tw3rp r3vi3w thr3ad

[Spud]

does blue know what gating is? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[jeff robertson]

Flvxxvm Florvm - I don't think I pulled this off.

Ross - almost vote.

Billy's Little Trip - vote. The edge was that acoustic guitar underneath the speaking parts. Beck-y.

Booty - this band is my favorite thing that Blue has been involved in during my time here on SF. I likes drums to sound all bootleggy like this.

Anarcheologists - real guitar playing the solo, but nothing but keyboards for the rest of the song (ie., no rythym guitar at all). Until the solo I assumed you were a guitar-less outfit.

Gert - no one will ever out-gert you guys. play that organ.

Raspy Jasper - don't listen to the haters who said that this should've been "pure" GnG. That little auto-wah pussy-fart guitar makes this song.

Wages of Spin - songfight is domesticating you slowly but surely. Where is the "what Kurt Kobain would sound like as a homeless wino" Wages of yore?

Wreckdom - this could only be better with a southern accent.


the rest of you are not bad, but reviewing you would just be forcing myself to think of something to say. damn these big fights.

[wages]

Wages of Spin - songfight is domesticating you slowly but surely. Where is the "what Kurt Kobain would sound like as a homeless wino" Wages of yore?

He's hiding in my back pocket waiting for a mood swing, or a quad latte.

[Leaf]

I won't have time before the results are in to post reviews... but they'll happen.


That's an internet promise, which is worth it's weight in kilobytes.

[fluffy]

0.08KB doesn't weigh very much.

[WesDavis]

Raspy Jasper - don't listen to the haters who said that this should've been "pure" GnG. That little auto-wah pussy-fart guitar makes this song.

Thank you sir! I completely agree, and when my pal Chris sent me that guitar I was like FUCK IT IS COMPLETE. But hey, I never expected to win with this one. I just wanted to share it.

[boochinballs]

Wow what a fight,

Sorry I haven't had much time for reviews (or songs for that matter) recently. I've have been lurking though and you've been pumping out some quality stuff recently. Also on a slightly unrelated matter, it was great to hear Glenn doing the Captain S theme over on Screwattack. I grinned from ear to ear when I caught that for the first time, I don't know how you manage it, awesome.

Anyway, I had to post this week to mention my two faves this week.

Billy's Little Trip.
Been listening to your tunes for ages and I must say this is by far the best thing I've heard you do. Love the King Missile vibe, there's not enough of that around these days. Great structure, nice chorus and it just oozes cool. You are the man

Beefy ft DJ Snider
Wow. Awesome production, great lyrics, top flow and vocal style. You are 10x as cool as you should be on paper. Checking out your other tunes and if they are half as good as this, consider another album (or bumper sticker if that's how it is purchased.

Really don't know who to vote for, I'm split.

Shoutouts for greatness also go to The Anarchaeologists, Garlick Head and to some degree Dj Dickie Qwick. Can't wait to hear what DjDQ comes up with next, it's so close to being genius, just a little sloppy in places.

Sorry to everyone who I haven't mentioned, it doesn't mean I don't like your tracks, it probably means I haven't listened to them yet.

I'm hoping I'll be able to join in again one of these weeks, I just need to get the studio backlog over with. I've taken on far too much work and every spare minute I get I'm spending on finishing my band projects or sleeping.

Peace and Geese

Krispy

[SteveHandPuppet]

Melvin: Musically this is pretty catchy, and the recording and mix is fine. I'm not so much a fan of the vocals, especially how the second word of each verse is stretched out so conspicuously. The overall vocal style strikes me as particularly "modern", in that 5 or 10 years from now it will probably sound very mid-00's.

Raspy Jasper: The overall level of this seems really low, and noisy and low-fi (in a bad way, regrettably) once I pull the volume enough to hear it. The music composition is nothing remarkable; stamped out of a fairly recognizable formula. I don't know what that wonbly-sounding thing is, nor do I wish to hear it again. I'm just not a fan of using old-tymey music to justify a subpar sound. Recordings from the 30's or 40's don't sound like they're being funneled down a tin-can and string on purpose, but because their technology sucked.

DJ Dickie Qwick: I have no use for this.

Sockpuppet: I suppose the synthy or flubbered bass was a signal that this just wasn't going to be my sort of thing. Sorry, but between that and the vocals I'm not finding much to keep me interested in this. Not my kind of music.

Beefy w/ DJ Snyder: I'm a typically unabashed "rockist", but this seems to hit a lot of the high spots in what I would consider the earlier, more innocent and/or direct days of yore, when it was just called "rap" and not "hiphop". All in all a nice job.

Garlick Head: I don't know what it is about the recording or mix, but I find this sonically uninteresting to listen to. It's like any edge or brilliance in any of the recording has been sanded down to a flat dullness. I wish I could identify what causes this technically. I don't like "genre exercises", so songwriting, etc. not my thing.

iNGRUO: It's all blips and bloops to me. Eject.

Tri Minutieux: It's all blips and bloops to me. Eject.

Wages of Spin: The frog farts substituting for a bassline "Gots To Go" aka "Not At All Good". I wish the guitar lines were more interesting, but it's a start. I've covered the "grunge ballad" vocal thing before. It seems like you are intentionally settling for hitting a "safer" flat than risking going up to hit the higher notes. IMO: Write to your vocal range, expand your vocal range, or go balls-out and attempt it (and fail, if you must). Electric piano bit is good, though.

Billy's Little Trip: Instrumentally this is great. Nice recording and mix. The talking "verse" bit is a good take on the topic/title. The chorus vocals rub me the wrong way, though. It reminds me too much of the "singing" bits in your typical rap-rock or whatever, where they attempt to switch between rap or hardcore growling or whatever and "sweet" singing, in that it seems to making far too much of a point in following the melody [basically, each half of rap/rock vocals seems to go to obnoxious extremes in emphasizing the end of a false single rhythm-melody axis.] I don't know how to rescue that part of this song, though.

Spinlock: I want to like this more, but a few things jump out at me. One is that the mix seems overly bright and sharp. Everything seems to be jumping out in the upper frequencies and could probably stand some low pass filtering. There is no lower or mid-lower end. The higher voice in the doubled verse (especially at the start) is pretty distracting for some reason. A lot of the pieces seem to be out of sync. The song relies a lot on group stops, so the occassional sloppy timing stands out all the worse. All said, though, I probably liked this more than most other entries, and I think the songwriting was one of the better efforts, and I think the flaws are primarily in the execution rather than the fundamental ideas.

FlvxxvmFlorvm: Blips, bloops. Eject.

Wreckdom: I seem to be listening to TAD (Jack Pepsi? Hedgehog?), the "Butcher from Boise". Complete with Jack Endino production (which is a compliment) vs. Sven: genre exercise. Fail.

Zoosneakers: This is SongFight, not UnlistenableNoiseFight. Read the FAQ.

Gert: Joyous chaos. Sure, it veers hellbent into ButtRock territory, but its a fun ride to the abyss this time. Overall good recording and mix. Lyrics and vocals decent enough.

Signboy: Instrumentally this is ok, but the recording or mix seems pretty lifeless. Vocals and lyrics are disappointing. Like Wages, I think that the vocal is hiding behind genre blueprints that punt and just hit everything flat.

Anarchaeologists: I'm not digging this too much. Instrumentally, the robotic alternating two note, two chord, two drumbeat motif gets just tedious. The fake synthy bass is none too pleasing to my ear. Or whatever it is that is saw-waveforming around in the low frequencies.

Booty Chesterfield Trio: The recording sounds intentionally noisy and distorted. and the mix is just muddy. Lyrics are interesting me at all, and vocals are just placeholding, really. THis doesn't sound like a lot of care or effort was put into it.

Ross Durand: The two Johns and Weird Al housesitting at Brian Wilson's Malibu pad. Catchy and uncool and a guilty pleasure.

Paco del Stinko: "Oh Yeah!"... Oh no!. Paco's got the technical chops and probably deserves some slack for this. Delightfully indulgent. Weird how the title brings out the techno electronico in so many.

Balls to Monte: Synth keys and earnest balladry are two strikes in my book. And that K-Rod slider is just unhittable. YOU'RE OUT!

[Paco Del Stinko]

I hope nobody cuts me any slack - I like a good kick in the pants, when needed. Although I would say my song is more like a wedgie.

[WesDavis]

Raspy Jasper: The overall level of this seems really low, and noisy and low-fi (in a bad way, regrettably) once I pull the volume enough to hear it. The music composition is nothing remarkable; stamped out of a fairly recognizable formula. I don't know what that wonbly-sounding thing is, nor do I wish to hear it again. I'm just not a fan of using old-tymey music to justify a subpar sound. Recordings from the 30's or 40's don't sound like they're being funneled down a tin-can and string on purpose, but because their technology sucked.

If all they had was a laptop microphone, it might sound like that. Just sayin'. But you're right, it sounded terrible. I was stuck in a town 3 hours away from my equipment, and got an itch to sing about female genitalia, what can I say?

[blue]

Raspy Jasper: The overall level of this seems really low, and noisy and low-fi (in a bad way, regrettably) once I pull the volume enough to hear it. The music composition is nothing remarkable; stamped out of a fairly recognizable formula. I don't know what that wonbly-sounding thing is, nor do I wish to hear it again. I'm just not a fan of using old-tymey music to justify a subpar sound. Recordings from the 30's or 40's don't sound like they're being funneled down a tin-can and string on purpose, but because their technology sucked.

If all they had was a laptop microphone, it might sound like that. Just sayin'. But you're right, it sounded terrible. I was stuck in a town 3 hours away from my equipment, and got an itch to sing about female genitalia, what can I say?

you can say it with the class: not every piece of shit you record needs to be submitted to songfight.

[WesDavis]

Raspy Jasper: The overall level of this seems really low, and noisy and low-fi (in a bad way, regrettably) once I pull the volume enough to hear it. The music composition is nothing remarkable; stamped out of a fairly recognizable formula. I don't know what that wonbly-sounding thing is, nor do I wish to hear it again. I'm just not a fan of using old-tymey music to justify a subpar sound. Recordings from the 30's or 40's don't sound like they're being funneled down a tin-can and string on purpose, but because their technology sucked.

If all they had was a laptop microphone, it might sound like that. Just sayin'. But you're right, it sounded terrible. I was stuck in a town 3 hours away from my equipment, and got an itch to sing about female genitalia, what can I say?

you can say it with the class: not every piece of shit you record needs to be submitted to songfight.

Perhaps! But a couple of people enjoyed it in spite of the production issues. And last I checked, this isn't Show-everybody-how-good-you-are-at-productionfight. Which is not to say that we shouldn't try, but hell, man, it's lots of free music provided weekly on the internet; you can't always expect GOLD. Songfight is no place for elitism!

[DarkSide of Archaeology]

Songfight is no place for elitism![/quote]

exactly.

[jimtyrrell]

Okay, but it's also not a dumping ground for half-assedness. Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but the idea that 'any song is worth creating' doesn't by itself carry enough weight to justify any old piece of crap's presence on someone else's server space, through someone else's bandwidth, and into someone else's listening time.

Perfection is likely unattainable, especially in a week. But we owe it to Songfight and its participants (and ourselves) to set the bar somewhere above the bottom, and to know better when we haven't reached it. That's not elitism, it's respect.

[jimtyrrell]

Also: The goddamned internet ate my reviews. Which is just as well, because I think I had some of the band names mixed up. Still, god damn it, I spent like an hour on that.

Anyway, Ross Durand did a kickass job, and Gert brought the rock. Beefy put together a nice clean well-performed piece. There were a few songs in this fight that would have been real good, were it not for the pitchy vocals.

[WesDavis]

Okay, but it's also not a dumping ground for half-assedness. Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but the idea that 'any song is worth creating' doesn't by itself carry enough weight to justify any old piece of crap's presence on someone else's server space, through someone else's bandwidth, and into someone else's listening time.

Perfection is likely unattainable, especially in a week. But we owe it to Songfight and its participants (and ourselves) to set the bar somewhere above the bottom, and to know better when we haven't reached it. That's not elitism, it's respect.

I understand that, absolutely, and I did my best to make sure the recording didn't have any peaks, and I didn't think the quality sounded so horrible that I should not submit the song. I meant no disrespect; I thought the song was entertaining. I'm not trying to stomp all over anyone's toes here!

[jimtyrrell]

Understood. My comments weren't really in direct response to your submission, which I'm re-listening to right now, in fact. This is actually one of the entries I found most interesting. It was like a space cabaret in here this week. I wish my reviews hadn't gotten nuked.

[spinlock]

What's a space cabaret? I looked it up but all I got was references to circus things.

[furrypedro]

it's also not a dumping ground for half-assedness

we wish it wasn't. (this may not be the place to admit I worked on my latest entry for a sum total of 3hrs30mins). It is a good platform for slagging people who submit sonic arse though.


on another note,
I'd be interested to see how the Beef-ster would fare if he wrote a song for, say, 4 fights consecutively; y'know feel the songwriting burn a bit, rather than once every couple of months. I wonder if the quality (and success) would be maintained. Just wonderin

I think I might have forgotten to vote again. poop.

[wages]

Okay, but it's also not a dumping ground for half-assedness. Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but the idea that 'any song is worth creating'

That's not elitism, it's respect.

You may or may not be talking about entries "like" Wages, but I usually get 2 or 3 reviews (sometimes more!) a week stating that it sounds half-assed like I didn't really put the effort into it, but the fact is I DID put the effort into it. When we/I am "done" with the song (usually only hours before the due time), I usually feel pretty good about it (especially if it were a collab), but shot down do I get.

So who decides when it is "half-assed", "acceptable or damn good", or "learning one's craft"? Personally I think most of MY material (and between 1/3 and 2/3 of any given week's entries) falls in the "learning one's craft" category. While that is my philosophy of SF, I'm sure yours is somewhat different (and SF is open to these different perspectives, hence its success). The fact is, I accept that you (and everyone) have a different philosophy about Songfight. First and foremost, I see it as a "song fight" (noun 1. a competition of songwriting skills subjectively and objectively voted on to win the prize of recognition among peers). Then I see SF as a way to learn how to hone my skillz, yo. Finally, it serves as confirmation or de-confirmation of talent. In my case I've gone with "confirmation of talent". And so now I enter what SOUNDS LIKE TO SOME half-assed entries in order to develop that talent, and I know it works because more and more reviews are encouragingly stating that my tunes and vocals are getting better.

Ultimately I think what is heard as half-assed is usually "work in progress" or "learning one's craft", and should therefore be respected and embraced by other musicians ("should...by other musicians".... and that's another discussion altogether). So long story longer, I think the term "half-assed" probably doesn't fully explain what you mean (or maybe it does and if it does, I am coolly trying to suggest you think outside your box to consider that it is something other than half-assed musicians wasting your time).

What is one man's garbage.....

[MintyHandy]

blue knows what gating is. Do you? I don't think you do.

Ooo, I know! It's the thing you put around your yarding.

[MintyHandy]

Perfection is likely unattainable, especially in a week. But we owe it to Songfight and its participants (and ourselves) to set the bar somewhere above the bottom, and to know better when we haven't reached it. That's not elitism, it's respect.

It's a tough call, you know? A few fights ago I submitted something under a pseudonym because I felt like it was sub-par, but I'd put a lot of effort into it and didn't want to waste it (and took a bit of deserved abuse on the boards for submitting something I wasn't proud of) -- then in the actual fight it fared quite well, and got surprisingly good reviews.

On the other hand, the two fights following I wrote songs that were quite good; one of them was judged by my wife as possibly my best ever. I didn't submit either, though, because I couldn't scrape together enough time to record it well, so I didn't bother to record 'em at all -- and I think some folks probably would have enjoyed it.

Still, at the end of the day I (like many others) often call out places where a song's production values could have been easily improved, and that can be as helpful as feedback on the song itself. Perhaps the personal criteria for submitting a song with bad production values should simply be this: if you tried really hard but it sounds bad, submit it for production feedback, and if you didn't try at all, don't bother.

Or not. Who the heck am I, anyway? I'm just here to make bad jokes about gating while I sit at gate A7 in the San Jose airport.