel part as an introduction to the rest of the song. I mean, a full rondel can be read out/sung in under a minute, and just repeating the whole lyric afterwards is kind of lame IMO.

Back in Nur Ein IV, one of the challenges was "Sonnet." That's a similar situation because a sonnet is by definition 14 lines. To the best of my knowledge, everyone who participated, including the winner, had the sonnet comprise the entirety of their lyrics.

15 lines doesn't strike me as unreasonably short for a song. That said, if someone's lyrics had a rondel contained within them, but bookended the rondel with something else, I wouldn't consider that a failure to meet the challenge. I would mainly be worried at that point about whether you're trying to cram too much into a single song, which isn't germane to the challenge, but is also a consideration when trying to write a good song.

A few years later, the challenge for Nur Ein VII Round 5 was "Villanelle," and here we had a controversial entry: Add's entry broke with the villanelle form by adding a single-line refrain in a couple of places in the song. In spite of breaking the form, Add won the round, a decision that remains controversial to this day (see above). And I don't mind telling you guys, if I'd been a judge that year, I'd have made the same call. I can see that it was risky because the definition of a villanelle is so rigid, but in Jefff's case the risk paid off because, for one, the rest of the song was still very clearly in a villanelle format, but also, Add's "Cassettes" is a fantastic song, and that refrain line is both an emotional climax to it and an excellent hook.

There's a tightrope to walk. On the one hand, if Jefff had written the best song of his life, but it had no elements at all that could be recognized as villanelle-like in structure, he probably would have ranked poorly. On the other hand, if he'd stuck slavishly to the villanelle format and not included the refrain, the song would have been worse off for its omission. The contestants are tasked with figuring out this balance for themselves. If you're going to take liberties with the format, you have to think about whether it will still be clear to the listener that you're participating in the form (i.e. engaging with the challenge meaningfully), and you also have to think about whether the liberty you want to take genuinely makes the song better - or rather, if the underlying song is good enough to make its own case.

You've all made it this far. We believe in you!

NUR EIN!!!!

[crumpart]

OK, so for clarification: does "rondel" mean that the entire lyric has to be a rondel, or does it just need to contain a rondel? I'm asking because Google says a rondel isn't a particularly long form of poem, three stanzas, 15 lines, so if the entire song has to be a rondel I'll probably try to write something with a catchy instrumental chorus, like Baker Street. If not, maybe I'd have the rondel part as an introduction to the rest of the song. I mean, a full rondel can be read out/sung in under a minute, and just repeating the whole lyric afterwards is kind of lame IMO.

Back in Nur Ein IV, one of the challenges was "Sonnet." That's a similar situation because a sonnet is by definition 14 lines. To the best of my knowledge, everyone who participated, including the winner, had the sonnet comprise the entirety of their lyrics.

15 lines doesn't strike me as unreasonably short for a song. That said, if someone's lyrics had a rondel contained within them, but bookended the rondel with something else, I wouldn't consider that a failure to meet the challenge. I would mainly be worried at that point about whether you're trying to cram too much into a single song, which isn't germane to the challenge, but is also a consideration when trying to write a good song.

A few years later, the challenge for Nur Ein VII Round 5 was "Villanelle," and here we had a controversial entry: Add's entry broke with the villanelle form by adding a single-line refrain in a couple of places in the song. In spite of breaking the form, Add won the round, a decision that remains controversial to this day (see above). And I don't mind telling you guys, if I'd been a judge that year, I'd have made the same call. I can see that it was risky because the definition of a villanelle is so rigid, but in Jefff's case the risk paid off because, for one, the rest of the song was still very clearly in a villanelle format, but also, Add's "Cassettes" is a fantastic song, and that refrain line is both an emotional climax to it and an excellent hook.

There's a tightrope to walk. On the one hand, if Jefff had written the best song of his life, but it had no elements at all that could be recognized as villanelle-like in structure, he probably would have ranked poorly. On the other hand, if he'd stuck slavishly to the villanelle format and not included the refrain, the song would have been worse off for its omission. The contestants are tasked with figuring out this balance for themselves. If you're going to take liberties with the format, you have to think about whether it will still be clear to the listener that you're participating in the form (i.e. engaging with the challenge meaningfully), and you also have to think about whether the liberty you want to take genuinely makes the song better - or rather, if the underlying song is good enough to make its own case.

You've all made it this far. We believe in you!

NUR EIN!!!!

In the most recent Spintunes we got 25 words, yo.

25 words.

25.

Words.

[WreckdoMelle]

So here we could use 26 if that extra word makes the song better? I think the thing most nerve-wracking (by design?) is attempting to satisfy challenges that are vaguely laid out, since then it feel like rather than having a defined challenge set out, they're going to wait and see if they like the song and then decide if it fits. Forgive me if that's unfair but I have certainly been cut in a controversial Nur Ein challenge in the past and it's rather unpleasant.
But as I was told, it's a song writing competition. If they like another song better, you're going down in the ranks regardless of how the challenge is or is not met by your song vs. those above.

Anyway I'm still trying to figure out from this example of what a rondel is what the hell the definition is. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/ho ... ondel-poem If I do what Chaucer did, do I get dinged? It's not two quatrains followed by a sestet (it's 3, 4, 6). But it is 13 lines long and contains all the prescribed repeats and explicitly is called rondel by a famous poet... Did Chaucer have a decent hook? The decision is in other hands...

[grumpymike]

And I don't mind telling you guys, if I'd been a judge that year, I'd have made the same call.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

So here we could use 26 if that extra word makes the song better? I think the thing most nerve-wracking (by design?) is attempting to satisfy challenges that are vaguely laid out...

Imagine you're in spintunes and the challenge said to limit your lyric to 25 distinct words and you used 26 then it is pretty damn obvious that you didn't hit the challenge.

Now imagine it's 1801 and you've been commissioned to write a sonata. But instead of a lively, brisk opening movement balanced by a middle slow movement, with a cathartic finale you choose to write a melancholy minor chord introduction and introduce a lot of sustained notes. It may not be received all that well. But it just may be one of the most well known sonatas in the entire world two hundred years later. (Personally I like pathetique better than moonlight, but no-one seems to give a shit about my opinion on the subject.)

Or to put it another way. Being creative with the challenge "Rondel" is different than being creative with "limit your lyric to 25 distinct words." One is measurable and one is a judgement call. In baseball interference and obstruction is typically a judgement calls and not reviewable. If the ball was touched by a fan or if it was a homerun is certainly reviewable. (And even then the wrong outcome sometimes happens.)

I personally like vague challenges that give the most different interpretations. Play it safe or stretch the boundaries at your own peril. No, it's not fair. Yes, it makes a more fun challenge in my opinion.

[Lucky Spoon]

Not that I ever submit shadows, but if anyone was looking for inspiration: