The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hey everybody, really sorry I haven't reviewed, I've been away on holiday and internetless for the week and I'm not sure I'll have time to listen properly/review at the weekend, partly 'cause it's my birthday and I will mainly be getting drunk. True, getting drunk and reviewing are not mutually exclusive but I can't take my computer to the pub.

Much thanks for all your reviews. I'm very glad some of you have been enjoying my song and the criticisms that have been levelled at my song are very valid. Ultimately, this was quite a rush job and I didn't have time to trim the fat and edit the song into a slick pop behemoth. The fuzzy guitar does seem like a mistake in retrospect, I can't even hear the notes when I listen back to it. HolstBen, you are spot on with the Foals influence. I also took ideas from múm's "They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded" and Q And Not U (who themselves are a big influence on Foals, so it kind of ties together). The pixie/brownie vibe is almost certainly a side-effect of the múm influence. It's been a while since I've been this whimsical.

Thanks again, and I'll write an angry post-it to myself to do some reviews.

Thanks for the reviews!

RE: comments on how hard reviews are: yes... yes they are. Sometimes it reminds of grading papers as a TA... sometimes you space out and start flipping through them really fast. At least in school you could argue for points

to answer some questions:

How the hell did you get enough time to do a 5 minute song?

girlfriend was on vacation with her family

Also, delicious helpings of copypasta (which manhattan glutton was so kind to point out)

Ebowed?

nope. just used a lot of drive/distortion and a lot of reverb (and delay). a little bit of production magic to do the fade ins.

How did you record your drums?

used these http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... sku=271264 (memorial day sale ftw)

I used reaper's reaEQ and reaGate for all the drum tracks... there were default settings for cymbals, tom, kick, and snare which worked pretty well... The only extra work I did was gating the snare pretty hard because it's way out of tune and rings like a tin can (I have no clue how to tune drums either). Also I tried to beef up the kick a little more... which didn't really work... not sure if it's my kick drum or the mic. Something to keep playing with I guess

Manhattan Glutton wrote:pig farmer jr - oh good god you're like ross durand 2.0. You're coming through awfully nasally and shaky. Verse is pretty catchy, chorus sounds forced

Thanks for the compliment.

Lucky Spoon wrote:(I have no clue how to tune drums either)

Basically, tap the drum lightly right next to each lug. You'll hear that it has a pitch. Then use a drum key (or sometimes a coin, depending on the lug) to tighten or loosen the lug to change the pitch until they are all the same. As for getting rid of rings, this is harder. Sometimes gaffa tape will do it. Sometimes sticking some cotton wool or something to it gets rid of it. The problem is that these measures can also make the whole sound a little dull.

Weirdly, the worst ring I ever had on my snare was actually coming from my toms every time I hit the snare, so it's worth checking that out too. All that said, though, if you're only using the drums for recording, it's probably easier to get rid of it with plug-ins than manually.

hmm.............

Did you miss me on purpose or by accident

chadfowler wrote:Did you miss me on purpose or by accident

Yes

sorry

Chad Fowler: B+

This one had a lot of good ideas, without sounding too derivative. I like this kind of song, especially because a novel sound alone can do a lot to keep me listening.

Lucky Spoon - Great job. By far my favorite. You should Song Fight more often!

Va of DuToVa

Dinnertime Boys wrote:It felt a bit crusty all the way through, and I think more time could have been spent making the female vocal parts work. But you get an A for trying something out of the ordinary I guess.

Wow thanks! I fixed some mixing problems post submission and prefer the version I posted on myspace. (For the contest I didn't have editing tools installed and a brand-spanking-new recorder so I had n00b mistakes galore.) Even mixed properly I lack the polish some other entries have. A few groups sound like they spent the whole week in the studio!

I was floored at the quality compared to earlier songfight entries. I was only prepared for groups like five years ago. The quality of some of the regulars is really intimidating for a newer poster in a way. My idea of success as a new guy would be to get 10 votes. I would be stoked to do that well.

DuToVa wrote:Lucky Spoon - Great job. By far my favorite. You should Song Fight more often!

Amen, this contest made me go back and listen to all his entries again. The quality of his entries have climbed by leaps and bounds. It makes me wish for a studio tricks and tips thread because I would love to know the finishing tricks used by some of the best entries. (Lucky Spoon was kind enough to respond to my emails asking about his guitar sound. I am definitely using that sound someday!)

All the criticism I received I richly deserved and the constructive critiques were informative. I especially love all the tips on mixing and mastering as I have so much to learn in that department. (Side note: the tip on removing mike pops failed to work for me, I had to select individual pops then compress the hell out of them to fix a few tracks for the mix on myspace. Are there any other good tricks for fixing buzz and hiss? Out of 10+ vocal tracks I had only 3-4 salvageable takes. *sigh* Not a good ratio, but new equipment == new problems, or so I guess.)

DuToVa wrote:Lucky Spoon - Great job. By far my favorite. You should Song Fight more often!

Thanks!!! I'd like to Song Fight more often too but it eats up so much time...

I'm actually in for next week's fight miraculously... but ummm.. if you're looking for a song like Dirt Nap then... .... i'm sorry... yeeeeaaah.

canonicalman wrote:(Side note: the tip on removing mike pops failed to work for me, I had to select individual pops then compress the hell out of them to fix a few tracks for the mix on myspace. Are there any other good tricks for fixing buzz and hiss? Out of 10+ vocal tracks I had only 3-4 salvageable takes. *sigh* Not a good ratio, but new equipment == new problems, or so I guess.)

removing pops is a huge pain... i've tried various "dessers" and "pop-removers" with not much success. your best bet is to get a better mic and/or use a windscreen.

Lucky Spoon wrote: your best bet is to get a better mic and/or use a windscreen.

Also, avoid words that pop or sing them differently than you normally would. For a while I had a habit of singing 'S' a little more like 'Z'.

Yeah the problem I had were P's. I probably need a mike screen. I used to not need one with my old mike but it walked recently so I had to use a different mike which was way too sensitive for close range vocals.

Yay!

It won't let me post a message with only 4 characters, what's that all about?

some quick reviews.


Canonical man: Portishead doing a Europorn soundtrack

Chad Fowler: Yacht hop which occasionally transcends itself, possibly thanks to the backing vox.

Chekhov's Raygun: Zombie geek-out word-fest!

Dinnertime Boiz: Like tripping in a lift

A Far Off Land ft. Wise: Intro sounded like that Tatu song. More lesbians!

Ford's Theatre Disaster (yeah, you heard. "theatre"): You totally just put your song in me.

Helen with the DI'd guitar: One from the Kristin Hersh school of songwriting. I can dig that.

Holst: Worthy chamber pop

Lucky spoon: 90's-o-rama! Somebody's been listening to Soundgarden.

Nancy Rost: Kinda sweet. Probably my favourite so far.

Pigfarmer Jr: I couldn't find anything to say about this.

Ross: Made me think of that film Three Burials for some reason.

Wages: I don't know why this only got 3 votes, this is among the best I've heard from you. The guitar line is cool in both sections and the vocal melody is robust, you're never off-key. Admittedly I haven't listened for while, but compared to the last time I listened to a fight with you in this is strong.

furrypedro wrote:Wages: I don't know why this only got 3 votes, this is among the best I've heard from you. The guitar line is cool in both sections and the vocal melody is robust, you're never off-key. Admittedly I haven't listened for while, but compared to the last time I listened to a fight with you in this is strong.

blush!

Yeah I agree. You deserved more than 3 votes. I liked your song. It had a good emotional feel. I felt it had a strong kinship to how Everlast plays his beat-up guitar and talks about rough times of everyday people. Sadly production counts a ton in songfight and it was a really tough competition so I think you were just below the cut on a lot of people's radars.

This was a song that if polished would be a lot of fun to listen to on my mp3 player. (You out lasted more than half the competition that week on mine) I don't think people were dissing your song, just the production quality. Keep playing. I liked your dirtnap entry more than hard landing. Nothing here distracted from your song concept. It was very striking. You should keep this in your set list and let it grow over time. When you do get that new guitar you have to rerecord this properly.

canonicalman wrote:Yeah I agree. You deserved more than 3 votes. I liked your song. It had a good emotional feel. I felt it had a strong kinship to how Everlast plays his beat-up guitar and talks about rough times of everyday people. Sadly production counts a ton in songfight and it was a really tough competition so I think you were just below the cut on a lot of people's radars.

This was a song that if polished would be a lot of fun to listen to on my mp3 player. (You out lasted more than half the competition that week on mine) I don't think people were dissing your song, just the production quality. Keep playing. I liked your dirtnap entry more than hard landing. Nothing here distracted from your song concept. It was very striking. You should keep this in your set list and let it grow over time. When you do get that new guitar you have to rerecord this properly.

Thanks! I will keep Dirt Nap in my "setlist". One of these days I will address the production values. Maybe in this decade....