April 6, 2009

[JonPorobil]

Almost 6 years ago, it was So Aggravating. I still dig it. I wish I knew to take one side of my headphones off when singing. I remember spending many hours learning how to sing "So Aggravating" backwards so I could record it and then reverse it and mix into the chorus...and no one noticed.

Wait, seriously? I always thought you'd been around so much longer than I have.

QotD: My first fight was "So Aggravating." I had no idea how to record a song at all, so I found a (shareware!) program that recorded directly to an mp3 file, broke out my slightly-off-key guitar, and started a-warblin'. I had to try like thirty times to get it to sound right in one take... oh wait. It never sounded right. I mean, yeah, it was bad, but I was also clever enough to make my first entry a song where being bad was kind of the point. I wish I'd been enough of a perfectionist to purge the few obvious errors, but after 30-some-odd attempts to sing this whole song in one take for the microphone, I just wound up thinking to myself, "Screw it, that's good enough."

A lot of my recording issues have been fixed since then. That last one may never go away.

[Paco Del Stinko]

The first song I submitted was Covered In Bugs, nearly three years ago. I like the intro and parts of the middle, although I haven't listened to it in a long time. I had actually recorded four or five songs to titles before Bugs, but didn't think they were as good, and also didn't know how to squish them down to MP3.

Today I am making my first Craigslist transaction. I am meeting a guy in the parking lot of the post office to buy a big, ugly, bass cabinet, a 1x18 made by Joe's Sound and Salami. Feels like I should be dropping off the microfilm or something.

[ujnhunter]

QotD: No nostalgia here either... It was "Love Me a Little Bit More" and it was a last minute thing. There is a REAL version of that still in the pipeline. However... I guess my first could be considered G.O.R.T.E.C.'s "In the Valley" as I did some backing vocals for CRay.

[nyjm]

QotD: "Turn the Power On." I was looking for some tips on songwriting. Google (or some such thing) led me here. That was a god-awful song. I still like the basic metaphor in the lyrics - turning on the stage lights. But the production was terrible, as was my singing. These days I either ignore my first (couple of) entry/ies or use it as an object lesson in what not to do.

I think I've learned a lot since then thanks to this site, the feedback and working with all sorts of folks. Yay Song Fight!

(yeah, it's nearly noon on the 7th, I'm late, I know...)

[Rabid Garfunkel]

QoTD: I Want To Get Better. It's too slow, now. But then, if I played it at the speed that feels right to me now, it'd be 30 seconds long. What a mess that was, and too clever to be anything but bad (seriously, a schitzy internal dialogue set to riffs from Suicidal Tendencies' Institutionalized and The Beatles' Helter Skelter? Shudder).

BLT, cue vomiting smiley, stage left

[Eric Y.]

Heather please do tell how the movie is, we (the family and I) are looking forward to seeing that one, as well!

QotD -- My first entry was "Direct to Helmet" (recently featured on the "five years ago" section of the website).
I think I was the only one not to make any mention of war or soldiers (but I'm too lazy to verify this). My song was inspired by several spins of Helmet's album "Meantime", and the lyrics reference growing up listening to non-"pop" music. Musically, I still dig the song a lot -- have intended several times to re-record it but never got around to it. The words could probably use some fixing up, though. The particular recording that is on Songfight remains one of my favorite of my own submissions, although I accidentally reversed the tried-and-true method of drunk recording, sober mixing. (i.e. started drinking while recording, then continued during the rest of the process). The result of this is that I totally lost the original vocal track -- which was supposed to have been blended with the effected track -- so the vocals sound, well, weird. As I recall, most people didn't appreciate that fact, although Phil Redmon kinda dug it.

[Niveous]

Heather please do tell how the movie is, we (the family and I) are looking forward to seeing that one, as well!

Monsters v. Aliens was okay. Not great, just okay. I didn't feel like I wasted the cash seeing it but it didn't make me say, "I need to get this when it comes out on DVD".

[fluffy]

QotD: I LOVE YOU back in the halcyon days of January 2001. The lyrics were mostly scraps which predated the fight by several years (back then there weren't any stated hangups/rules about when the song was actually written), and I had just bought a pawnshop guitar and barely knew how to play it. I just recorded a few chord strums and put them into my sampler software, and recorded my vocals (which I didn't know how to sing) and split it up for the sampler too, and so it's all herky-jerky and terrible.

I think I've gotten better since then.

[irwin]

First fight I ever recorded anything for was Dog Without Warning in December of 2003. I recorded it about 2 weeks late, so it never saw the light of day.

First fight I actually made it into was Mad City in May of 2005.

So far I've entered 13 fights since discovering Songfight! sometime in the late summer of 2003. So, yeah. 13 fights in 6 years. Depressing.

[Heather. Redmon.]

Heather please do tell how the movie is, we (the family and I) are looking forward to seeing that one, as well!

Monsters v. Aliens was okay. Not great, just okay. I didn't feel like I wasted the cash seeing it but it didn't make me say, "I need to get this when it comes out on DVD".

Agreed, it was good but not great. The 3D was fun, but it was no Pixar film. I will not be buying it on DVD. But, the kids liked it and that's what's important.

[Billy's Little Trip]

BLT, cue vomiting smiley, stage left

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