Nur Ein VI Round One "Colourblind"

[glenra]

What is that, like, two hot dogs or something? I can't see it at all.

Then perhaps your song will be autobiographical?

Hardy har har. I don't think I'm colorblind. It's a faulty test! I can now see it, but I must admit it was difficult.

I'm red-green colorblind, and I have no idea what image is supposed to be in the big ball of colored spots - there's no pattern at all that I can see or tease out.

[glenra]

blessed be.

this challenge is in the pocket (famous last words...). I have to create a MAP to get a chorus to "happen," normally.

Me too - for some reason I find it hard to make songs with a real chorus that repeats the same way every time. The rule "the song must have a chorus" would be harder for me - the way I get a song without a chorus is:
(1) write the verses that make up a song
(2) don't bother to then write/add a chorus

[Ross]

I'm red-green colorblind, and I have no idea what image is supposed to be in the big ball of colored spots - there's no pattern at all that I can see or tease out.

Even for those of us with red-green vision it was hard to make out, but there is a reddish "Nur Ein!" buried in there. Just supposed to look like a vision test, i think, not one of those where different visioned people see different things.

Nur Ein!

[glenra]

I'm red-green colorblind, and I have no idea what image is supposed to be in the big ball of colored spots - there's no pattern at all that I can see or tease out.

Even for those of us with red-green vision it was hard to make out, but there is a reddish "Nur Ein!" buried in there. Just supposed to look like a vision test, i think, not one of those where different visioned people see different things.

Nur Ein!

My guess is that this actually *is* "one of those where different visioned people see different things". Likely constructed by taking a typical dot test pattern in which normal-sighted people can see a number and rearranging the dots so the colors that originally spelled out a number now say something else.

[EmbersOfAutumn]

Final mixdown tonight, submit, and keep my fingers crossed I don't place last again (though the way the audio turned out on my piano, it's almost a given).

[Ross]

Final mixdown tonight, submit, and keep my fingers crossed I don't place last again (though the way the audio turned out on my piano, it's almost a given).

I'm glad you'll be in. Always bettee than throwing in a towel.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

Mowed the overgrown lawn (well, strip of lawn) with my manual lawnmower today, then wound up tearing the door handle off my aging clown car when I tried to open the door to get in... and sitting down at the computer, found that it's really bad to have previously moved all your Reason refills to another drive when you're trying to find the one you want to record with in the old shortcuts you'd set up. So I think I'll pour myself another scotch and ginger ale and watch "The Jerk" instead.

But I'm in. Plenty o' time, heh. And I even have the words, already.

Nur Ein! (round 1 is one bang, right?)

[EmbersOfAutumn]

Submitted.

[Billy's Little Trip]

So I think I'll pour myself another scotch and ginger ale and watch "The Jerk" instead.

....he hates these cans! stay away from the cans!

Such a great movie.

[glenra]

Wow! I'm done, and I am really happy with how it came out!

(Although I just realized I should have listened to it without headphones - it seems like there are some mixing issues there. In particular, if you can't hear the bass, some of the high percussion parts are too conspicuous and it loses a good chunk of the AWESOME that comes from the low end jumping in at just the right time in a couple places. So if you want the full effect, listen with good headphones. And turn it up! It's totally worth the trouble, trust me. )

Thank you for assigning this topic! Also, thank you to those of you who nagged me to compete!

I'm sure I'll be stumped on the next challenge, but this one was fun!

[glenra]

For those who are curious, I gave up on GarageBand-for-iPad1. I had solved the clipping issue by just singing more quietly but there was another problem that if you try to record long parts it randomly stops recording. That turned out to be a deal-breaker for me. So I went to GarageBand on the mac. Which by default outputs songs that have a wide dynamic range but are kind of quiet, so I used Amadeus Light's "normalize" to make it louder.

However, that produced a track that sounded bad on small speakers. The solution turned out to be to install "Channelstrip" ($89, but there's a free 12-day trial option). Having done that, I could turn off normalization in Garageband and just use ChannelStrip on the master track to make everything lovely.

http://www.mhlabs.com/metric_halo/produ ... trip/CSGB/

-Glen

[Caravan Ray]

For those who are curious, I gave up on GarageBand-for-iPad1. I had solved the clipping issue by just singing more quietly but there was another problem that if you try to record long parts it randomly stops recording. That turned out to be a deal-breaker for me. So I went to GarageBand on the mac. Which by default outputs songs that have a wide dynamic range but are kind of quiet, so I used Amadeus Light's "normalize" to make it louder.

However, that produced a track that sounded bad on small speakers. The solution turned out to be to install "Channelstrip" ($89, but there's a free 12-day trial option). Having done that, I could turn off normalization in Garageband and just use ChannelStrip on the master track to make everything lovely.

http://www.mhlabs.com/metric_halo/produ ... trip/CSGB/

-Glen

Interesting. I have also wondered what to do with the GarageBand " Which by default outputs songs that have a wide dynamic range but are kind of quiet, "-thing. I will investigate this too. Thank you

[bambamoozle]

Welp, for me, I was pleasantly surprised by my third place finish in Round Zero, the highest I've ever placed in one of these songfighty thingamabobs!

Then we went away for almost this whole week, only getting home last night. No room in the car for a guitar, so I composed a piece using loops and sounds, and I only have to finish the lyrics, do vocals and mix down tonight. I used the English spelling of the title (with inspiration from songs playing on XM radio). One last bonus, if the judges don't like it so much they won't dislike it for long, it's under 2:00.

NUR EIN!

[Pop Machine]

Submitted. Good luck, everyone!

[glenra]

For those who are curious, I gave up on GarageBand-for-iPad1. I had solved the clipping issue by just singing more quietly but there was another problem that if you try to record long parts it randomly stops recording. That turned out to be a deal-breaker for me. So I went to GarageBand on the mac. Which by default outputs songs that have a wide dynamic range but are kind of quiet, so I used Amadeus Light's "normalize" to make it louder.

However, that produced a track that sounded bad on small speakers. The solution turned out to be to install "Channelstrip" ($89, but there's a free 12-day trial option). Having done that, I could turn off normalization in Garageband and just use ChannelStrip on the master track to make everything lovely.

http://www.mhlabs.com/metric_halo/produ ... trip/CSGB/

-Glen

Interesting. I have also wondered what to do with the GarageBand " Which by default outputs songs that have a wide dynamic range but are kind of quiet, "-thing. I will investigate this too. Thank you

One thing I found really counterintuitive is that if you go into Garageband's preferences, on the "advanced" panel there's a checkbox for "auto normalize", which is described as "export projects at full loudness". Nowhere does it tell you that if your finished composition is loud already "auto normalize" can make it quieter. So if you want to export loud songs right from garageband in one pass you have to uncheck that box, as well as tweaking the final mixdown settings appropriately. I installed ChannelStrip, applied that to the master track (you probably want to try a bunch of different presets until you get the sound you want), and without normalization I got a balanced and loud output.

The other option is to boost the signal outside of garageband. Here's what I did before ChannelStrip - it's instructional to try it this way:
(1) Use garageband's "Export Song to Disk" to export it as an MP3 *without* cluttering up iTunes
(2) import the MP3 into Amadeus (I think I bought Amadeus Light from the App Store for $29)
(There also seems to be a free version here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/a ... uspro.html )
(3) select all, then use the "Normalize" command (in the Effects menu), but rather than normalizing to 0, normalize to, say, +3, look at the resulting waveform to see if there's clipping you can see visually, then listen to the track, and if that's too loud or not loud enough hit command-Z to undo and try normalizing again with a different value.
(4) Eventually you'll have it the way you want it; do a save-as to write out that version.
(side note: if you then select that file in the finder you can "preview" it by just hitting the space bar, which is much faster/easier than launching iTunes to play it)

[JonPorobil]

I just realized that I've missed a wonderful opportunity for a pun.

"Chromatic" is an adjective meaning "of or pertaining to color." It also refers to the musical 12-tone scale.

I did not write my song with this in mind. My song is nearly done now, and it's too late to turn back. Maybe some lovely procrastinator will find profit in my sharing of this idea.

[Manhattan Glutton]

I will put an extended non-judge version of my song up once the songs are posted. It made me laugh, but that usually means I ruined a song with my oddball humour.

[bambamoozle]

In.

NUR EIN!

[frankie big face]

I have to say I am really counting on the judges to recognize that a refrain is different than a chorus. Any casual listener to my song would say it has a chorus, but it doesn't--it has a refrain. Don't disqualify me!

It just started raining like a motherfucker here.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

IN!

Nur Ein!

[Caravan Ray]

One thing I found really counterintuitive is that if you go into Garageband's preferences, on the "advanced" panel there's a checkbox for "auto normalize", which is described as "export projects at full loudness". Nowhere does it tell you that if your finished composition is loud already "auto normalize" can make it quieter. So if you want to export loud songs right from garageband in one pass you have to uncheck that box, as well as tweaking the final mixdown settings appropriately. I installed ChannelStrip, applied that to the master track (you probably want to try a bunch of different presets until you get the sound you want), and without normalization I got a balanced and loud output.

The other option is to boost the signal outside of garageband. Here's what I did before ChannelStrip - it's instructional to try it this way:
(1) Use garageband's "Export Song to Disk" to export it as an MP3 *without* cluttering up iTunes
(2) import the MP3 into Amadeus (I think I bought Amadeus Light from the App Store for $29)
(There also seems to be a free version here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/a ... uspro.html )
(3) select all, then use the "Normalize" command (in the Effects menu), but rather than normalizing to 0, normalize to, say, +3, look at the resulting waveform to see if there's clipping you can see visually, then listen to the track, and if that's too loud or not loud enough hit command-Z to undo and try normalizing again with a different value.
(4) Eventually you'll have it the way you want it; do a save-as to write out that version.
(side note: if you then select that file in the finder you can "preview" it by just hitting the space bar, which is much faster/easier than launching iTunes to play it)

OK. I have always just put up with it - but I look forward to fiddling as you have described next time I record. I would like to be louder. Louder means better.

[Ross]

Hmm, i think i'm in, but have received a confirmation email....