Submit an original song using the following prompts:
Title: "Fix Your Hearts or Die"
Challenge: don't suck
Non-mandatory Inspiration Prompt: David Lynch (take this any way you want: emotional metaphors, transcendental meditation, immense amounts of coffee)
Due Date: 11:59 pm PT, February 16, 2025
Donor: mo
Prizes:
One (1) Behringer Dual-Phase, clone of the Mutron Bi-Phase pedal, in the original box. This is an incredible pedal to use not just with guitar or electric pianos or whatnot, but also with drum machines in particular. It is a very, very good clone.
Submissions should be sent to sonofgearfight@gmail.com
mp3s, please, regular Songfight conventions for submission.
Please name your file as such: bandname_fyhod.mp3
Reviews and winner announcement will happen about a week from the due date, possibly sooner if not there are not many entries.
Reminder that the Inspiration Prompt is here to promote creativity and different approaches, and is not mandatory or a criteria for eligibility or ranking.
Contestants worldwide are eligible, if there are problems, issues with fulfillment will be handled to the best of everyone’s ability offline. Subsequent fights may have changes depending on prizing and donor.
The Fightmasters have graciously agreed to host this fight, so it will appear on its own page in the Songfight ecosystem.
Further announcements, corrections, and whatnot for this fight will be made in this thread
Hoping for better luck this time around... I couldn't sleep last night... wrote some lyrics... have a musical idea... let's see if I can put something together in time... wish me luck.
SongFight and Son of GearFight #6 Listening Party!
Monday 2/17 - 8 PM
Drop in and listen to the latest SongFight 'Fixation' if it's posted, or 'Boner Jamz 08' if it's a little late.
and the new Son of Gear Fight #6 'Fix Your Hearts or Die'
Hoping for better luck this time around... I couldn't sleep last night... wrote some lyrics... have a musical idea... let's see if I can put something together in time... wish me luck.
In with my first sonofgearfight, and only my second SongFight song! At least, my second if SpinTunes and NurEin don't count as true SongFight entries, being more adjacent.
I used this mostly to force me to actually finish something, which this is, so I'm grateful for the motivation. I'm doing FAWM and it's going badly/slowly - four songs in 17 days is not exactly rocket pace, and one of those songs was 14 seconds long... [Edit: it’s three songs not four. I’m slower than I thought].
The music for this was all recorded to 4-track cassette (Tascam 644, if that's of interest), and then imported to Logic and the vocals added in Logic. Other than the mastering chain, I've not touched the 4-track import at all.
It's a 'sort your attitude out or feck off' kinda song, though maybe the last section gives away that I'm as big of a d*ck as whoever I'm singing this at (that's the intent, anyway). Whatever I think of whoever this is about, ultimately I'm a hypocrite too!
I used this mostly to force me to actually finish something, which this is, so I'm grateful for the motivation. I'm doing FAWM and it's going badly/slowly - four songs in 17 days is not exactly rocket pace, and one of those songs was 14 seconds long... [Edit: it’s three songs not four. I’m slower than I thought].
I hear you on this one, Dutch. I am suffering for FAWM this year and I don't know why; just not feeling the usual inspiration or burst of creativity I normally get. I have four half-finished songs, and now this one. Cheers to a deadline to get something done.
I listened to the entries on the YouTube video (seems mp3s aren't up yet?). They're all pretty good and I especially love the Dutch Widows and Ujn entries.
I promised Mo if I submitted, I'd give reviews. Here you are.
Dutch Widows
Posted on FAWM already, but will put here as well.
Really like when the tambo comes in, a little hot in the mix right there and vocal gets a little buried
Really nice guitar tones as always the sliding around really works.
Light harp or arpeggiated guitar note accents are nice
Dug the vocal melody and progression also, particularly on the turnaround
I started jotting my notes down during the listening party(above) fleshing them out here.
Really cool building sliding guitar tone to open, nice balanced drums, light touch arpeggiated guitar is nice. I like your vocals on this too, they sit really well. Great when the harmonies come in; solid distorted guitar. Doot doots, nice touch. Tambo is a bit hot, but as you said, it's in the mix; on the plus side its frequency should be a fair bit higher on the root than your rhythm guitar, so you might be able to get some of it down with eq of high end or high mids, but really up to you. Excellent guitar work and tone selection as usual.
For topic, another great one, digging the perspective of a possibly unreliable narrator (or reliable but on either side of an argument), making an exception for one they dislike to fix their hearts or die. Sentiment of room for people on different sides, and clever line for we all end up in the ground from what I've seen ring true. Also excellent use of the word resile, which I had to look up. Nice dagger to finish with "nothing that you're doing would've made your mother love you".
Pigfarmer junior
Nice punky guitar, enjoy the leading tone in the turnaround on the that's what she said, nice perk up to the ears
Solid guitar tones, nice slightly overdriven vocal
Good use of repetition in the "they call her" lines in the verses.
Good driving energy in this
Really hooky melody in the chorus. The double on the fix your heart or die part is solid. I'm really dying for a harmony vocal line or two on the main part of the chorus, I think it would sound cool and fill out that part in a nice way, maybe just on the 2nd chorus onwards
Desert rock solo works nicely
Key change for the bridge? I couldn't quite tell.
Nice solos
Solos sounded a little buried in the mix for my taste at the listening party but they sound fine on the mp3 listening now, so maybe it was some youtube shennanigans. Nice song.
Ujn corporation
Off kilter bells and slow groove to start solid ominous head bob, dystopian carnival is the vibe I get.
Reverb textures, lush, delays for days, pushed back drums are huge.
Solid melody line on the fix your hearts or die.
Lyrically it feels like a bit of a grab-bag of emotive visuals, which I think works for the song. For me it doesn't hang together as a coherent narrative or story, but it captures a mood, and FWIW I think that's fine (but something I anxiously consider when I find myself writing vague lyrics. Famous folks do it all the time, but I feel like I don't have the license to get away with it as an amatuer. Mostly a "me" thing).
Threw me for a curve with the tempo change; feels a bit abrupt. I would have liked a hold over note or tone to ease me into the next section a bit, but again, that could be my personal preference.
Definitely a different mood for the rest of the song in the back half.
This type of genre is not to my personal taste, so take anything I say with a grain or pound of salt. Even if it's not my personal cup of tea, I can appreciate the work you put in. My two big constructives are I think the knocky sound for the hi hat fatigues my ear a bit and wears my attention down, and secondly there's not much change in the second half of the song; it's mostly the same from when the 2nd portion kicks in to the end. At least IMHO, some dynamics, different sounds, maybe call back some of those lush reverb or delay textures, a different singing pattern, etc. would have been nice. I just find my attention wandering a bit on the back half and would love some other little hooks, even one-shot accents, rising or descending synths, a changeup of the vocal melody, something to pull me back in. Those are all just my humble thoughts, though, take that as you will. I still thought it was a cool groove.
Siebass
Mostly I was happy with this, but didn't have enough time to mix. The day after this was submitted I cleaned up some eq/levels stuff for the vocals and the electronic bass work, but I was mostly satisfied with this, happy with the structure and shape, programmed bass and progression, and very pleased I was able to crap out a solo that I thought fit very well in the last hour or two before submission. I was also pleased that I managed to get a lyrical hook/coherence into the prompt that I was happy with, namely people that love tearing others down, like happiness vampires, and some turns of phrase and imagery I liked.
I think it was a solid entry, but there are three other solid entries, so we'll see how it fares. Either way, it's one more song I have written, and helped me get moving on some FAWM stuff.
Hey so apologies on getting to this so late--no excuses, I just had a project I had to handle at work, plus some unpleasant oral surgery. In any case, I'm sorry if anyone has been waiting on tenterhooks and I've just straight up failed you.
I really quite liked all the entries, generally a pretty moody and atmospheric prompt, apparently, which got everyone's goth on a little bit, in different ways. Anyway, to the thoughts:
The Dutch Widows: I quite enjoyed the moodiness of the tune, good choices in arrangement to build layers through the song, generally well-mixed I think. I personally would have lowered the vocal level a smidge and then mixed it up to where it sits with the full band, as for my taste it’s a touch too dominant in the early, emptier going, although I’m big fan of the sort of male Nico thing with the delivery and the reverb. I really like the guitar sound, especially on the slide guitar solo, although I was hoping for something a little more exciting melodically there. I don’t even necessarily mean more complex, but just something, either in the notes or just the sonics, that would make me shift a little. But as it is I think that bit doesn’t do enough to aid and abet the journey the rest of the song takes me on. In any case, after several listens I still felt like the journey was good but I kind of still wanted to song to have one more gear to really lift into the stratosphere before the end, YMMV.
Pigfarmer Jr: You’re quite good at putting together these steady groove rockers, and so I don’t have a lot of critical thoughts about the craft of the music. That all sounds pretty good to me. I like the craft and phrasing concepts of the vocal as well, every verse entry, transitions, etc. are good ideas. The execution though is the thing that continues to bug me. So many lines come in a bit late and then get rushed before they catch up to where they’re supposed to be, which kind of kills the effect of the groove for me. Lyrically, I enjoy that you went for a little love story, but, and this might be me being stupid, but I felt like I wanted a little more about the specifics of the relationship. Like, you’ve confessed your love, but you need to fix your heart? But the song seems to suggest that it’s other people who don’t get her and therefore need their hearts fixed. So I would’ve maybe liked either the thing where the narrator explicitly supports the “girl who doesn’t care” against these other people, or maybe it’s that the narrator is a mistaken person, who thinks that he gets this girl but she’s pointing out that he’s fooling himself. I don’t know, there’s a lot of potential narrative avenues here to choose. I just think that I want to know more about the direct emotional relationship between the narrator and girl, it’s maybe a little passive.
Siebass: You’ve already commented on the mix deficiencies due to time, so I won’t belabor the point on these, I know you know what to do to polish the mix and get it sounding a little less rough. That being said, I quite like the underlying song, the bassline especially is pretty cool. My main criticism would be that I think the vocals would sound better if the melodrama of the performance were pulled back a little. Or if you went like 3x harder on the melodrama, that could work too. As it is though I feel like it’s sitting in a place where it’s kind of dripping and slick with this sort of heart-rending emotion, and I would prefer it to be a bit more neutral or perhaps even cold in the feel of the delivery. Especially some of the more drawn-out ending notes are a little much for my taste, and the repetitions of “die”. I’m not saying don’t do those things, but maybe flatten out the feel a bit. Lyrically I think the bridge is too much in line with the rest of the song, like I realize not every song needs to have a twist in the bridge or whatever but here I feel like it gets a little monotonous meaning-wise. I’m thinking something like, what would it look like for this person to fix their heart, how would that be a better world, that sort of thing.
The Ujn Corporation: Definitely the most Lynchy of the songs, sonically, lyrically, especially the Badalamenti Twin Peaks-esque opening section. And of course I like the imagery derived from the movies. One of the things I remembered again on my personal rewatch of Lynch films and other projects over the last month or two has been how much he didn’t really plan everything to a T, and was able to roll with things that happened during shooting, or writing, or whichever phase he was in, and would just sort of find ways to incorporate those things into his art—a pretty good lesson for anyone doing creative things. Not just the Killer BOB thing, which is probably the most famous example, but as I watched different interviews with his collaborators (actors, writers, producers, DoPs, production designers, whatever) he really just loved to find accidents. For a moment I thought that's where you were gonna go with the feel change, and that there would be a couple more feel changes. As it is though, I think I was hoping for a little bit more buildup or movement, like once you get to the groove, it's a good groove but somewhere in there I keep being like, it should do something else here now.
And with that, the winner of the Behringer Dual Phase is The Dutch Widows Congrats!
I will contact you by email to get your shipping address!
Thanks everyone for participating, and I will get a new one up later tonight I think. Many more prizes to come!
Wow - thanks MO! And thanks PF Jr too! I thought all four songs were really good, and any of them would have been worthy winners! Not sure I've ever won a prize before - a weird but quite nice feeling!
