Do robot babies dream of electric pacifiers?

MC wreckshin · Post by **MC wreckshin** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 10:24 am

MC Wreckshin: Hey listen a rapper, rapping about how good he is at rapping and who his enemies are... The (Chorus???) part is good though.

ummm when do i rap about how good i am at rapping? most of the time i am making fun of myself *shrug*

wages · Post by **wages** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:14 pm

DEMS WIN! DEMS WIN! DEMS WIN! DEMS WIN!
Plus stem cell research passes in MISSOURI! Hahahahaha!

Given the shear quantity of entries, I will follow suit with the short practically useless reviews. You are welcome.

My Song: I found a drum loop, wooohoooo! Makes a big improvement. Not the falsetto I wanted to use, but I don't care to work on dozens more recordings to get it just right, not for this kind of tune.

All the voicings are from the same take. It was fun to try something different.

Adnosium: blah. Why even enter it?

And Then Tentacles!: It's like an industrial remix of Adnosium's tune (better, but no cigar).

Baker: Starts out cool. Quaint.

Bear Squadron: I'm obviously not the only one using a pitch shifter this week. If you, Adnosium, and Tentacles got together...

Bellison: It wasn't hard to do, but this is the best entry so far.

) Like a guitar playing Ben Folds, but not too much.

Boo Chin Balls: Oooo, nice! Great entry, bravo!

Chuck the Bear: Nice take on the song lyrics, and nice tune.

Cranial Biffida: More NIN influenced stuff. I wonder why, Robot Baby.

Cynthia Size and the Eclectic Spoons: Reminds me of Coin-Operated Boy, without the hookiness.

Division of Suns: I can't help but think this is a new genre "gothic-death-midi".

Framed: Is that heavy chorus? I don't care for he background singers or the heavy chorus effect. I like the change in the middle of the song and the spoken word part.

fried rich ho nighosen project: It's band names like yours that begs for a different filenaming scheme. Good take on what everyone did.

Friendly Martians, Julie: PacMan, Jr meets Fisheads. This one conveys the "baby" aspect of the songfight.

Glenny: I like your song. Its got a lot of cool stuff happening. The vocals need replacement, but the song is good!

Jimmy Jet and His TV Set: Great '90s-style song. I like it with the djambe (?). A little better production and this would be incredible. I'll keep it!

Jordan Seavers: Best overall production so far. Nice entry Jordan!

Luke Henley: The guitar (in the verse parts) is bringing this song down. I really like your lyrics and your melody a lot. I'd love to hear a better production of this piece.

MC Wreckshin: I can't stand this general sound.

Melvin: Nice entry man. I'll keep it.

Muffcake: Not a bad entry, but the serious pops and cracks are impossible.

Nemphusi: This is the kind of sound I had 6 to 8 years ago. Keep working (a better mic would probably help).

Ninja Bachelors: I can't stand the rhythm. Too "lazy sunday" for me.

Paco Del Stinko: Fun entry. Good job! Nice solos too!

Pained Memories: Too static-y. Interesting musical ideas.

Rone Rivendale: This is one of those concepts that sounds good in theory, but should not actually be done. The lyrics are good, but I don't care for the spoken word approach.

Shex: Bruce Springsteen on acid. I like your voice and it mixes well with your instrumentation.

Slicks: I like the female voice alot and the male voice is complimentary. Nice! I'm not crazy about this song, but I'm sure you have written stuff I would like.

Socklesspupp3t: Too poppy for me.

Spacedust: It's got too "cute" of a sound. Like Eminem at 11.

WWE Are Smort: Funest hiphop-type song this week.

Zealous1: Honestly surprised "Danger Will Robinson" wasn't used by anyone else! Interesting perspective.
--------------------

The best:
Boo Chin Balls (really great!)
Chuck the Bear
Jimmy Jet and His TV Set
Jordan Seavers (really great!)
Luke Henley
Melvin (really great!)
Paco Del Stinko
Shex (really great!)

Four I would vote for, but I pick BooSIN balls. I really like the fours songs marked above a LOT.

Nigel (spOOn) Clements · Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:16 pm

Paco Del Stinko wrote:
Sp00n wrote:One final point though 219kbs surely you've used that one already (I'm onto your little game!).
I'm glad you're back, and thanks for the review, but what does that mean? Don't do this to a paranoid!

sorry dude, its just that when i've downloaded all the tracks i reformat them all to 128kbs and 95db and ive noticed that you always use a different bit rate each week (i notice this because ive downloded all your tracks and possess a PdS album!) usually between 140 and 220, but if you dont do it on purpose then its weird, if you do it on purpose then its cool, i assumed it was on purpose....

is that too many s's in possessssss!?!

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:20 pm

So you take lossily-compressed music which is probably already not perfectly-encoded to begin with, and the first thing you do is reencode it at a shitty bitrate and normalize the levels?

Post by jb » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:44 pm

I suspect it means that whatever Paco uses to make MP3 files examines the file and decides what it means when he chooses "Good" from the list of quality options. This is my suspicion. It may be a suspect suspicion.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:50 pm

spOOn wrote:when i've downloaded all the tracks i reformat them all to 128kbs and 95db

That's what I was responding to.

Nigel (spOOn) Clements · Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:34 pm

Blimey! some people will moan at anything anyone does...

yeah thats what i do, i'm happy with it, it seems to work for me, and doesnt seem to impair things much at all, i just like to set everything to an equal standard for my own listening experience, i dont inflict it on anybody else, i was in fact just having a bit of a guffaw with someone called paco who comes across as a decent guy and who doesnt mind having a bit of a laugh, do we now have to move threads?

what did i do to upset you?

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:39 pm

I'm not upset, I was just wondering why you transcode everything. It doesn't put everything on a level field, it degrades everything inconsistently. It just seems like a rather silly thing to do.

Also, do you just normalize, or do you run it through a compressor? Normalizing is relatively okay (though there's better ways to deal with it than transcoding a file), but compressing can destroy an artistic intent behind dynamic range or whatever.

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:03 am

fluffy wrote:Also, do you just normalize, or do you run it through a compressor?

Or do you replay gain? I think everyone should replay gain.

Nigel (spOOn) Clements · Sun Nov 12, 2006 3:36 am

I have no idea what you're talking about i just download the songs, and put them on my second-hand 40gb creative zen jukebox so i can listen to them while i'm at work, because thats where i get the most amount of time to listen to the songs (while im working - i work in a warehouse environment, lots of external noise), because of that i need to re-format the tracks to go onto my player and also to sort out the track tags i use the software that came with my player, if ive inadvertently destroyed somebodys artistic intent, by changing something from for example 96kbs to 128 or from 160 to 128, then i'm sorry but i cant really hear that much difference, im not a professional and only do this as a hobby, because i get a lot of enjoyment out of it, ive stated many times how much admiration i have for people who can pick up an instrument and make it work the way its supposed to.
if ive honestly let somebody down by doing what i do then im sorry but judging my my reviews of songs over the last year compared with other peoples reviews then i do seem to generally agreee with the consensus.

if it makes people happy then i wont do it anymore, but i may not always get the time to listen to the tracks enough to post reviews, which is surely the most enjoyable part of this whole amateur music community.

Im really sorry to everyone for taking up so much time and space with this, im not a technically adept person, im just a 45 year old man, who got bought some software and who tries to make something that isnt too horrible.

I use MP3Gain, is that the same as replaygain??

All the best to everyone, spOOn (Nigel).

Paco Del Stinko · Post by **Paco Del Stinko** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:47 am

Hi. Sorry to further clutter the review board, but I use Win-Lame, suggested to me here, and let it do the encoding as JB said. It doesn't let me set the exact conversion rate (maybe 'cause it's a free download?) although I don't hesitate to point out that I am not very bright.

Not pointing fingers, mind you, but nobody's hollered at me like I was doing something wrong. I figured the higher than suggested rates were part of the VBR.

Sp00n - A whole album? I hope that your head doesn't explode while at work! Or anywhere else, for that matter.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:55 am

The point to VBR is that it doesn't use higher bitrates on average, it uses smarter bitrates which average out to about the same by only allocating bits where they're needed. WinLame is perfectly adequate though if you can tune the LAME parameters I'd recommend -b 32 -V 5 -q 5 which is sufficient for songfight and usually averages around 128ish.

sp00n wrote:stuff

I was just curious. I don't really care how you listen to the stuff. The artistic intent was more regarding the volume adjustment.

ReplayGain is an agreed-to id3v2 tag which specifies the average (or is it peak?) power level for the song so that the player can make a relatively smart decision for global volume adjustment, though personally I don't like those mechanisms since they tend to mess up albums (just today I turned off SoundCheck in iTunes because of what it did to "Rift" by Phish, and it does basically the same thing as ReplayGain). In the context of Song Fight (where it's a bunch of inconsistently-mastered singles) it's okay though.

Artistic intent gets destroyed if you use something like AudioCompress to actively adjust the volume during the song, especially if you use a really small history.

(I realize the irony of lamenting the use of AudioCompress when I'm the one who wrote it to begin with.)

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 5:03 am

spOOn wrote: im not a technically adept person, im just a 45 year old man, who got bought some software and who tries to make something that isnt too horrible.

Let me know if you need any help, old timer - sure, it's hard keeping up with us crazy kids, but I know all about the technical side of things

. BTW - I record all my songs direct to 8-track cartridge - no need to worry about all that bit-rate nonsense.

Adnoisium · Post by **Adnoisium** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:32 am

Wages wrote: Adnosium: blah. Why even enter it?

SWEET BABY JESUS! Harsh, man, harsh.

wages · Post by **wages** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 1:38 pm

Adnoisium wrote:
Wages wrote: Adnosium: blah. Why even enter it?
SWEET BABY JESUS! Harsh, man, harsh.

Sorry dude. I didn't intend to be so harsh. I could have said, "this is the sort of song that makes A&R reps stop accepting demos" (EDIT: I'm not trying to be an ass, just funny), but I should have said, "This just grates me the wrong way."

Don't worry, I've gotten (understandably) worse reviews.

martyr · Post by **martyr** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:47 pm

Adnosium
Your name is very self descriptive of the music.
Monotone rythmic sleeper robo lulabye.

And then tentacles
Another creepy whisper vocal urging doom and gloom.
The electronic behind this one is like a schizo nightmare
face coming out of the mirror. I'm worried, I'm scared,
these babies are not good. Stop all production.
Hault the assemblyline!

Baker
Spoken word always slows down my acceptance. Ok, it jumps into
some u-zig thingy. News sound bite feel over a 4 track synth
flows into a campfire-o-forgot the words diddy. Not really
sure about this one.

bear squadron
Serious vocoder offset vocals at extreme octaves. No music
just pitch shifted vox strangeness.

B. ellison
A real song, finally! This one is good. Groovy subtle intro
soft vox over well placed crashes. Good transition to reflective
pre-chorus and chorus build up. Yeah, this is well constructed.
Can't place influences -- but overall good composition.

Boo Chin Balls
This got high marks from other reviewers. I'm still waiting through the intro.
Lots of key shifting -- ok, voice intro is solid. This is reminding me of
Matchbox 20 meets some synth thing. The chorus is very 80s -- almost Softcell.
I'm not hitting these influences very accurately, sorry. This is certainly well
constructed. The verse is actually quite groovy. I like the high note on the
chorus too.

Chuck the bear
Another heavy hitter on the review circuit. The levels are bit bass heavy on my
system. I like the sound though. A sort of Foo Fighters thing. The guitar and
voice are well aligned. The ride is really low -- wouldn't mind a touch more of that.
Wow, the click click part is awesome -- this is straight out of Tanner circa early 90s!!!
Wind me up baby -- SWEET!

Cranial Biffida
Wow Depeche darkened and given a creepy Siousxe vocal overlay. Not sure about the
spoken word sample overlay. Death metal harmony is okay. Pretty good.

Cynthia Size and Electric Spoons
Cool intro loop. At first hit, the vocals seemed underwhelming,
but once they set up their atmosphere they are better. This this
stereolab-ish? It's a bit more goofy and less poppy though. The chimes
are way loud in the mix. Is a chime solo what you *really* want to do???
I like the sound of Cynthia through the vox vocode.

Division of Sin
Heavy thunder pushes me over. Typewriter heavy metal riff?
Trance transitions with radio RF tune in sounds. A small child
whispering in the distance. I've never heard synth death metal
done with a typewriter before. This is creepy.

Framed!
Blues construction. Chorus harmonies sound like they were done
by volunteers from the street. The middle part gets really Soul,
like like i don't know Barry Manalow? The story is good. I love
the "Robot Embrace" part -- that's funny.

Friedrich Honig Hosen Project
Vocally this reminds me of an Adult tune I loved -- statements
like "footwear". But without the electro-clash pop dance music,
this really doesn't compare to Adult. Interesting, but I'm longing
for something I can dance to.

Friendly Martians
PacMan over campfire hodge-podge of instrumentation. Quirky
puppet voice sings a decent melody. This would be really fun
to perform wasted while camping.

Glenny
The classic crazed production of a Zappa loving guitar hack.
I like the guitar tap and wail intro. This lyric is great:
"This little bundle of plastic and metal is my daughter". I
also like when the robo daughter sings back to her father --
did you sing through your guitar effect rack or something? Crazy.

Jimmy Jet HistVset
This is cool. It's kind of Sebadoh meets early Beck doing
the all acoustic thing. Rough timing on the low fi drums, but
good feel overall. The structure, composition, and melody is
good.

Jorden Seavers
Holy moly -- I never tuned in to Jorden's amaizing entries until
this fight. This is excellent. It's like that 2nd Postal Service
album all the fans have been awaiting for ages -- forget that, just
download Jorden Seaver's entire discography off of SongFight.
What's impressive is there are 90% synth tracks like this one, and
90% guitar tracks. Good job! Definitely enjoying these!
I like the "switch is gone -- gone gone gone" part. OVerall great
song craft.

Luke Henley
Acoustic + voice. Soothing melody, a few crash lyrics here and there.
The harmonies are actually pretty good in the middle. The verse holds
back nicely to frame the whole thing. Pretty nice.

MC Wreckshin
Russian dance synth thing. Nerdcore -- okay. Thanks for clarifying
what genre this is so early. Self promotional lyrics with songfight
history on there. Interesting to know the history. How do you
and Chuck the bear both come up with the same "click click click", yet
implement it so differently -- strange how these things work.

Melvin
Smooth verse line -- good guitar lick. The vamping chorus is good too.
I would have liked to hear the chorus keep building into some epic
thing and stay and shift before going back to the verse. This is
certainly one of those inspirational stand up an do something type of
songs.

MuffCake
I like the 80s retro verse. I'm wondering if you could have adjusted the
vocal melody slightly to really highlight the underlying track. It's
catchy -- could push the pop a knotch.

Nemphusi
Nasal blues with a bit rough implementation of the cool hammer on licks.

Ninja Bachelors
A nice cowboy waltz. Mixed soft. Hard to hear.

Paco Del Stinko
Country rock by a lab scientist. Nice changes -- fast and twangy.
Good guitar solo. RE: The controversial yea-hah -- to me it belongs.

Pained Memories
Hinting at NIN. Lots of static in this track. What's your setup?

Rone Rivendale
Oh no -- spoken word over a Church organ. "Stop right here".

shex
This is pretty live sounding. Has a sort-of TX rock sound. Cool guitar/key solo action. The break between vocal parts is a touch long. Gets kindof jammy / shapeless after the second vocal part. This reminds me of Matchbox 20 too. I never listen to that band, so I might be throwing that reference out incorrectly.

The Slicks
This was the third of three live takes. Wrote and performed the whole song during our jam night in about 2 hours. The mix had problems because the live vox were heavy in with POP sounds, especially during the "Pyre" part in the middle -- also the drums are really low -- mics that should have worked didn't work... Glenny who normally plays guitar was off "doing his own thing"

, so the intro is rough, and no bass in the entire song. The intro was actually supposed to be the chorus with "Robo Baby, Baby be Robo" as repeated lyrics, but we couldn't get the transition timing right, so made it an intro/outro, and wrote an emergency chorus. We appreciate all the opinions and advise. Special Thanks to people that gave encouraging comments, or even said this was a top contender!

Sockpuppet
Wow, phat piano! This is off to a good start. Groovin. I like the sounds and the buildup. Eletro madness. This progression sounds reminiscent of something... The female voice is good almost 99 red balloons. Whoa -- the male voice is a bit too forward and clipped.

Space Dust
Spoken word over a triangle. Goes into a rap beat. Strange mix of new order triangle melodies over a MC space mmm dust quirkiness.

Wages
Wild deep voice goes into repeating guitar high in the mix. The high vox are a bit ambitious, but I see what you're going for.

wwe are smort
Another wild crazy rap. Crzy mix of instruments taking over the chorus melody. Cuts in the main take right in the middle into a eponymous proclamation of self over the wedding march.

ZeaLous1
Another rap - - phat bass drum - - good robot vox effect.

JAK · Post by **JAK** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:49 pm

...I listened to all entries -- but when faced with commenting on so many I failed to get the job done -- now I'm out of time but wanted to say:
a) PdelS's lead guitar work is crazygood, and
b)Space Dust entered a brave & beautiful epic -- congratulations.

very much good work,my vote would be to have more than 1 song title/week...

MC wreckshin · Post by **MC wreckshin** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 3:06 am

How do you
and Chuck the bear both come up with the same "click click click", yet
implement it so differently -- strange how these things work.

heh yeah i thought that was strange as well.

Denyer · Post by **Denyer** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 3:36 am

My least favourite song in this fight was MC Wreckshin with Oddioblender's. And I voted for Boo Chin Balls.

MC wreckshin · Post by **MC wreckshin** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 3:40 am

wow was my song really that bad? pls explain

Denyer · Post by **Denyer** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 4:13 am

nerdcore sucks.

MC wreckshin · Post by **MC wreckshin** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 8:26 am

Do robot babies dream of electric pacifiers?

Robo Baby Reviews

chin music intones