What's it all About, Alphie?

[jeff robertson]

Don't fool yourself, if there's one thing that Song Fight! has taught me is JB's maxim: "Garbage in: garbage out." Nothing, no amount of talent, skill or zeitgeist, will replace quality equipment.

If Song Fight has taught me one thing, it's that few audiences pay as much attention to recording/production quality as Song Fight does. Many reviewers hold songs here to higher standards of production than non-SF people typically apply when listening to *commercial* music.

This is not a bad thing, but it takes getting used to.

[signboy]

It would be interesting to see some SF reviews of commercial music, held to the same standards.

[jast]

Here are my reviews for the "Bohemian Rhapsody" fight.

Queen -- 10/15
C:3 (You've got a lot of things moving around here, that's pretty cool. It almost changes too much, perhaps you should add a chorus.) L:1 (That doesn't even make sense! One moment he's all "let me go" and suddenly nothing matters anymore? Pretty stupid.) F:2 (I don't really see how this all works together. It's a rather disjointed experience. You won't get any radio play with that.) P:3 (Pretty cool but please please PLEASE don't do any of those very high backup vocals anymore.) M:1 (Many parts of the mix sound rather thin and could stand getting beefed up quite a bit. Boring panning. I think you've got digital clipping in there.)

No votes this time, sorry.

[Spud]

The tracks seperately (sic) were good, but somehow the mix killed it, it was a horrible death.

So I am curious now, Rone. Do you have a means of listening to the tracks already laid down while recording the next one? I mean, if not, that would explain a lot.

I once had to record a song like that, due to the limitations of the equipment available at the time. I recorded a piano track, and then completely separately, and without the benefit of being able to hear the piano track, I recorded the vocal track. The song was "Is It Cold?", and I think I had the opposite result from what you are describing. The two tracks (especially the vocal track) sucked individually, but when pulled together, they came out alright, if I do say so myself.

[HeadShot]

Theoretically, if the song is written right, and you perform each track perfectly in time and on pitch, it should sound okay without being able to hear the tracks already recorded. If this wasn't true, then nobody would ever be able to record that first track, off of which to base the others. If the tracks aren't clicking together, the problem is either mistakes in the performance, or in the writing process itself.

[jast]

and you perform each track perfectly in time and on pitch

Let me tell you a closely guarded secret:

That's the difficult part. Especially if, you know, you have nothing to compare your performance against.

[nyjm]

and you perform each track perfectly in time and on pitch

That's the difficult part.

Ain't that the honest truth.

[HeadShot]

and you perform each track perfectly in time and on pitch

That's the difficult part.

Ain't that the honest truth.

Not denying that, that's why I said "theoretically", lol

[tbuk00]

Don't fool yourself, if there's one thing that Song Fight! has taught me is JB's maxim: "Garbage in: garbage out." Nothing, no amount of talent, skill or zeitgeist, will replace quality equipment.

If Song Fight has taught me one thing, it's that few audiences pay as much attention to recording/production quality as Song Fight does. Many reviewers hold songs here to higher standards of production than non-SF people typically apply when listening to *commercial* music.

This is not a bad thing, but it takes getting used to.

I totally agree with this, and I was going to say something earlier but I didn't want to sound ungrateful for reviews. In my opinion far too much credit is given to people on this site for mixing well, as opposed to writing a good song. The advice on how to mix is good and all, but really doesn't tell the person whether they wrote a good song or not. Mixing has nothing to do with how good of a musician you are, or how creative your song is... Although if you are not the best musician, it can help you cover it up.. But either way, I've voted for some songs in the last few weeks that were ripped up by reviewers for their mixing. But I voted for them because they were good songs that were relevant to the theme. If all you do is pay attention to mixing you kind of defeat the purpose of the website...

[HeadShot]

If all you do is pay attention to mixing you kind of defeat the purpose of the website...

Finally, somebody says what I've been thinking ever since I came to songfight

[Caravan Ray]

Don't fool yourself, if there's one thing that Song Fight! has taught me is JB's maxim: "Garbage in: garbage out." Nothing, no amount of talent, skill or zeitgeist, will replace quality equipment.

Yes, that is true. But so is the corollary:
"Garbage in: garbage out." Nothing, no amount of quality equipment will replace talent, skill or zeitgeist.

Good songs that are not unpleaseant to listen too is the goal we are aiming for here I think. How the various aspects of the final product are prioritised is usually a matter of personal choice.

[JonPorobil]

(disclaimer: I haven't listened to the songs in question, so this post pertains to the general statements quoted as follows:)

Don't fool yourself, if there's one thing that Song Fight! has taught me is JB's maxim: "Garbage in: garbage out." Nothing, no amount of talent, skill or zeitgeist, will replace quality equipment.

If Song Fight has taught me one thing, it's that few audiences pay as much attention to recording/production quality as Song Fight does. Many reviewers hold songs here to higher standards of production than non-SF people typically apply when listening to *commercial* music.

This is not a bad thing, but it takes getting used to.

I totally agree with this, and I was going to say something earlier but I didn't want to sound ungrateful for reviews. In my opinion far too much credit is given to people on this site for mixing well, as opposed to writing a good song.

You're both insane. Commercial music is held to a ridiculously high standard of cleanliness in recording. Have you heard the radio lately? It's practically sterile.

As for Songfight specifically... Though I haven't written a full set of reviews in a while (sorry!), I like to think that when I do, I actually touch on non-production aspects, including phrasing, prosody, lyrics, arrangement, performance, &c.

Look at it this way: Sometimes, reviewers miss a song's redeeming qualities due to a bad mix, but rarely do I see a bad song get a lot of praise because of a good mix.

Often, production values present a road block between the listener and the good bits that might be found in those aspects of the song. It doesn't mean you can't record a good Guy-n-Guitar song in your bathroom, but it does mean that if you're going to try it, it had better be a fantastic song, because lyrics, melody, and musicianship are going to be all you have to go on.

On the other hand, if a song is fully-arranged and mixed, but mixed badly, it usually results in a track that is simply unpleasant to listen to. And no amount of whatever you think makes a song good can compensate for a track that listeners find unpleasant to the ear.

The production is, after all, a part of the song.

[Spud]

Here we go again.

[tbuk00]

You're both insane. Commercial music is held to a ridiculously high standard of cleanliness in recording. Have you heard the radio lately? It's practically sterile.

I think you took what I said the wrong way, I totally agree that today's pop music is extremely well produced. What I was getting at is that the average person, when listening to a song, doesn't sit there and think "hmmm this person obviously doesn't know how to mix."

But what I do disagree with is this statement:

It doesn't mean you can't record a good Guy-n-Guitar song in your bathroom, but it does mean that if you're going to try it, it had better be a fantastic song, because lyrics, melody, and musicianship are going to be all you have to go on.

Lyrics, melody, and musicianship SHOULD be all you are going on! That is what makes a song! That is why people are payed to properly mix a song that someone else wrote! And that is what I was talking about earlier, this site is supposed to be about writing good songs... not about quickly using a basic template to write a song with generic licks and cliche lyrics that fit the theme, and then mixing the shit out of it to make it sound professional. I'm not saying that you do any of this jon, or that it is a bad thing to give mixing advice (I find all this mixing stuff very interesting). What i am saying, is that its bad to give a review on someone's song where all you say is "learn how to mix and then maybe i'd take the time to pay attention to your music and vote for you." That's what I'm trying to discourage. (No one actually said that, I've been happy with all the reviews I have gotten. All I'm saying is that the lyrics and music should be the most important thing.)

[Caravan Ray]

... write a song with generic licks

You'll have to post some .wav files for that Jon. Make them nice and slurpy.

[Lunkhead]

Guys, take it to another thread. If the deja vu I'm having is accurate there are probably many threads on this topic. Or start a new one dedicated to it.

By the way, you're all wrong! I totally disagree with everyone!

[Lord of Oats]

This thread is called Fight Discussions and Reviews. Everybody always claims that this kind of thing is off-topic here. But there's no other forum section for discussing SONG FIGHT! It's this one. So maybe we could have a new topic in this forum, but there's really no other good place for it on the site.

The following applies here, but it's also meant in a more general sense.

Dear Internet,

There's no such thing as somebody ruining or clogging up your thread, because it wasn't yours to begin with. Threads on forums are community-authored. They're conversations, not books. Please stop telling people what they can and cannot say. Speech is constitutionally protected in many jurisdictions. If you're not prepared to listen to people say things you don't care about, you're not ready to have conversations with humans. Go back to talking to the dog; he won't say anything to you that you don't care about.

We, the people of the internet, seem to have forgotten a skill that many of us have applied IRL for generations: selective listening. It's even easier on the internet, because you never seem rude for paying attention to what people are saying. However, you might come off that way if you tell people what they can and can't say where. It's also easy to ignore people because it's easy to get a mouse with a scroll wheel. I found a working USB optical mouse with a wheel in the dumpster.

I hope this has been offensive to nearly everyone. It's definitely way off-topic. And I love this place because I'm almost certain my comment will not be moderated. <3

[Loilage]

hehe, lol. im afraid all i can say to that Lord of Oats is WTF?!?!?! that's like well random! xxx

[JonPorobil]

Lyrics, melody, and musicianship SHOULD be all you are going on! That is what makes a song! That is why people are payed to properly mix a song that someone else wrote! And that is what I was talking about earlier, this site is supposed to be about writing good songs... not about quickly using a basic template to write a song with generic licks and cliche lyrics that fit the theme, and then mixing the shit out of it to make it sound professional. I'm not saying that you do any of this jon, or that it is a bad thing to give mixing advice (I find all this mixing stuff very interesting). What i am saying, is that its bad to give a review on someone's song where all you say is "learn how to mix and then maybe i'd take the time to pay attention to your music and vote for you." That's what I'm trying to discourage. (No one actually said that, I've been happy with all the reviews I have gotten. All I'm saying is that the lyrics and music should be the most important thing.)

Most of us here are not professional mixers, nor do we hire professional mixers. Like it or not, we're turning in recordings, and the mix is a part of the recording. As reviewers, we don't demand genius in the mix, but we do demand something with a competent enough mix that it doesn't get in the way of the song. A lot of mixes on Songfight get in the way of the song. That's just how it is.

I think it's very interesting how, every once in a while, someone posts to a review thread, "It's SONGfight, not MIXfight," as though that somehow excuses poor execution. To succeed at Songfight, you either need to be good at all aspects of recording a song, or to work with people who are. If mixing is a problem for you, post to the collaborations thread or log into #Songfight!, the IRC chat room, and ask for help; I'm sure you'll find people willing to help.

(And yes, you're absolutely right, reviewers who focus on nothing but the mix, to the exclusion of all other aspects of the song, are annoying and not very helpful. See the review thread for "Thinkin' About the Old Days" for more perspective on that.)

[Spud]

What's important about a SongFight! entry? The lyrics? The structure? The performance? The Mix? Of course, they're all important, but given 10 days or so, on what aspect(s) should both entrants and reviewers concentrate?

This topic hijacked from the Dry Spell review thread.

[Eric Y.]

the average person, when listening to a song, doesn't sit there and think "hmmm this person obviously doesn't know how to mix."

I do. I'm not just saying this to be contrary; I often have nitpicks about various things I hear in "commercial" music (for lack of a better term to describe "music professionally made with the intent to be distributed for sale"). I realize that likely puts me in a minority of the general public, but you may happen to be seeing reviews written by a bunch of musicians and not the general public (or "the average person" as you said). You will find that the vast majority of the message-board participants and reviewers are other musicians. Music critiqued elsewhere might be viewed from a different perspective. You can't go around telling people what they should care about when they are giving an opinion, though. Doesn't work that way...

Lyrics, melody, and musicianship SHOULD be all you are going on! That is what makes a song! That is why people are payed to properly mix a song that someone else wrote! And that is what I was talking about earlier, this site is supposed to be about writing good songs... (...) its bad to give a review on someone's song where all you say is "learn how to mix and then maybe i'd take the time to pay attention to your music and vote for you." That's what I'm trying to discourage. (No one actually said that, I've been happy with all the reviews I have gotten. All I'm saying is that the lyrics and music should be the most important thing.)

Feel free to ignore comments made about mixing/recording if that's not important to you. It is important to me. I appreciate any advice I can get on making my recordings sound better -- more so than on the songwriting itself, actually. And I would never vote for something that sounded utterly like ass, or have much positive to say about it, however well-written the music and lyrics might have been. This is my personal opinion, or my personal way of expressing my opinion, just like it is the opinion of many people here. People have bitched about it in the past, but nobody has ever changed the way they listen to (or write about) music because somebody bitched about it. My advice would be (as I mentioned), ignore anything that you don't find relevant, but accept that it's there, because it isn't going away.

[Lunkhead]

This thread hijacking is a bit confusing but welcome nonetheless.

This place may be called "song fight" but you submit a recording of your song, not sheet music and lyrics. People are listening to and evaluating the whole package, including songwriting, performing, recording, mixing, and mastering. If you care about getting better reviews, then work on improving the whole package, starting with whatever is your weakest element. Or if you don't care, then don't tell people how they should write reviews.

As for SF! reviewers being more focused on mixes, I think that's baloney. It might seem that way because they actually know something about mixing, unlike average listeners, and can and do provide feedback about how mixes could be improved. To me that seems like a good thing.

Also I think SF! reviewers are actually much more lenient than people who are used to commercial music. SF! reviewers at least understand that there is going to be a lot of really amateurish music on here. Average listeners don't really hear much amateur music and they're not personally invested in SF! either. They have no reason to listen to someone singing way off pitch, or playing his/her instruments badly, or making a recording that sounds like it was made through two paper cups connected by a string. I have tried many times to get many different people to listen through a whole fight, and I always have to skip through most of the songs at their request.