Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

There can be only one.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by frankie big face »

I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to listen to any of the songs this week. I'll try to catch up at some point.

Thanks for the positive feedback on my song. It's the first song I've written in what...four years? Good to know I still can write songs but I definitely forgot how to record them. Looking forward to getting reacquainted with my DAW (which keeps crashing, BTW :shock: )

I can't tell if no-one noticed my alphabet acrostic or if you just didn't think it was a big deal. Or maybe you thought it was too gimmicky. But I liked it and now I want to show it off. :P

After turning in my resignation
Birds began to sing
Clouds began to part
Don’t worry ‘bout me baby
Everyone deserves a new start
ETC.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by vowlvom »

frankie big face wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 8:02 am
I can't tell if no-one noticed my alphabet acrostic or if you just didn't think it was a big deal. Or maybe you thought it was too gimmicky. But I liked it and now I want to show it off. :P
I didn't notice! That's really cool.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by frankie big face »

vowlvom wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 8:09 am
frankie big face wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 8:02 am
I can't tell if no-one noticed my alphabet acrostic or if you just didn't think it was a big deal. Or maybe you thought it was too gimmicky. But I liked it and now I want to show it off. :P
I didn't notice! That's really cool.
Thanks. V-Z was the real challenge. :)
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by BoffoYux »

vowlvom wrote:
Wed May 01, 2019 10:52 pm
Here's your song passed through my usual lazy "mastering" chain, since I've been meaning to make it louder anyway for listening in my car.
Edit: I seem to have chopped the start of the song off somehow. This is why I shouldn't process audio before breakfast. Will sort it later.
Yeah, I can hear it's definitely louder with the processing. One more tool to play with in the arsenal of sound!

Thanks everyone for helping us get a better song out there.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by BoffoYux »

Chumpy wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 12:10 am
If you use Audacity this can be pretty easy. I found an oddly specific video on YouTube that explains how to use the free maximizer and LUFS metering plugins mentioned earlier in this thread with Audacity. Hope this helps!
I have a lot of homework to catch up on now. Thanks for pointing us in the right direction.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by owl »

frankie big face wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 8:02 am
I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to listen to any of the songs this week. I'll try to catch up at some point.

Thanks for the positive feedback on my song. It's the first song I've written in what...four years? Good to know I still can write songs but I definitely forgot how to record them. Looking forward to getting reacquainted with my DAW (which keeps crashing, BTW :shock: )

I can't tell if no-one noticed my alphabet acrostic or if you just didn't think it was a big deal. Or maybe you thought it was too gimmicky. But I liked it and now I want to show it off. :P

After turning in my resignation
Birds began to sing
Clouds began to part
Don’t worry ‘bout me baby
Everyone deserves a new start
ETC.
I noticed, and loved it, and was going to comment on it but I still haven't gotten the Nur Ein reviews written up. But kudos, it's great :)
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by Lunkhead »

Just a reminder, the boards are on lockdown to prevent being flooded with spam. If you know a Nur Ein participant who's trying to get on the boards, contact me directly or via the fightmaster email so I can activate their accounts.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by vowlvom »

BoffoYux wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 8:20 am
vowlvom wrote:
Wed May 01, 2019 10:52 pm
Here's your song passed through my usual lazy "mastering" chain, since I've been meaning to make it louder anyway for listening in my car.
Edit: I seem to have chopped the start of the song off somehow. This is why I shouldn't process audio before breakfast. Will sort it later.
Yeah, I can hear it's definitely louder with the processing. One more tool to play with in the arsenal of sound!

Thanks everyone for helping us get a better song out there.
Here's the not-cutting-off-the-first-minute-but-still-maximised version if you want it for anything.
BYD_MessageReceived.mp3
(5.22 MiB) Downloaded 81 times
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by bennyharv3 »

Sorry for the long delay, but the New Ugly review of Round 0 is finally live! http://podcast.songlander.com/?name=201 ... in14-0.mp3 or on iTunes. If you want it anywhere else, ask Mike, because he has all the admin stuff.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by iVeg »

Ben & Mike: Thanks for putting in the time to review everything. Now I need to change my screamo/ ukulele song, because nobody will believe I didn't steal the idea from Ben.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by glennny »

Ben & Mike,

Love the podcast! Nice to be named "#1 fan" !

one little note, I'm riding my volume knob throughout the podcast. In general all the songs are really loud and Ben is quieter than Mike.

cheers!
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by Lucky Spoon »

bennyharv3 wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 5:24 pm
Sorry for the long delay, but the New Ugly review of Round 0 is finally live! http://podcast.songlander.com/?name=201 ... in14-0.mp3 or on iTunes. If you want it anywhere else, ask Mike, because he has all the admin stuff.
Thanks for appreciating my arbitrary humor. Then again, it was pretty much targeted at Mike. Knowing I made him nearly choke on his coffee made it all worth it.

I promise I'll take next round a little more serious.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by owl »

I haven't had time to listen to the whole New Ugly podcast yet but I skipped ahead to our part and the speculations about Vom's mysterious lady vocalist friend/kidnapping victim and I'm pretty entertained that the two Songfighters living in my city and allegedly co-hosting SF Live! with me in a few months have no idea who I am :D HI GUYS I LIVE IN MADISON AND I AM 50% OF VOWL SOUNDS.

(Also I have a show on Saturday at Art In, come out and say hi!)
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by frankie big face »

bennyharv3 wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 5:24 pm
Sorry for the long delay, but the New Ugly review of Round 0 is finally live! http://podcast.songlander.com/?name=201 ... in14-0.mp3 or on iTunes. If you want it anywhere else, ask Mike, because he has all the admin stuff.
How long can I keep up my sad sack routine you ask? I suggest you look at "Date Joined" in my profile to the right for that answer! ;)

Thanks for the review.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by Cybronica »

bennyharv3 wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 5:24 pm
Sorry for the long delay, but the New Ugly review of Round 0 is finally live!
“The Genre wires in my head are crossed”
Whelp, that pretty much encapsulates me, all the time. You don’t know how right you are about being stuck between Opera and rock. I figure, why not both? :)


Also, Ryan and Chumpy- thanks for the kind words! Ryan it’s good to hear you liked it so much!


Great podcasts, guys! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by ken »

Has anyone already commented on how many returning champions we have this year?

As far as I can tell:
Merisan
Frankie Big Face x2
Caravan Ray x2
Glen Case
Puce x2
Paco del Stinko
Glennny
Nick Soma

Did I miss anyone? Is BGM or Ben Krieger in it as well?
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by Lunkhead »

bgm did a Song Fight entry so I figured he'd be back for Nur Ein but I don't think he is. I didn't hear Ben Krieger in there but he's a bit of a chameleon so who knows. I think two years ago there were seven returning champions but this year has topped that.

(Is your "x2" meant to indicate folks that have won Nur Ein twice? I think that only applies to Frank and Adam/Puce/etc.)
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by Manhattan Glutton »

owl wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 11:09 pm
HI GUYS I LIVE IN MADISON AND I AM 50% OF VOWL SOUNDS.
It took me a few days to realize that Vom misspelled "vowel" on purpose. I apologize. It's hard enough keeping people's real and invented names straight.
glennny wrote:
Thu May 02, 2019 8:32 pm
I'm riding my volume knob throughout the podcast.
Ben asked me if I wanted to listen before he posted it, and I responded "Round 0! #yolo". Then I proceeded to give him a bunch of feedback that made him feel bad. I'm eternally grateful he's editing while I do a billion other things. We're all warming up and getting back in the groove again. For example, I forgot how to form complete sentences using my mouth.

Oh Glen, I think Ben clipped out my main Jackalope nitpick at my behest because the way I phrased it. Basically, the drum fills are a little unnecessarily “extra”.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by vowlvom »

I thought the music clips were a little loud but not too bad. Good to hear you casting again, with a tonne of songs and two podcasts I'm enjoying having my weekly listening sorted out for me for a couple of months!
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by Niveous »

Sorry Andy Williams, you were wrong. This is the most wonderful time of the year, Nur Ein time. It was a very solid round zero. Now, if you don’t know me, I have a terrible knack for throwing all of my reviews into one giant paragraph. I don’t like over-thinking them so I tend to write a kind of stream of consciousness review.

Okay, well, first things first. I hurt a couple of people’s scores because of the rules of the game. The title is a mandatory. If it doesn’t seem like your song is built around that title or at least uses the title, you’re going to lose points. That’s what happened with Rain Watt. I really loved Rain’s song. Rain’s voice is a little nasally but in a charming way, like a Rivers Cuomo. The song is super catchy but it’s S-A-D and not Message Received but it is one of the few songs from this round that I would listen to outside of the competition. I also dinged The Sunday Colors for the same reason but TSC had a second issue which is the recording. I know that this isn’t production fight but you have to be able to hear the music. It’s a simple g&g song and when it’s so quiet, I’m losing a big chunk of the sonic dynamics. Pigfarmer Jr. hit both criteria of the title and challenge but really stretched the limits of what falls under a song. For me, there wasn’t enough there to make it more than just a sci-fi interlude. Two songs got dinged by me for the same reason and that was bad rapping. I know that I have done some less than stellar rap in my time (see: MC Shatner Boy and the Suave Noise Youth) but it grates on me. Even when I know it has its tongue firmly in its cheek like with Lucky Spoon, it just makes me not want to listen and it ruined all the good points earned by the first half of the song. It was worse for Fisher and Diaz because I feel like the potential was there but this was a clear missing of the mark. The rap needed to hit harder or the beat needed to be stronger. Certainly, the chorus needed to not be so offkey. Speaking of being just off, I enjoyed Lichen Throat’s song but the song has a very strict rhythm to the vocals and when the lines don’t have the right prosody, it feels really off and I docked some points for that. Another song that I enjoyed but it had its flaws was Mike Lamb. This song wanted to be Megadeth so badly and I wanted that for it. It’s got the thrash chug but the vocals are not strong enough and the guitar is too sparse and it just needs some percussion to put it over the top and it’s too short. I’ve done a lot of talking about negatives. How about a few positives like Vowl Sounds. Great vocals by Owl, which had a hint of Nina Persson. The song is catchy and a little quirky and it easily won me over especially because it also played into one of my favorite things in the world- OUIJA. Did you know that just like in this song, Ouija boards were once seen as a romantic game. You would play it on dates as a way to sneakily get closer to your partner. OMG, knee to knee touching. Another song I really enjoyed was Abominominous. Lyrically, it was a bit of a word salad but sometimes that can be enjoyable (see the entire catalog of Nirvana or AFI). It was coupled with a strong delivery and great guitar work. Berkeley Social Scene always brings great guitars (I always appreciate a neat clean solo) and this time the bass work was really solid. The main flaw was that the song was fairly generic. It’s a song that I forgot easily. Agony Sauce fell into the same sort of trap. Now, I couldn’t forget the song because it had the simplest most basic chorus that fulfilled the challenge. But that’s kind of the problem. Great guitars. Good delivery. Bland. Where other acts painted outside the lines or used interesting colors, this was as straightforward as could be.

Hey look, I started another paragraph. Needed one for the flow. Anyways. Let’s talk about Max Bombast which was a little cheesy for my taste. It felt like it was part of a hip cool Off-Broadway musical where they show a gritty side of the city with young kids trying to make it without health care. I liked the morse-code feel of the beats though. A song that caught me off guard with how much I enjoyed it was Inflatable Vegetables just because I’m not always the biggest fan of songs based around such heavy synth riffs but that chorus dug its way deep into me and the way it was delivered that last time by dropping the music out and then coming back in with that little ethereal sustain, that was a winner. I enjoyed Paco del Stinko but I felt like it just lacked some snarl. This is a punk song but without teeth. This could have been an Iggy Pop and the Stooges brawler if PDS would have just kicked up the delivery. Imagine the “I Got It”’s with some real attitude instead of all falling the same way, it would have been exceptional. Another song that I enjoyed but could have used just a touch more flavor was Frankie Big Face. It’s a ballad and it’s solid and I enjoy the shimmering sounds but I really wish that the chorus or the bridge would have added some more energy to the song. It stayed in one lane and that made it a bit soporific. Faster Jackalope did a better job of doing the ballad by going for the power ballad. It’s a song that is growing on me. It’s a slow burner which doesn’t help when you’re a judge and there’s only two days to listen and rank a song. It’s a fun pop ballad which could use that background vocal turned up and much more pronounced percussion. Let’s genre hop and talk about nu-metal. I was shocked to hear Grumpy Mike raiding my late nineties, early aughts record collection. It hit in many places especially the guitar and bass but the vocals just couldn’t handle some of the parts. This song with a different vocalist and maybe a different ending would be great. I know it’s fulfilling the challenge but oh well, for future renditions of the song cut that part out. Third Cat is here. I’m sorry but it gets the worst kind of review from me, indifference. The chorus is okay (he says as he shrugs his shoulders). It’s the song that is most easily missed. I did a lot of my listening during walks or at work and it was the one song that I kept going “Did I miss that one…oh right, it was that one. Third Cat needs to stand out. Fire on all cylinders next time. Boffo Yux Dudes couldn’t be missed with their song about Zamboni but I just didn’t find it very funny and that’s tough when it’s clearly a comedy song. I’m notoriously not big into funny music but it does happen. I have a sense of humor, I swear and I hope BYD tickle that funny bone eventually. Who’s left. Oh, Mandibles. Cybronica’s vocals are interesting because it’s blues rock as done with a hint of opera. It’s quirky. I enjoyed it but I can see how it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The song is a decent li’l rocker, like a Heart b-side. I dig it, though there was no need for those high notes towards the end.

Didn’t expect to still be talking, over 1300 words in. Okay, Rachael Layne brought great vocals and the song is just fun. The chorus is the song’s big flaw. It might as well not be there. It’s forgettable. The song has a good pre-chorus and then falls flat on the chorus. And is Glenn doing the guitars there? If so, good job you. There’s no good way to transition from that to Ujn and Friends but that’s what I’m doing. The song is fun in that Ida Maria “OMG” way where there are barely any lyrics but there is a lot of swagger to carry the whole thing. But seeing as most of the song is in Thai, I can’t get into it as much. Not saying that I can’t get into foreign language songs, as I love J-Rock, 90’s French rock, and BlackPink; my issue is that with so few lyrics, I wasn’t able to get hooked by this song. Another song that I struggled to get hooked on was Nick Soma. Sure, I liked the guitar riff but the whole song fell flat with me. The chorus just wasn’t catchy. The bridge is the best part of the song but that also didn’t hit the way I hoped it would. I think the biggest problem is that the song is about a relationship but lacks the emotion it needs. Mousehole also didn’t catch fire with me. The big reason is that it’s lyrically flat. The story of the song is “you wanted to tell me something but didn’t say it but I get it.” It’s not the most thrilling concept and it’s delivered almost as flatly as my description. Plus, the song is super short so it really didn’t go anywhere. And lastly, the defending champs, Merisan. Solid rocker with a very good bridge. Erin hits those “Send it to me”’s with just the right oomph to kick the song from just okay to good stuff. Okay, that was a lot of reviewing done in huge ugly blocks of text. Maybe I should do a podcast? Those are in vogue lately. Anyways, if you would like me to elucidate on anything, seeing as I just kind of rambled for the last 1600+ words then feel free to ask. Good luck to all in the next round. The biggest thing as a listener and a judge that I can ask of all of you is some energy and some catchy hooks. Deliver on both of those and we are golden.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by thirdcatmusic »

I dig the stream of consciousness review Nivous, Also; listened to both of the podcasts in full - great stuff ! I liked what Mike said about Max Bombast's song being an act of aggression. that sounds about right.
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Re: Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

Post by BoffoYux »

Niveous wrote:
Fri May 03, 2019 12:38 pm
Boffo Yux Dudes I have a sense of humor, I swear and I hope BYD tickle that funny bone eventually.
Ha! One of these days, we will. I think I was upset for a quick moment on your first negative review of BYD years and years ago. Now we just go 'He just doesn't get us, that's cool'. It's nothing personal, we just don't have humor on the same wavelength.

I used to be cranky about reviews. Now I'm just happy that people take the time to listen and give their honest feedback. Some of it is valid, others missed the intent, but in any case, the thoughts are appreciated.

I'm also old. Age doesn't bring wisdom, but it does bring a different thought into play. We tend to do stuff to amuse ourselves. It occasionally amuses others, and might get played other places. I forget how many times BYD and Pop Machine made it on Dr. Demento, and syndicated radio shows. At one point we were on 500 stations with bits and music each week and then we kinda faded out of the whole comedy and music scene for full time day jobs.

The last ten years we've slowly gotten back into it, mainly because we are lazy, and the contest deadlines give us a timetable to force us to get out a song. I think we're up to 100 or so by now. I should actually get that BYD release out soon.

But Niv, you've always been in the back of my mind, because there's no malice in your reviews. You just don't get us.

Someday the stars will align and you'll see what we've been trying to do. Until then, we're happy you keep listening until the music clicks in.
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