Bender for President (Robot Candidate Reviews)

[erik]

Yes we can (review songs).

[bz£]

I, for one, welcome our robot candidates. And their reviews.

[Sober]

I, for one, welcome our robot candidates. And their reviews.

Nice.

[gert]

Reviews by Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe ... ounds+like
(Results, of course, matched to the song they best match. Of course.)

ben krieger - This sounds like an inspiring movie
Elastic Waste Band - This Sounds Like an Interesting Program
Electro the Wonder Boy - This sounds like deliberate trouble
Flvxxvm Florvm - This sounds like a formula for boredom,
G3RT - This sounds like a dream project for Mike
Gibson - This sounds like a job for contract man!
Ignite Your Face - This sounds like a good reform
Kid Cruiser - This sounds like a dare.
Matthew Nellis - This sounds like an ok/good diet?
Melvin - This sounds like a good idea
No Horse Town - This Sounds Like a First Amendment Issue to Me
Paco del Stinko - This sounds like trouble
PiGPEN - This sounds like boilerplate urban drama
Renwick - This sounds like the Administration's version of 'the dog ate my homework"
Robots do the Work - This Sounds Like Good News
signboy - This Sounds Like a Really Fun Mission.
The Sober Irishman - This sounds like a cool gig!!!
The Wax Malachai Confessions - This Sounds Like April Fools, But It's June
The Weakest Suit - This Sounds Like Goodbye was recorded mostly at the home studio by Ken

[BenKrieger]

I worked really hard to get this in on time...I could have used an extra day to clarify the ending, mix it a little better, and add some guitar/synth/preacher solos where the chord progressions repeat a few times to many. Now I have to go do all the shit that I put off while doing it.

[BenKrieger]

What I've streamed so far:
Elastic Waste Band - FUCKING Buggles, man! I love this.
Electro the Wonder Boy - Heh heh. GVB Suitcase contender?
Flvxxym Florvm - Wow...the Doors meets Battles. The guitar solo rocks...I wish I could do little runs like that. I chuckled when it slipped back into the march again.
G3RT - Great drum sound, the snare in particular. Are those live? The chorus is really good on this one...the grinding guitar riff in the second verse is really cool, I love shit like that. And then the bridge...where the hell is it going? this is great! I like this one and Elastic Waste Band a ton so far.
Gibson - This is--dare I say it and I mean it as a compliment--cute!
Ignite Your Face - People really got into the vocoders on this. This is like Sebadoh covering Boris...until the looney bridge. I love the guitar you're doing in the last minute.
Kid Cruiser - this is REALLY REALLY REALLY sick. this is sicker than Ween's "Spinal Meningitis." i think in order to do a song like this you need to keep it catchy and brief, which you did. i like songs that make me feel uneasy.
Matthew Nellis - Kudos to you for relying on lyrics and not synths/effects to carry the title.
Melvin - Great synth intro and rhyming. The drum arrangements on this are really good.
No Horse Town - really low volume but when I craned it up i liked what i heard. i like how the detuned sound you got out of the acoustic. the synth horns are very Godzilla-ish.
Paco Del Stinko - Heh. heh heh. Great guitar on this. GREAT use of the word "compunction." I envy your ability to solo on the guitar. damn.

[robotsdothework]

Woooooo! I'm officially back to Song Fight! It's been a year and a half!!

[Sober]

Ben Krieger: Rock opera? Wow. These are all very good. The second song is awesome. You are a madman, on a Starfinger level. Superb production. I really like the bass sound you're getting. Do you use outboard compression?

Elastic Waste Band: This is a pretty poor vocoder performance. There's not really any production value to speak of, as it sounds like a bunch of reason stock instruments. Kudos for complex arrangement and cool progression.

Flvxxvm Florvm: The metal kick sample is lame. This sounds like something George Thorogood would have done if Garageband had been around in the 70s. Take it easy on the wah. If you're going to do the super china thing, use a sequencer that won't cut the sample off. FruityLoops does this well. Or, you could put alternating samples on separate tracks, so they'll have a little more time to ring. This would have been more hip if the vocal had been clean and belted. As is, it's about as hip as.. George Thorogood.

G3rt: Very cool. The chorus is awesome, though I think the melody needs to be doubled, either by another vocal or a guitar, to make it really stand out in this busy mix. Very cool solo progression. Needs a better ending. Great songcrafting.

Gibson: Garageband + your xbox mic. You got a lot of work ahead of you.

Ignite your face: Mix is way too hot. This is painful. That's a pretty boxy guitar tone. Practice amp? Encouraging ideas, but you need a shitload of work.

Kid Cruiser: Every song ever should start with those two words. You should have run with the cock bit, as the title connection is so weak and lame that the humor level needs to be off the chart to compensate. Also, I recommend leaving the lispy voices out. There's more appeal when a ridiculous song is done with a completely straight face. Promising.

Matthew Nellis: Intro sounds like the beginning of the Clarrisa Explains it All song. Real drums with 2 overheads? At least get something on that kick and snare. This needs more than just acoustic guitar and bass to fill it out. Another guitar, a wurly/organ, something. Vocal delivery is shaky. Sounds like a bad splice or dropped beat around 2:30. This song does not need to be >4:00. Best advice I can give you: more balls.

Melvin: The intro gets me expecting (and hoping for) a Queen-esque rock epic. Solid as always, but it never seems to really get going. A greater departure from the groove in the chorus might make this really move.

No Horse Town: Ultra quiet mix.. at least normalize your mix if you can't be bothered to master it. With a lot of work, you could be great lofi punk.

Paco del Stinko: The grunts are way too dry and up front, they sound ridiculous. The drums really need more movement, they are way too simple and reserved for this arrangement. A neat thing to try with the guitar track would be octaver. Give it a whirl with just one lower octave added, I think it would add a lot. Consider getting an outboard compressor, or controlling your input levels better, it sounds like your vocal takes are overloading quite a bit. Listen to some Klownhole, he really nails the goofy aggro-rock. Pretty solid.

Pigpen: The title was Robot Candidate, not Ready the Jets. Also, this is bad.

Renwick: Yay, 3-rock. This is awesome. Did Ken write this? It's got a great indy melody groove. The only thing I'll say about the mix is that the kick is really buried and distant. All the drums could use some sparkle, and maybe some headroom on the compression. On the last repeat of the chorus, some harmony or something added in would be great. Good guitar tone, sounds like guitar rig, yes?

Robots do the Work: This is great. My Chemical Romance much? Great hooklines all around. This is probably the best example of a perfect pop song I've heard in a couple years on Songfight. Cut the cute guitar stuff at the end. I'm calling this the winner right now. Who are you?

Signboy: The sample that plays every measure just before 3 and 4 is really annoying. Choose a sample sounds less like an artifact. The vocal delivery seems lackluster. Very cool arrangement, the multi-layered parts are well executed.

The Sober Irishman: Good to be back. Threw this together last night on a whim. I don't know why I try to rap. I'm sorry. I've always wanted to sample that song. Great riff. The choir is me singing, not a patch.

The Weakest Suit: That guitar sounds fantastic. To do a song like this without a full band arrangement, you need to have an amazing voice, and you probably know you don't. This is a song, and could really be turned into something great. As is, it's nothing special.



Decent fight. Robots wins without question. Melvin's entry is solid as usual, G3rt and Renwick satisfy my indyelectrorock deficit. FF has huge potential, and Paco has improved a lot since I've been away. Ben Krieger wins the hardest worker award. Everyone else has great potential. I recommend you start investing your money in gear, and your time in reading production articles. Those who didn't get a review are shitfucks.

[rone rivendale]

I've only listened to Melvin's entry so far but it's sweet as hell. The first 30 seconds is epic and it stays good through out the rest of the song. Usually get a Weezer vibe from you Melvin but this one reminds me more of Angels and Airwaves.

[No Horse Town]

Yeah, I know I have a lot of production issues.. most of the music is sequenced in this funny little program called GuitarPro, and then I tack on vocals/accents here and there. The "normalize" feature on Audacity never seems to do much, but I used it on this song. I have a pretty bad ear for production stuff.. I think part of the problem might be that all the GuitarPro fake-instruments are mashed together in this one big track. Tricky part is, whenever I try to record them separately into Audacity, rhythms fall off and everything ends up jumbled (which also happens any time I try to record anything more than, like, 8 seconds long, forcing me to break the vocals up into little bits.. ugh). I think this may be an issue of a crappy computer. So, yeah, not that it's an excuse or anything, but I know the production sucks. If anyone knows any tricks that might help, I'd love to hear them, but right now it looks to me like a matter of money.

The low volume thing is weird... I brought the overall volume down because in the past, my shit's been too loud. I played the finished mp3 in winamp next to my other songs to make sure the volume would be closer to "Maki" and not "Baby Be Quiet"'s super-insane-loudness. Strangely, it sounded about right. I must have missed something, because it's obviously super-quiet now. Maybe winamp "embiggened" it somehow? Anyway, sorry it's so quiet overall, that's not what I was going for.

OK, I'm done showing off my ignorance! Thanks for the comments so far. I'm not being defensive; production is important, and I know I don't have a very good handle on it. I haven't checked out y'all's songs yet but people seem excited, so that's cool.

Smell ya later!

[ujnhunter]

here a little review/blurb... haven't finished listening to the entries but figured i'd post this anyhow...

Ben Krieger: I was afraid of the 14+ min. time at first glance... but this really is put
together quite well... it's like 5 or 6 different songs in one... and it tells a great
story... It reminds me of Planet P Project for some reason... Very impressed with this
one... I didn't lose interest once thru all 14+ mins....

Electric Waste Band: I like the overall sound... everything fits together nicely... I like
the "steam" like effect in the drums... Hard to make out lyrics... but that's a vocoder
fault...

G3RT: Dig the drums... and when the Guitar comes in... I really like the Guitar parts...
the bridge is cool too...

Kid Cruiser: Nice sound... Subject matter is a little strange... Though I did smile when
you wanted to rub your cocks together...

Paco: You are Mr. Guitar... like it... overall good sound... seems to have some clipping?
Like the guitar solo...

[Sober]

Maybe winamp "embiggened" it somehow? Anyway, sorry it's so quiet overall, that's not what I was going for.

Winamp uses a preamp. It boosts every song you put into it, then limits it. Disable the preamp and you'll not only hear the difference, but you'll see it in the graphic eq.

How crappy a computer are we talking? And how are you getting your audio into it, direct-in through the soundcard?

[No Horse Town]

Maybe winamp "embiggened" it somehow? Anyway, sorry it's so quiet overall, that's not what I was going for.

Winamp uses a preamp. It boosts every song you put into it, then limits it. Disable the preamp and you'll not only hear the difference, but you'll see it in the graphic eq.

How crappy a computer are we talking? And how are you getting your audio into it, direct-in through the soundcard?

the music is computer-generated, the vocals are direct-in to the sound card through a dinky "free-with-your-computer-from-the-90s" mic. I think I've done fairly well with the mic side of things, considering. The computer is, I dunno, reasonably powerful about 5 years ago. About the winamp thing.. uh, by preamp do you mean the EQ? It's always "off", and I'm not finding a specific "preamp" mention under options/preferences. (wincing in shame, I'm prolly overlooking something obvious, sorry.. hmm, OK, it's winamp 5.33, not sure if that makes a difference..) Ah well, I'm out of the closet, everyone can plainly see now that I know very little about what I'm doing (technologically, at least). It's prolly for the best.

before I go, my thoughts after having listened to just a few of them (Kid Crusier, Melvin, Robots do the Work, Ben Krieger):
"holy hell that is some cool shit Ben Krieger OMG I haven't heard em all yet but I doubt anything's gonna top this!"
and Kid Cruiser was way better last week.

shit, I'm late, gotta go

[BenKrieger]

Re: bass

It's played direct through a Sansamp Bass pedal and then a Universal Audio peamp. I use a VST compressor in the bass called "endorphin" on using the *loud and punchy* setting and then some Eq. I'd love to eventually some more outboard gear.

[jeff robertson]

I know that absolutely nobody asked me about my equipment, but before getting down to reviews I'm going to talk about it anyway.

All guitars and basses were played direct through Tascam Porta02. (No analog tape was used in the production; the Tascam was used as a pre-amp).

The bass is a Fender Precision. It is compressed with a plugin that I wrote myself called "axe murderer", and otherwise unprocessed.

All guitar parts are a Fender Squire II "Stratocaster", Korean made, circa 1990. This is the only electric guitar I currently own. All guitar tracks are processed with the Simulanalog Guitar Suite JCM-900 plugin. Some parts also use Simulanalog's Univibe plugin. The wah-wah is real, not a plugin. Late 1980's Dunlop Crybaby.

Drum samples are a bunch of .ogg files that somebody posted on the Reaper forums to help newbies get started, probably not expecting anyone to actually use them.

The keyboard (or horn section, depending on how it sounds to you) is the General User soundfont.

Vocals are processed with pitch shifting, compression, another home-made plugin of mine called the Gilliganator, and finally the "guitar-amp" plugin that comes with Reaper.

[erik]

Winamp uses a preamp. It boosts every song you put into it, then limits it. Disable the preamp and you'll not only hear the difference, but you'll see it in the graphic eq.

Hey, anyone, how do I do this?

[Spud]

About the winamp thing.. uh, by preamp do you mean the EQ? It's always "off", and I'm not finding a specific "preamp" mention under options/preferences.

Options>Preferences>Playback>Use Replay Gain> uncheck

<edit : OK maybe not. Your files probably don't have Replay Gain metadata. Sober, help us out here.>

[melvin]

...after having listened to just a few of them...

NHT, I had really intended to rise to your challenge this week and try something weird and dissonant, but I was cramming for the deadline, so I stuck with the usual, uh, not-weird and harmonic. But I'll try again next round...

[No Horse Town]

NHT, I had really intended to rise to your challenge this week and try something weird and dissonant, but I was cramming for the deadline, so I stuck with the usual, uh, not-weird and harmonic. But I'll try again next round...

heh heh, oh, sorry man, I wasn't neccessarily issuing a "challenge" or nuthin', just joking around. I hope it didn't come off offensive. Although I haven't heard any songs of yours that jump out and appeal to *me*, I certainly wasn't trying to say you're blah or boring or anything - I just don't have much criticism for your stuff. Mostly because you're damn good at what you do. I'm not exactly in a position to be telling people what to do, I know.

Still, if you're serious.. awesome! And I'll look forward to hearing it!

[melvin]

NHT, I had really intended to rise to your challenge this week and try something weird and dissonant, but I was cramming for the deadline, so I stuck with the usual, uh, not-weird and harmonic. But I'll try again next round...

heh heh, oh, sorry man, I wasn't neccessarily issuing a "challenge" or nuthin', just joking around. I hope it didn't come off offensive. Although I haven't heard any songs of yours that jump out and appeal to *me*, I certainly wasn't trying to say you're blah or boring or anything - I just don't have much criticism for your stuff. Mostly because you're damn good at what you do. I'm not exactly in a position to be telling people what to do, I know.

Still, if you're serious.. awesome! And I'll look forward to hearing it!

Yeah, I'm serious. I appreciate your positive comments, but I also appreciate the challenge of trying something new. No hard feelings!

[Sober]

About the winamp thing.. uh, by preamp do you mean the EQ? It's always "off", and I'm not finding a specific "preamp" mention under options/preferences.

Options>Preferences>Playback>Use Replay Gain> uncheck

<edit : OK maybe not. Your files probably don't have Replay Gain metadata. Sober, help us out here.>

Obv I'm full of shit and don't know what I'm talking about. I don't even have winamp on any of my machines.

I recall Winamp's eq working very much like a multi-band limiter. When I talk about the preamp, this is what I was referring to. The silly eq boosts gain, potentially making every song in the playlist the same volume.

***PSA***

If you are going to talk about your song's production, please do it in your review post, under your own band. See my post above. This makes less clutter in the thread and makes sure people know who you are. Like Jeff Robertson. Who the hell are you?

[Steve Durand]

Elastic Waste Band: This is a pretty poor vocoder performance. There's not really any production value to speak of, as it sounds like a bunch of reason stock instruments. Kudos for complex arrangement and cool progression.

Sober,
Could you expand on your comment about the vocoder performance? I only dust off the vocoder about once a year and would like to do it better.

Steve