Nur Ein III Round Zero "Kick Start"

[frankie big face]

Wait! This isn't due until Friday!!!!!!! Why am I still awake!? I have another day! *doing dance of joy*

[Märk]

With all due respect, this is the stupidest non-optional challenge ever.

With all due respect - you've never actually entered a song for Nur Ein have you Märk?

Not true. I did 'Pencil Me In' for the first one. I flaked on the second round, though.

[jb]

New monitors: check (pair of active Mackie BR 5 + a Samson sub88)
New audio interface: check (M-Audio Firewire 410: drivers are a little flaky, miss my rock solid delta drivers, but now I have MIDI on the box)
Cables to hook them all together: check (thanks again Earthshaking Music)
All hooked up, drivers installed: check (you have to install like four drivers twice, and none of them are signed, and there are warnings all over the place about when and how to plug the stupid 410 into your firewire)
Figured out how to get S/PDIF working: check (had to change the 410's sync source to "external-coaxial" so I could get noise in from my J-Station)
Set up a template in Cubase pointing to the 410's inputs and outpus: check

Written the song: uh, I have two days left, right?
Recorded the song: uh, I have two days left, right?

Do you think the Earth will care that I plan to never, ever turn any of this stuff off ever again?

[Lunkhead]

With all due respect, I would like to submit "no guitar" and "six minutes" as worse than this.

I disagree. But whatever, I worked it in. I would just hate to see someone with a good song get disqualified for not using an actor's name in their song. That would be stupid, indeed.

And it would be less stupid for someone with a good song to get disqualified because it had guitar, or because it was less than six minutes long? I guess I don't understand your point.

[Ross]

Allright - progress made - I'm not done yet, but if I had to send it now, I'd have a whole song.

[frankie big face]

With all due respect, I would like to submit "no guitar" and "six minutes" as worse than this.

I disagree. But whatever, I worked it in. I would just hate to see someone with a good song get disqualified for not using an actor's name in their song. That would be stupid, indeed.

And it would be less stupid for someone with a good song to get disqualified because it had guitar, or because it was less than six minutes long? I guess I don't understand your point.

I don't want to stretch this out to long, especially with someone who's judging the competition, but my point is that your examples merely affect the arrangement of the song, while the current challenge affects the composition of the lyrics, which for some people (including you, I believe!), is a pretty significant thing. Maybe I'm splitting hairs--I don't know, I was just agreeing with Sven/Mark--but I think there's a big difference.

[Reist]

And it would be less stupid for someone with a good song to get disqualified because it had guitar, or because it was less than six minutes long? I guess I don't understand your point.

I don't want to stretch this out to long, especially with someone who's judging the competition, but my point is that your examples merely affect the arrangement of the song, while the current challenge affects the composition of the lyrics, which for some people (including you, I believe!), is a pretty significant thing. Maybe I'm splitting hairs--I don't know, I was just agreeing with Sven/Mark--but I think there's a big difference.

I agree that there's a big difference, but I like to think that they're equally important in the creation of a song. Music that doesn't beg for transitions and over-the-top composition could easily be destroyed if it's forced into a 6-minute song.

On a lighter note, I sent in my 400x400 band photo. I had to flip through a lot of pictures to find a decent one though - for some reason the lighting made me look like a giraffe. It was kind of gross.

[Lunkhead]

It seems like splitting hairs to me. The challenge is an extra constraint, be it to the lyrics, arrangement, instrumentation, or whatever. I see all those parts of the song as equally important, and to me having to use the name of an actor in the lyrics seems like less of a burden than not being able to use my primary instrument or having to write/record a song that's twice as long as usual. It seems less likely to result in a song of lower quality than I could make without the constraint. I thought this would be an easy challenge to understand and implement, but maybe the challenges always seem that way to the judges and never seem like that to the contestants. Being on the other side is already very interesting.

[Caravan Ray]

Tex liked the challenge.
Tex is in.

[ujnhunter]

oh snap! i read that a "optional" before... argh!
it's okay... I have about 4 hours of time to write and record, and pretend to name drop someone... i can do it! i hope.

[Hoblit]

It seems like splitting hairs to me. The challenge is an extra constraint, be it to the lyrics, arrangement, instrumentation, or whatever. I see all those parts of the song as equally important, and to me having to use the name of an actor in the lyrics seems like less of a burden than not being able to use my primary instrument or having to write/record a song that's twice as long as usual.

While I agree somewhat and I definitely see your point, I lean towards Frankie's thinking. The argument of primary instrument can be thwarted though. You can still WRITE the song using your primary instrument though. The lyric is part of the song no matter how you cut it. Unless you can find a way to illustrate an actor's name drop with a musical piece*, it is something that is defined within the song. You can always transcribe your guitar into piano, keyboards, mandolin, banjo, bass, etc...

I think thats what Frankie means. I can write a song on the guitar and then replace that medium while I cannot replace a lyric and it still qualify the challenge.

*Benny Hill theme, Hail to the Chief, there might even be just a few more that I don't know of, but none the less resulting in a much mores significant limitation.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

The lyric is part of the song no matter how you cut it.

*Benny Hill theme, Hail to the Chief, there might even be just a few more that I don't know of, but none the less resulting in a much mores significant limitation.

Counterpoint: The Beatles' "Hey Jude". Originally written, IIRC, as "Hey Jules", to Lennon's son. Anything lost in that substitution?

The musical, not lyrical, name drop... that's pretty nifty. Hadn't thought of that bit o' cleverness.

[Hoblit]

The lyric is part of the song no matter how you cut it.

*Benny Hill theme, Hail to the Chief, there might even be just a few more that I don't know of, but none the less resulting in a much mores significant limitation.

Counterpoint: The Beatles' "Hey Jude". Originally written, IIRC, as "Hey Jules", to Lennon's son. Anything lost in that substitution?

The musical, not lyrical, name drop... that's pretty nifty. Hadn't thought of that bit o' cleverness.

Thats not a counter point. If John Lennon writes a song about Julian and calls it Hey Jules then Paul McCartney insists on changing it to Hey Jude (the non-optional challenge) the song no long references John's son. It now references some Jude person therefore altering the song dramatically. Granted, the song is still GOOD, but altered to the point in which the name makes all the difference in the songs meaning and over all outcome.

If you write a song with Am C D, Am C Em, then translate that to a piano, keyboard, string quartet in the same octave, it may alter the song, but its significantly the same, especially if the lyrical content is transcribed exactly. (Keeping in mind that you can add distortion, delay, reverb to any of the above instrumental variables) The point is that it would be the same song. Lyrically you can write a good song with a celebrity name drop, but no matter what you do...the lyrical name drop will be part of the song no matter how its transcribed.

[GlennCase]

It's not the first time we've had a challenge that directly affected the lyrical content of the song.

"Like A Villain" was a title from the first Nur Ein, and we actually had to steal a lyric from at least one of the judges.

ROCK!

Glenn Case

[Lunkhead]

I didn't think we'd be saying this so early, but... less whine, more NUR EIN!! I'm sorry for getting into this downward spiral, and I humbly both retract my earlier statements, and apologize to last year's judges for all my copious whining about the challenges.

[erik]

I dunno, I think there's enough room in the oven for someone to say "This challenge sucks", especially if they think it sucks but do it anyways.

I think this challenge sucks, but I'm doing it anyways.

[king_arthur]

I was quite pleased with both the title and the challenge on this one. The title is open enough that it provides lots of different directions the song could go. The challenge is something that is entirely within the songwriter's control, as opposed to having to go find some real horn players or something. Those will be the tough ones, the ones that require me to stick my head out of the studio and make contact with other human beings.

Charles (KA)

[Ross]

It's not the first time we've had a challenge that directly affected the lyrical content of the song.

"Like A Villain" was a title from the first Nur Ein, and we actually had to steal a lyric from at least one of the judges.

I don't think we had to steal lyrics, I think the challenge was merely to plagiarize - I included some purely musical plagiarism as part of that.

_________

As to the discussion in general. I wonder why they call it a "challenge" [sarcasm, implied]

I took the song first, challenge second approach on this - I hope it serves me well. If not - I hope 25 or less submit

Nur Ein!

[Paco Del Stinko]

Mailed in, picture included. NUR EIN!

[jb]

I was quite pleased with both the title and the challenge on this one. The title is open enough that it provides lots of different directions the song could go. The challenge is something that is entirely within the songwriter's control, as opposed to having to go find some real horn players or something. Those will be the tough ones, the ones that require me to stick my head out of the studio and make contact with other human beings.

Charles (KA)

Strange, although I did come up with what I consider to be a unique angle, I feel the title is restricting. Sure, I can kick start lots of things-- a party, my heart, a motorcycle, the jams --but I'm still kick starting those things, which is a bit limiting. Thankfully I think I did come up with something a little different.

In contrast, I didn't have trouble name dropping an actor, possibly because it just fit with my angle so I didn't have to stretch to make the name work.

I think that in addition to giving last years judges some slack, perhaps some of you will have a deeper sympathy for Deep Throat and your friendly Fightmasters after your experience dealing with the fallout of title and challenge choices. And I do seem to recall Erin declaring that the "no guitars" challenge resulted in one of her favorite Merisan songs, even if somebody did complain the whole time it was being written and recorded.

[Reist]

I found the challenge to be more inspiring than the title for this one. If all I had to work with was the title, you'd probably have some badass rap on your hands.

[jimtyrrell]

Hey, they might anyway.