Sam (Lunkhead) and I (Frankie Big Face) have been working on a new songfighting competition called Somesongs. We named it after Jefff’s (ADD Music) old website, where people post songs and people would rate them very simply as “Good,” “Okay,” or (gasp) “Bad.” Scores were generated based on a simple, yet elegant, formula: Good=10, OK=5, and Bad=0. After at least five people rated your song, you could tell all your friends and your mom that your song has a 9.17 on somesongs!
We are writing to ask you to consider participating in this inaugural competition. But first, let us answer all of your questions.
Why do we need another songfighting competition? Don’t we already have enough?
Of course! But this one is different. For starters, there are no eliminations. The winner will be determined by having the highest average song score and everyone who makes it to the end will have a new six-song EP to share with their friends (and mom).
Okay, what else is different?
I’m glad you asked. There will still be five
I’m intrigued. Go on.
Songs will be evaluated as “good,” “okay,” or “bad” using a common rubric with six equally weighted categories:
- Lyrics - We assume your song will have words and they will be related to the given title.
- Songcraft - Is your song crafted in a way that is aesthetically pleasing?
- Performance - How good was your performance?
- Production/Arrangement - How good is the production and/or arrangement?
- Execution of the Challenge - Yes, there will be challenges. More on that later…
- Overall Impression - This is where the judges can let their genre bias flag fly freely.
Equally weighted?! But I value lyrics really highly and I don’t care at all about production.
Yep. And the next person doesn’t care about lyrics at all. That’s why they’re all weighted equally.
Okay, tell me about these “challenges.”
We’re going to try something a little different. Instead of saying “No guitars” or something like that, we’re going to use Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards for the challenges. These cards are pretty vague, so there may be some disagreement about how well the challenge is executed, but we find they spur creativity and we want to give it a try. A typical challenge might be “Reverse” or “Gardening, Not Architecture.” It will probably be fun. Probably.
I’m sold! How does it work and when do we start?
We want to do this in the fall to avoid conflicting with that other big songwriting competition that we all know and love.
We are thinking of a nine-day cycle of six days writing/recording and three days listening. We will NOT post the new title and challenge until after the results have been posted. This is to give you a little break and to encourage more listening (and reviewing, if you like) of the songs.
Here’s what we’re thinking in terms of a timeline:
- Round One: September 30-October 8
- Round Two: October 9-October 17
- Round Three: October 18-October 26
- Round Four: October 27-November 4
- Round Five: November 5-November 13
- Round Six: November 14-November 22
Week 3 Results:
- 1. Lunkhead 9.17
- 2. JBB 8.33
- 3. Glenn Case 8.33
- 4. ADD 7.78
- 5. BSS 7.24
- 6. Frankie Big Face 0.00
- 1. JBB 9.02
- 2. Lunkhead 8.89
- 3. ADD 8.62
- 4. BSS 8.34
- 5. Glenn Case 7.42
- 6. Frankie Big Face 0.87
How will we listen to the songs?
We’re going to post the songs on Soundcloud and then embed them in a review thread.
Where do I sign up?
No sign-up, no Google forms, no binding contracts. You just submit a song when it’s time. We’re hoping for 15-20 participants this first time around.
And that’s it! We’ll try it out and see how it goes. Tweak as necessary. Sam and I have agreed to be judges this first time around and we already have three more judges tentatively lined up.
If you know (or think) you are going to participate, it would be great to know in advance so we can be sure our judges aren’t going to be overwhelmed by too many songs. (Wishfully thinking, we may want to cap it at 20.) Conversely, we don’t really want to run this with three artists - that would be sad.
Now let’s write SOME SONGS!
