The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Congrats TLB!

*WOOT* Congratzies.

Good job all!

The Jerks are joined by Glenn Case and Mo, in our longest podcast ever!

Here's how you can participate in this madness:

• Download or point your browser directly at the mp3
• Alternate download from AWS S3
• Point your podcast software at the feed
• View the podcast on iTunes

Feelings, woah-woah-woah feelings: feedback@twojerksonevote.com.

INDEX:

• 00:00:00 - Intro Song
• 00:01:07 - Freak Flag Wrapup
• 00:01:55 - Glenn Case Intro
• 00:03:54 - Mo Intro
• 00:10:19 - Beginning-of-podcast blathering
• 00:14:05 - Balance Lost
• 00:23:20 - Berkeley Social Scene
• 00:30:43 - The Elephant Choir
• 00:36:32 - Jim Tyrell
• 00:43:46 - The John Benjamin Band (waltz)
• 00:48:48 - The John Benjamin Band (synthpop)
• 00:57:36 - JP Nickolas
• 01:03:09 - Lichen Throat
• 01:14:05 - The Lowest Bitter
• 01:20:48 - Paco del Stinko
• 01:24:35 - The Pannacotta Army
• 01:30:03 - Somebody Named Seth
• 01:39:12 - Thanks for the Frisbee
• 01:48:08 - Third Cat
• 01:52:30 - Tim Hinkle
• 02:01:02 - Agony Sauce / Vowl Sounds collab
• 02:04:56 - Judging Sucks
• 02:06:58 - Brother Machine / SF Live
• 02:08:56 - Judging Sucks Redux
• 02:10:24 - Bad Chinese TV
• 02:12:43 - Cumulative Challenge
• 02:24:02 - Agony Sauce Origins
• 02:26:03 - Nur Ein XIV Retrospective
• 02:30:21 - Glenn's Plugs
• 02:35:02 - Mo's Plugs
• 02:40:16 - Songland Reality Show
• 02:41:31 - Glenn & Mo's Drug Stories
• 02:45:47 - thesixtyone.com
• 02:48:06 - Frontalot / Netsplit
• 02:50:00 - Ryan's Shoutouts / End Music

Yow!

Sorry about that, y'all

Hahaha nobody likes my damn guitar solo. I worked hard on that! Just because you can’t hear the vibrato doesn’t mean my finger wasn’t wiggling! *womp womp*

Anyway, not sure if you noticed in the preflight thread but I mentioned that my entry would be mildly controversial— the fact that it’s a close homage to The Tennessee Waltz and that Porcupine can be swapped for any theee-syllable word was the mild controversy.

For the dance song here are the Wikipedia elements:

1. The families (basically there are Old World and New World porcupines. Actually only Old World porcupines climb trees.)
2. All your bark is mine - porcupines eat bark
3. 30,000 spines - I forget where I read that but it seemed like a lot
4. The verses are the Lakota myth about how Porcupine was given his spines by the trickster spider god Iktomi.

Thanks for another fun podcast, chums.

Kenna

Oh and BY THE WAY Sonic, from the videogame, is a hedgehog. Hedgehogs and Porcupines are not related.

KEEPING YOU HONEST HAD TO BE DONE

Hedgehogs v Porcupines would be a good terrible video game for Glenn to be #1 at.


Fins

That was excellent, sprawling and extremely detailed. I am fully down for more detailed post-Nur-Ein analysis (I hope that Niveous+Brookes recap still happens) and the commentary on the fight songs was good too! I feel like I'm missing out every time there's a podcast and I don't have a song up for discussion which is excellent motivation to write more.

Thoroughly enjoyed listening to that. Thanks fellas. I also really love doing the connect-the-dots thing with hip-hop and old songs!

I liked the solo, JB, it’s just ever since I got called out by the old cat about playing long sustained notes without vibrato, I started not being able not to notice it. I tend to do no do vibrato when I’m thinking too much about what to do next, so I’m not fully in the moment and details of playing performance might get missed. It doesn’t happen if I’m playing a blues or something where I’ve played that kind of thing enough that I can just go by feel and turn my brain off, but jazz or any playing through changes still requires more thinking for me.

But just being aware that it’s something to remember has made a huge difference for me, if you know what I mean

mo wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 07, 2019 10:35 am

I liked the solo, JB, it’s just ever since I got called out by the old cat about playing long sustained notes without vibrato, I started not being able not to notice it. I tend to do no do vibrato when I’m thinking too much about what to do next, so I’m not fully in the moment and details of playing performance might get missed. It doesn’t happen if I’m playing a blues or something where I’ve played that kind of thing enough that I can just go by feel and turn my brain off, but jazz or any playing through changes still requires more thinking for me.

But just being aware that it’s something to remember has made a huge difference for me, if you know what I mean

It's an interesting discussion. I very much agree that you should be aware and shouldn't just play something any particular way by default. Default only gets you so far. I received an astute comment by Frankie once that a melody in a song was "Default JB", which was true and thought-provoking. I really had just tossed it off and it sounded like melody I'd make off the top of my head-- intervals and rhythms that come naturally to me, without consideration or craft. Which, I think my default is pretty good and that's what training gets you. But as an artist the default isn't thoughtful and I aspire to be a thoughtful artist.

That solo in "Porcupine Waltz" took me a while to figure out both notes and tone, and I practiced it and crafted the melody line deliberately to get what I wanted. I was pretty pleased with myself, so I was surprised to see how it was experienced by others. One comment was that it was the most amateurish aspect of the recording-- a shocking comment to me, since I felt its restraint and craft to be quite sophisticated. Doesn't mean I was correct though.

Not that I'm offended at all by any of the comments! People hear what they hear and I'm not one to say they're wrong in how they experience the production, even if I disagree. All it has to do is make me consider different perspectives, because my goal when I make music is to communicate and communication requires an understanding of how your intended recipient will comprehend the message. So the critiques are useful to help me better communicate in a way that others might understand.

Regarding vibrato, I come from a world (cello, vocals) where when you reach a certain level of technical capability it's easy to just apply vibrato by default without consideration. When I taught private cello lessons, it was always a mental challenge to ensure that my students applied vibrato where it would be effective, rather than just by default. Sometimes, vibrato isn't called for. Sometimes you just have to let the note ring, and "movement" isn't helpful. YMMV of course, but I'd disagree with that person who said long sustained notes aren't interesting if they're not moving. And many classical clarinetists would agree... clarinet vibrato belongs in a klesmer bands, not an orchestra.

Even then, there's room for interpretation and its about the piece of work rather than some intellectual principle. Vibrato in a Gregorian chant would ruin it. Vibrato in a concert choir expands the sound within reason. Too broadly performed it muddles the close harmonies, but nuanced vibrato makes it sound like there's twice as many singers.

Good chat!

JB

Wooo! Thanks for the nice comments and reviews everyone, good week all round. Enjoyed the podcast a lot, feels bizarre to hear The Lowest Bitter and The Spinto Band mentioned in the same breath. They’re actually how I first heard of Song Fight over a decade ago, when I came here and downloaded all the Carol Cleveland Sings tracks at the height of my teenage The Spinto Band fandom. Couldn’t take part back then as I didn’t play a single instrument, but I’ve gotten around to it eventually

Sure all that’s true, and there’s also the consideration of what kind of vibrato we’re talking about, as the usual cello (for me, violin) vibrato and electric guitar vibrato are quite different techniques. The subtlety vs bigness of the vibrato, as it were, change of velocity, timing, etc.

While you are totally right that intention and musical motivation matters, ie that you shouldn’t just apply vibrato to apply vibrato, it needs to be a musically valid choice, in this particular solo there’s a LOT of sustained notes, sure, some longer than others, and on the really long notes I do feel like they could benefit from more expressivity. I don’t feel that way about most of the half notes; those are fine. I wasn’t saying PUT VIBRATO EVERYWHERE, that wasn’t the intent of either what I was saying or what I was told. I’m sure you know what I mean, but better to say it than not, I think.

If it helps you determine if you care or not, I notice it most at about 1:10 where there’s several longer notes and the last note of the solo