...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Discuss upcoming, current, and previous song fights.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by j$ »

mr beany wrote:The big thing keeping me from online collaboration is total inexperience with any collaboration.
Not that I'm making any great claims for the quality of this, here is an example of what I did with your vocal track and a downloadable, free sequencer in 45 minutes in my lunchbreak - set out to turn the "nursery rhyme" (i got that and rather your children turn into kittens with lazers in their tails than bankers or realtors any day) into a Residents noisescape. http://www.johnnycashpoint.com/demos/beany.mp3

I don't post this wanting you to like it, but I wanted to show you internet collaboration (or just making music to accompany your own tracks) really is that simple - and a collaboration is pretty much someone sends you an mp3, you record a track along to it, and send that track back. It's great fun, you'd don't have to be a genius to do it, and it takes your tunes to different, sometimes very interesting, places. Happy to talk more about the possibilities via PM, if it interests you at all. If not, tant pis.

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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by mrbeany »

Geoff WreckdoM wrote: Yes, three chords would be sufficient. Also consider wearing a helmet at all times.
Very interesting. If I had an object tied to a helmet I could do a little ball-and-cup thing with it on stage... I'll try to remember if I ever go to a SongFight Live event.

Of course, I'm also wondering who I know that could help with bluetooth (or other wireless) enabled objects that could leveraged to make music by reporting orientation and velocity and what-not... Hmm...
j$ wrote: I don't post this wanting you to like it, but I wanted to show you internet collaboration (or just making music to accompany tracks) really is that simple - and a collaboration is pretty much someone sends you an mp3, you record a track along to it, and send that track back. It's great fun, you'd don't have to be a genius to do it, and it takes your tunes to different, sometimes very interesting, places. Happy to talk more about the possibilities via PM, if it interests you at all. If not, tant pis.
Well, you make it sound both incredibly easy and incredibly fun. I'm going to double-check I'm not totally clueless with my software, but I think you'll be hearing from me.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by mcbigc »

j$ wrote:McB – What is it with this title and the jazz mood? Anyway, I do like cocks and anuses and I don’t like this. I actually don’t take offense at the homophobia (which it is, regardless of your intention, as explained – and if you have to explain a song, you already failed, in my book) as much as I do “bitches” and - far more importantly - the enormous number of predictable, lazy rhymes, when the song claims they’re “fat”. Musically and “flow” wise it’s OK, but nothing special. It’s about the right length, mind.
I'm gonna keep working at it and paying more attention to how I write what I want to say. Still in the early stages, testing the waters, being generally not good but working on it. Thank you for the review though. This is the kinda stuff that I need to be hearing.

And again, I'm sorry that the line comes off as me hating/being scared of gay people. I don't exactly understand where that's coming from but what matters is that other people are taking it as such. I really don't want people to think I'm homophobic so please don't take this song/that line as a window into who I am.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by j$ »

No worries - I would have felt bad not pointing out (even though I had read what you said prior to hearing said song). Consider it forgotten (by me, at least!)
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by nyjm »

First, off, thanks to everyone who posted their lyrics!

As always, listened to in random order but listed alphabetically for your reading pleasure.

Berkeley Social Scene - vote for catchiness
+++ catchy melody +++
+++ guitars +++
+++ chorus harmonies +++

Brown Word and the Big Whine
+++ atmosphere & unconventional instrumentation +++
--- hot, flat vox ---
/// this sounds like a demo, or something off the leaked version of Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine ///
On a personal note, it's always fantastic to hear a new female voice here at SF! We need more estrogen, so please keep coming back!

Checks the lyrics archive. So, you're the better half (third) of WreckdoM? Awesome.
Cornflake Brothers Band - vote for overall songwriting excellence
+++ country vibe +++
+++ guitars +++
+++ melody +++
+++ piano solo +++
--- the performance is a little too loose in place ---

Elly Lane & the Janglin' Jims - vote for lyrics and ego
/// that guitar-work and drum-programming is mine :-) ///
+++ concept: best story of the fight +++
--- the guitars and keys fight for the melody too often ---
/// the overdrive guitars sound a little off-time ///
+++ vocal harmonies +++
+++ dynamics +++
That "come back again!" applies to you, too, Elaine!
Future Boy
+++ vocal harmonies +++
--- "bad pony"? ---
--- the super synthesized music seems to be an odd match with those rich vocals; maybe the overdriven synth in the verse is too loud ---

G.U.N.S.
+++ awesome '70's jazz-infused guitar rock +++
--- vox are in a paper tube ---
--- and they're really pitchy ---
+++ bass +++
--- falsetto ---
/// solo borders on guitar wankery ///

Johnny Cashpoint
/// harpsichord sound? ///
+++ no, that' harp is pretty damn cool +++
+++ slap bass sound; that might be your FX'd uke +++
+++ tempo changes +++
+++ concept +++
--- not a memorable melody ---

MC Big C
--- meta fail ---
--- homophobia and misogyny ---
+++ rapping; you have some serious rhythm and enunciation +++
+++ "amelioration" +++

Mr. Beany Bellows Balefully
--- oh how I wish this would have music ---
--- or was sung well ---
--- and lacked a third verse ---

noah mclaughlin - vote for ego; and it's not half-bad, either
+++ guess what? I have a MIDI saxophone! when did that get in here? +++
+++ noah mclaughlin [tm] growl +++
+++ bridge with a key-change! +++
/// bridge needs more energy ///
--- solo bass tone ---
/// some drum fills are overly busy ///
J$: I was totally bringing my version of the E-Street Band, so your first impression of Springsteen was dead on the money. And I'm a sucker for fake endings.

codywalkerjr: That's actually a really good idea about the vocal panning.
Nobody, et al. - vote for overall songwriting excellence
+++ minimal instrumentation with a strong vocal and an interesting guitar part to pull it off +++
+++ bridge melody +++
+++ xylophone solo +++

Paco del Stinko
+++ guitars +++
--- wish you wish wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you wish you would make the chorus shorter ---
--- bridge lyrics are really on the nose ---

Pigfarmer Jr
+++ opening +++
+++ great blues song +++
/// vox are a little bare; they sit on top of the mix rather than exist within it ///
--- warbly vox ---

sausage
+++ RAWK! +++
+++ chorus +++
/// why are the vox are in the bathroom? ///
/// bring those awesome guitars UP! ///

sonofsupercar
+++ RAWK! +++
/// i really want a chorus, or a hook of some kind ///
+++ super sonic space sounds +++
--- lyrics seem to be stream-of-consciousness nonsense; there's a industrial melancholia but no "there." there ---

styop quoons
+++ african drums? awesome +++
+++ quirky +++
--- can barely make out the vox ---
/// seems more like a sketch than a fully fleshed-out idea ///

Tuners Union - vote for something utterly different that still works
+++ vocal harmonies +++
+++ dynamics +++

WreckdoM
+++ BEST OPENING LINE EVER +++
+++ random noises +++
--- ooh ooh ooh ---
/// could use a (more distinct) solo and some more dynamics; slow down for a second ///
"You sound like the ghost of David Bowie." - SchlimminyCricket | it was a pleasure to burn | my website | Juliet's Happy Dagger
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by j$ »

nyjm wrote:+++ slap bass sound; that might be your FX'd uke +++
I'm not calling you on the melody comment (though I disagree) but I would point out that's either Andy's bass (on which he is forbidden to play slap, but I was in a rush so might have missed it) or my six-string acoustic recorded through a very cheap attachable mic + phantom power boost. I haven't played ukulele since December 2010.

No-one's got the Star Wars easter egg joke so far (or didn't find it funny) - either way I'm disappointed :)
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by mcbigc »

nyjm wrote: --- homophobia and misogyny ---
+++ rapping; you have some serious rhythm and enunciation +++
+++ "amelioration" +++

I guess I really need to clean up my language :D I'm neither homophobic or misogynistic
Thank you for the complements otherwise
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by mrbeany »

nyjm wrote: Mr. Beany Bellows Balefully
--- oh how I wish this would have music ---
--- or was sung well ---
--- and lacked a third verse ---
Did you hear my first Song Fight entry? I think I'm getting better, but I fully acknowledge it'll be a long crawl to reach the not-bottom. (Yes, I did get votes, but I tied for bottom with a song being sung by a cat -- literally -- a feline cat.)

But seriously, I do plan to release an album of nursery rhymes and include sheet music and release it under a Creative Commons Attribution (no other restrictions) license.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by ElaineDiMasi »

So, I have been listening since wednesday night, but just reading lyrics and getting influenced by the other reviews more or less now...

Berkeley Social Scene - I like the meter, and the lilt; the vocal cadence in the chorus works well, but I wasn't taken with the verse melody or the guitar working against it. Guitars are always a little out of tune with themselves but the way this is constructed, it's annoying in the verses. Singer is making it sound like everything in the verse has one syllable. Sounds like that's being done on purpose? Pre-lyric-reading I thought I heard something like "she'll never let go of her murder, I wish she would", which sounded interestingly nonsensical. I agree that the ending seemed abrupt.

noah mclaughlin - Love the way the bass and the bassy piano take charge here. The lyrics don't look special on the page but the way they're working in the music is killer. VOTE BABY. Oh, I've been such a fatuous fan ever since I heard my first Ford's Theater Disaster tune. But it just sounds great.

Johnny Cashpoint - Ok, so it's chock full of puns and clever super-rhymes, and thoughtful color changes in the music. Stopping short of grabbing everybody though. Hey! You used the words "fat fanny"! :-p Something is not enrolling/engaging people, not enough groove, and/or not enough way into the story for the rest of us maybe.

Mr Beany - Do you have small children at home? (This was already my review prior to your conversation on the review thread about having small children at home. I like the supervillains idea. Play lots of Zappa for them.)

Paco del Stinko - Do you have small children at home? I kinda hope not!!

G.U.N.S. - This is musak-y and vocally moan-y and feels like it's going around in circles structure wise. "I wish you would / tell me the truth" is a hook that should work. There are instrumental melodies with merit, including bits of the bass. I wish I would hear them in another song.

Pigfarmer Jr. - Nice chord changes. Nothing against the story in principle but it's a cliché, and so are so many of the lines. Hold you tight, wipe away your tears. "Making time for you" sounds out of place in something so rootsy. 99% of the song has lived in the Heartland forever, but "make time for you" came from the 1990's self-help book that the substitute teacher lady donated to the library before she went back to the west coast..

Brown Word and the Big Whine - Literarious science-fiction folk, I'm down. Two or three tracks on my 2008 record are in this genre. My criticism of this track is, though the song moves forward and there are interesting sonic changes, it never gets bigger. There's no up and down in the energy levels, so you get an impression of moving implacably forward. Could be more. Either more weight and size in the instrumentation, more vocal layers, or move the vocal melody into a higher register. Right now it's pretty poems on pedestals all the same height. Which one should I look at? What order do they go in again?

WreckdoM - A potentially good groove wasted on a nothing list-style lyric. Sorry.

Sausage - Competent structure. Reasonably hooky delivery of the various hooky lines. This sounds like a case where great performance/production would have everybody applauding. Listening past the tinny
recording and the sloppy vocal pitches, there's definitely charm to it including the melodies, the guitar solo work is nice, the basic groove. But I'm left with an impression of repetition as it goes out. I think it would hold up in the playlist, so, download.

Future Boy - The chords and timbre is kinda cool. I like these kinds of vocal sounds. This I think I will download. Though, it also suffers from not getting any bigger as it goes along. The false stop feels like stepping in a pothole.

Cornflake Brothers Band - This is holding up to many listens! Download and a VOTE. I didn't decide about that vote right away. The 2nd verse is dangerous. It continues the list of complaints. If the third verse had piled on more of them, forget it. But the singer harshes on himself a little then wraps it around into the first verse lines. Good. The music is solid and just darn sounds good, little touches of pathos are in the words AND the music without being too heavy at all. Good good good job.

Tuner's Union - Nice work, technically, that is not so easy to do, and I should like it as much as I like Future Boy. So I feel like I should download either both of them or neither of them. [reads the lyrics now] You know what, this reminds me of the Moody Blues and I like them. So, a download for you, and Future Boy as well.

Nobody et al. - The guitar texture is the highlight. Def a good match to the walking-on-eggshells character.

Styop Quoons - You've been at this a long time, finding cool sounding sounds, and then doing nothing with them that goes anywhere. The notes in the sample that goes "boop boop boop beep boop bip" have
nothing to do with the notes in the guitar strum sample that comes after it. Etc. Glad you're having fun.

MC Big C - The music is thin. It's not about using garageband loops. People can make music with those, but you have to have a vision in mind for what it will sound like, and program it in. It hasn't written
itself just because there are three flavors of loop sections used in the song. People are not reading your lyrics as self-irony, maybe, because there's nothing in the lyrics to involve them with the character anyway. Another rapper talking about himself, who cares? What's it got to do with me? Yeah, the voice sounds nice. And, the track stays equally thin from beginning to end, with no landscape. So, neither the topic nor the music are reaching out to grab us.

sonofsupercar - Cool but could be cooler. I do like the style and lyrics a lot. I was dying for a change in the music but then at 1:38 when I got it, it was -ugly?- I'm not going to do download this one. Come back next time and be one I like a lot better!

Elly Lane & the Janglin' Jims - Right, so I got a new keyboard!! It's a Nord Electro 3, my first pro keyboard. Unpacked the box on friday and on saturday needed to do a little something with it, checked SF to pick up a title and threw a few ideas together. How lucky am I that noah mclaughlin saw me tweeting about it and agreed to put in all that guitars+drums goodness? I finished the scratch track sunday so he could do his thing monday afternoon, I could re-track to his groove monday night and turn it in.

And not, obviously, get another pair of ears to keep me from clobbering the mix. Here's another one that might be better. Apologetics upon request. [Edit: Oooooo! SF has a new song player widget thingie!!]

Opinions on the song, I think the story is fine, groove is good. 2nd verse lyrics are not good enough, and that's a place where energy drops and the song lags a bit. I agree that the parts get somewhat in each others' way. Next time noah and I should, like, collaborate, much as I love the last minute miracle track thing. VOTE. Cause of all our hard work on a pretty-good pop song. And, mellotrons.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by ElaineDiMasi »

codywalkerjr wrote: Elly Lane & the Janglin' Jims ... i hear some faint buzzing in the track, is that a synth or a digeridoo?
The bass line is an organ patch on the keyboard, with a phaser effect and an amp overdrive effect, both dirtying it up and making that buzz you hear. I have a lot to learn about the organ sounds on this keyboard. That patch sounded bassy and not too buzzy solo. Then it sounded just buzzy in my scratch track. After Noah put the drums and guitars in, it sounded bassy again, so much so that I thought he had tracked me a bass part and put it in the demo mix.

My issues in dealing with the mix are that I like bright sounding drums, if I compress them they get too dark, but if I leave them alone the transients stick out and make the track impossible to normalize. That's what was the case with the mix I turned in. I had actually normalized it to 0 dB but it didn't sound that way because the bulk of the music was a dB or two lower than the snare hits.

Another issue is that my ability to listen and hear what's there is only so good ... but my monitor speakers are VERY good, so even a poor mix sounds crystal clear to me in there. And my own vocals are perceived like a knife slicing through my brain. I turn bright stuff down, then it's buried on mere mortals of speakers. I could use a local friend to drop in on my mixing nights for sure. I have to save the perfectionism for my day job, unfortunately for those kind enough to listen to my tracks!

Thanks for the comments all.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by LibraryDogs »

Sorry I didn't have a ton of time to review these. If I can get more time to listen I'll come back and edit.

BSS - I like the jazzy chord changes in the verses. Chorus is a
nice changeup from that. Burden/bourbon is an interesting rhyme
that's a little nonesensical but works. Angsty enough to suit
the prompt. I like it.

Brown Word - Ethereal almost, with all the synths. The lyrics
have some neat imagery but the phrasing is inelegant. Nice to
hear more female voices here, and your voice isn't bad at all.
I was sort of waiting for something to ground the song, but
nothing did. I'd love to hear your take on the next fight's
prompt though.

Cornflakes - the chord progression reminds me of a Phish song,
and I wasn't able to get away from that the whole song. Not
your fault.

Elly - nice tone in the intro. I like the lyrical approach that
you've taken. A yearning for authenticity. Heck yeah. If you
mean something, say it. I also like that the form is not what I'm used to hearing.
The piano runs in the chorus are neat. I like how it returns to the mellotron for a bit in the outro.

Future Boy - wish you'd have posted the lyrics. I have a
feeling this is an even wierder song than I think it is.
You've succeeded in writing a really creepy song.
Why doesn't the pony want to go in the hole?
Why does everybody want him/her to? Do I even want to know?
I like the vocal harmonies though, and the track is pretty tight.

GUNS - Vocal pitch isn't always there. Arrangement is pretty
solid though. Bass line in the verse is kickin. Lyrics are good
but I don't get pulled in for most of it. Solo prior to the
final verse makes the song seem too long.

J$ - There weren't quite enough style/tempo/key changes to
remind me of a british mr bungle, but almost. I'm not sure it all FIT exactly,
but I can see the lazy, overweight, borderline depressed batman.

MC - You dig Wheelie Cyberman? If you don't you should. You've
got some neat lyrical turns there. The backing track could use some work. Pizza bagel. I like it.

Beany - Some of those things I have thought about. The rest I
definitely will. Others have said you need a ukulele. I'm
hearing chiptune under this.

Noah - I can almost see the singer's leather jacket and
pompadour. Nice emotion in the vocal delivery. Good dark raspy vocals and timing.
Kind of Neil Diamond. Maybe more than kind of. :) Nice, solid tune.

Nobody - me; This was more of an exercise in vocal harmony than
an honest to goodness song. In retrospect, some compression on
the xylophone would have made it pop a little more. I could
have spent more time on the mix as well.

Paco - The chorus has a cool punk-surf-country feel. Not sure
how all that works, but it does. Lyrics are good in places.
Really interesting chord changes and tight-ass guitarwork are
Paco hallmarks and they're present as usual.

Pigfarmer - OK I'm totally the pot calling the kettle black
here but "show, don't tell." Imagery is your friend. If you can
think of an unusual way to say something rather than just say
it, do it. On the plus side, you've got the structure of a rock
song down, and your guitar tone isn't bad. Keep the tunes
coming.

Sausage - Bit of a departure from last fight. Who are you
pissed at exactly? :-) Got a little Alex Lifeson almost in the
guitar solo. I like the choruses.

Sonofsupercar - A lot like last year's fight. I'm both bobbing and scratching my head.
Groove is great, even if it goes on a bit long. The wish you would segment is a nice difference.

Styop - If Les Claypool did an indie electronica album it might sound like this.
I might not BUY said album per se, but I give you mad props for making something that sounds completely different from the rest of us.

Tuners - Please tell me you use autotune so I can feel just a tiny bit better about myself?
I really like this entry. It's just so lush and heady. You manage to find harmonies that
I definitely wouldn't have found even given the same wonderful chord changes.
Do you write a melody over chords and write harmonies around it, or do you write with the expectation
that you're going to have 3 or 4 voices singing on every note?

Wreckdom - when I first read the lyrics (prior to the songs being posted) I thought
there was no way anybody can arrange and sell this that would make me want to listen to it.
I was wrong. Fricking awesome and wierd and funny and awesome.
“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”
― William James
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by j$ »

ElaineDiMasi wrote: Johnny Cashpoint - Something is not enrolling/engaging people, not enough groove, and/or not enough way into the story for the rest of us maybe.
Yeah, you're not wrong there; which I am disappointed by, obviously. Maybe Noah's right and there just isn't enough melody for when/if the words don't grab you. And yes, singing about fat superheroes may just not engage anyone but comic book book nerds like me, at least not the way I have done it!

Short of wishing it had another dimension here and there (BVs to bolster the chorus, maybe a less scratchy lead guitar part that I could have ended up using more of) I find the "meh" factor it's getting most perplexing. The last time this happened to this degree was my "The Only French I Know", another song "from my heart".

Someone told me that I should explore showing the 'real' me rather than hiding behind wit and snark all the time. I thought I would give it a go. Never seems to work. Clearly there is no 'real' me - just a gaping hole :)
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by ElaineDiMasi »

j$ wrote:
ElaineDiMasi wrote: Johnny Cashpoint - Something is not enrolling/engaging people, not enough groove, and/or not enough way into the story for the rest of us maybe.
.. I find the "meh" factor it's getting most perplexing. The last time this happened to this degree was my "The Only French I Know", another song "from my heart".

Someone told me that I should explore showing the 'real' me rather than hiding behind wit and snark all the time. I thought I would give it a go. Never seems to work. Clearly there is no 'real' me - just a gaping hole :)
Getting out of the wit and snark is one thing, and also making the "I" more engaged. In this song you're not the super couch potato. But who are you and why do you care about this nemesis-ridden neighborhood? There's scolding but no yearning. If you have yearning in mind, that doesn't come through. I think wit and snark would be a sizeable blockade to yearning. "Wish You Would" is auto-yearning-chorus-stuff, but it has to happen musically and setting-wise too. The speaker is not effectively appealing to the superhero maybe, so in turn the song doesn't effectively appeal to us?
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by EvelBist »

Lane&Jango - From the first note I liked this for the funky synth with distortion guitar, and the bass together. There's a part near the bridge where the drums seem out of whack, but that is so far below the norm of the song its a statistical nothing. Greeat stuff - I havent heard this band before, but I wish they do more in this style - kind of alternative poppish.

PDS - mr. manic strikes again. violent femmes-ish. Not the norm from you, a departure in the instrumental dept. I like the breaks, with the harmonies. Kind of devious sounding. Did you mean to give that impression? I wish I was there in the studio to see your face turning red while you were "wishing" the chorus.

Cornys - I like the sparse delivery, and the "well" stops at the beginning of chorus. I wish there was a sustained lead instead of the piano at the break, but owell. Straight ahead and loving it. I think its above the norm.

BSS - Took me a long time to get into the song, possibly because of the bareness and length of the verses, but the chords are pleasant. The chorus is nice. I wish the guitar leads in the breaks where they are dueling sounded like two different guitars playing different styles. Overall, its well produced, way better than I could do so kudos for that, but I'm just left with a feeling that its not bundled up, tied together.

J$ - Comeon man. I know what you're up to, you said so and the lyrics are clear about it. I hear you trying but its not coming thru. I wish you'd change your voice when you're pleading. Change it when you're complaining. Change it just like you would when youre talking to someone because its kind of samey samey all the way. That last bit about dinner shows you're capable of it.

FB - Wow, the vocals are moving at a different pace than the backing instrumental, yet in sync. Very cool and catchy. Lyrics dont carry much emotion but I'm not wishing they did because they are not the point of the song, its kind of like electronic Beach Boys - ala "Pet Sounds".

NM - Quite distinctive vocal tone. Not dynamic, but torquey. Rough around the edges, in a good way. I dont know if you wished for it that way, but the clear but rough production adds and doesnt subtract.

G... - I like the Santana-ish stylings, a bit overdone though. What does stand out is the rhythm and the way the vocals, guitar and rhythm come together. I wish it was a bit shorter.

WD - You into southern rock? Does good bro. You dont have to wish for it, you got the voice for it, greg allman-like. And the funky background and then the Frank Zappa stuff fits right in. nice man.

Brown - Whats going on here, some kind of wicca seance? That's what I get - is that what you wished for? Alternative and cool, not for everyone, but i like it nonetheless.

MBC - Clever lyrics. I follow the story. If I was one of your homies, i'd be wishin for more of your fat rhyme busting.

Beany - Sorry man, I wont be wishing for thinking of robot bunnies anytime soon.

PJr - Intros a bit long. I hear the distortion guitar in there. I wish it had been the front instrument instead the acoustic because your voice is clean, so a dichotomy would be set up with your voice and guitar that way.

SoS - Neil Young is an influence? If you wanted the lyrics to carry thru, I wish you had sung this less buried in the mix. Kind of sing song sameness. The time change chorus seems out of place. I so like how it burns out.

NeA - I listened to this right after SoS. This is the polar opposite of theirs. The whole thing is carried by the voice and lyrics. Both of which are good. Exactly opposite of SoS, I wish there had been more of a backbeat, I hear it in the stopped acoustic strums, but its just not there.

Styop - Jungle beat and the telephone arcade voice makes this unique. Did you wish to trancify your listener? Thats where I find myself - mouth agape eyes not blinking. Very effective medical office music.

TU - Interesting reggae stylings. I wish the four part harmonies didnt muddy the lyrics so much, as they are it sounds like mid - era Police, with a bit of early Hall & Oates. Really good, easy to listen to.

SSg - Lousily produced musical introspection.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by j$ »

evelbist wrote:J$ - Comeon man. I know what you're up to, you said so and the lyrics are clear about it. I hear you trying but its not coming thru. I wish you'd change your voice when you're pleading. Change it when you're complaining. Change it just like you would when youre talking to someone because its kind of samey samey all the way. That last bit about dinner shows you're capable of it.
elaine wrote:Getting out of the wit and snark is one thing, and also making the "I" more engaged. In this song you're not the super couch potato. But who are you and why do you care about this nemesis-ridden neighborhood? There's scolding but no yearning. If you have yearning in mind, that doesn't come through. I think wit and snark would be a sizeable blockade to yearning. "Wish You Would" is auto-yearning-chorus-stuff, but it has to happen musically and setting-wise too. The speaker is not effectively appealing to the superhero maybe, so in turn the song doesn't effectively appeal to us?
Oh no, no, NO - that is not what i meant at ALL. Fuck emoting - any expressed emotion in a song is despicable and entirely false - disingenuous at best and deceitful at worst. Fuck that. No offense meant to either of you but I have spent long enough studiously avoiding the fallacy of objectivity.

However I think the problem is then that people hearing this song are expecting something else than what I am going for. So wrong vocal approach / muscial arrangement for the song, that makes more sense.

As if I really give a f*ck about Batman, or the state of things ;)
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by LibraryDogs »

I think we have drastically different songwriting approaches, j$, so I'm not sure how valuable this will be.
My un-asked-for advice follows, for the benefit of anybody following the thread :)

Your song paints a good picture of the couch potato super hero, but like Elaine alluded to, doesn't give me a reason to care about it.
If you're not shooting for some sort of cathartic realization (ie perspective of one of the characters changing as a result of events, some revelation about life,death,love,etc) then that's a different sort of song than what most people are going to be looking for (I think).

We see the fat batman in the glow of his WoW computer screen, glancing guiltily and depressed toward the door, but I never got a clear picture of the repercussions of this.
Show us the teenager gang raped on her way home from church group, show us the crack babies and the subjugated poor. Show us what happened when Joker and Penguin and Riddler didn't get reigned in. Why did Batman get depressed and quit? Too much stress? Personal troubles?

Another way to think about it: The Mona Lisa is a fairly second-rate picture that nobody thought was special until it was stolen several times.
Without the story & mystery (is the one in the museum the ACTUAL Mona Lisa, or is it still stolen?), the best images are only images until we have a way to make it personal.

Without some sort of emotional appeal, maybe an element of mystery is a good way to engage people? In that case, show more and tell less? That way it's an intellectual appeal rather than an emotional one.

Anyway, I'm a hack but that's my 2 cents. Take what you like and disregard the rest.
Looking forward to next fight! Please submit, I want to see what you do with it.
That goes for everyone else too :)
“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”
― William James
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by j$ »

All advice always welcome for consideration, Nobody, but I don't want to hijack the reviews thread with pages of talking about a song that no-one else cares for, so just to say the song is not really about Batman, that's a staring point for the real point of the song, and by making so many references to that part of it in the threads I mave misdirected people. i do accept the lyric is hermetically sealed - it's nigh impossible to "get" it without the j$ decoder ring, which i forgot to put in your cereal boxes this week :) So, it's an interesting failure from my point of view and though disappointed, I do have the pleasure at least of being able to carry on thinking you're all idiots :)
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by kaz »

nobodyetal wrote:Tuners - Please tell me you use autotune so I can feel just a tiny bit better about myself?
I really like this entry. It's just so lush and heady. You manage to find harmonies that
I definitely wouldn't have found even given the same wonderful chord changes.
Do you write a melody over chords and write harmonies around it, or do you write with the expectation
that you're going to have 3 or 4 voices singing on every note?
Sorry, all songs are guaranteed autotune-free. All vocal parts are doubled, though, so I sang each part twice: one of those is panned a bit left, the other right. I've found this helps mask any pitchy problems and makes for a nice full effect, although in the case of this song that meant I had something like 14 or 16 vocal tracks... it's been mentioned by mrbeany that the mix is a little funky this week (I happen to agree) and it's totally because it's a damn nightmare to mix that many vocal tracks... it's a little muddier than it should be (which has also been mentioned, I think).

As for writing the harmony, this week I actually intended to do a minimalist thing with nothing but vocals and a bass line. The chords on the backing vocals actually came note-for-note from a chord progression developed on the piano. What wound up happening was after I got all that done, I started tinkering with percussion tracks, got carried away as I usually do, and the song grew somewhat naturally from there. As a result I wrote an actual lead vocal melody/harmony that pop out front a little bit, and sunk the piano-based harmonies back to act as a pad, of sorts.

I share all of this because I've never tried anything like this before (that is, using the piano to write chords for a 5 part vocal harmony) and it worked exceedingly well, at least from a composition standpoint - mainly because it saved me a ton of time recording and re-recording vocal parts searching for the right harmony, which is what I usually do. So that's my big takeaway this week: if it's going to be complicated, actually write it before you try to perform it (shocker, I know :o ).
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by mcbigc »

Elaine-
Thank you very much! I do need to work on my instrumentals. I know that the beats come out super flat. I'm trying to get some of my friends who are actually going to school for music production to put together some tracks for me but I'm also gonna work on figuring out how to make mine better.
I'm also now fully understanding that no one on here actually knows who I am, so hearing about me prolly isn't that interesting :D

Nobody-
I have not heard of them but I will certainly check them out. I'm glad you dig the pizza bagel part. One of the lines that I'm most proud of hahaha

EvelBist
I'm glad to hear that at least a few people were able to follow along. As I mentioned to Elaine, rapping about myself to a bunch of people who don't know me prolly isn't the best way to go so I'll work on trying to make it more accessible than to just my friends.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by ElaineDiMasi »

j$ wrote:All advice always welcome for consideration, Nobody, but I don't want to hijack the reviews thread with pages of talking about a song that no-one else cares for, so just to say the song is not really about Batman, that's a staring point for the real point of the song, and by making so many references to that part of it in the threads I mave misdirected people. i do accept the lyric is hermetically sealed - it's nigh impossible to "get" it without the j$ decoder ring, which i forgot to put in your cereal boxes this week :) So, it's an interesting failure from my point of view and though disappointed, I do have the pleasure at least of being able to carry on thinking you're all idiots :)
But this is on-topic for lots of songs. We probably are not going to get excited (emotion) about a song just because we figured out that "Batman" means the songwriter's ex-housemate's lover, or George W Bush, or whoever. We're probably going to get excited (emotion) about it because the groove makes us dance, or the guitar chops are amazing, or we never heard that sonic texture before, or the emotion delivered by the song and lyrics makes us feel like we care about something for three minutes.

To be disappointed (emotion) about the song's reception not generating excitement (emotion) but to say one's going to willfully withhold all emotional connection from it in the writing and performance, is rather asking to have it both ways.

And yes, we've all been to the poetry slams where emo-boy and emo-girl are up there acting like they're the only beings in the known universe who experience these feelings. That doesn't make a good song either, we know that. A lot of the heart has to be in the music itself and get past the clichés. Some people play their instruments that well or choose their words that well or have vocal sound and phrasing that gets that across. But I don't think they'd sound that way, no matter their talent, if they didn't act like they care. They're willing to do it in front of me and not feel like an idiot.

I don't feel like an idiot either. My opinions also have a hermetic enclosure! ;)
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by ElaineDiMasi »

mcbigc wrote: I'm also now fully understanding that no one on here actually knows who I am, so hearing about me prolly isn't that interesting :D
So, I once wrote a long-winded song where verse 1 told about somebody from science fiction classic #1 and verse 2 was sf book #2 and the 3rd verse was "my" issues.

People noticed the references and said "oh cool! I don't know that third one but, nice song!"

I said to my ex afterwards, "They didn't know the 3rd one was me!"

He said "Why should they care? To them, you're just another character."

He was right. If a song makes us care about an interesting character/scenario, we'll be happy to meet it and not care it's "you". Nobody knows which phrase in my song was about my divorce and still makes me cry six years later, and they don't need to know.

Or option two, ROCK peoples' a$sses and they won't care even what the lyrics say.
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Re: ...Step Back From That Ledge, My Friend (WYW Reviews)

Post by mcbigc »

ElaineDiMasi wrote:Or option two, ROCK peoples' a$sses and they won't care even what the lyrics say.
I don't know why I had never thought of it like that, me being the character in the song, but that makes perfect sense. And I really think that option two should be what I am for :P
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