The Song Fight Bulletin Board

darricklucas wrote:I could easily have been petty and said something in response like 'bro I checked your personal site, 1998 called and they want their website back' but I don't

Uh, you just did, classy guy. You don't have any idea how many points you are racking up, dude.

Spud wrote:

darricklucas wrote:I could easily have been petty and said something in response like 'bro I checked your personal site, 1998 called and they want their website back' but I don't

Uh, you just did, classy guy. You don't have any idea how many points you are racking up, dude.

Is someone keeping score then?

I have a clicker.

jb wrote:I have a clicker.

That's very efficient of you. I am assuming the winner gets some sort of gold star or a certificate for a personal pan pizza at their local Dominoes?

Yeah man the other guy nailed it - we give the songs the same title to make it easier for everyone and then we change it to our choosing when we promote it on our personal site.

Not necessarily. It's an option. In order to play the game you must follow the rules. Once this game is done you are more than welcome to go play somewhere else with the equipment you acquired for this one. We don't mind.

Keep in mind what was said in the other thread. People have invested a lot here. While I don't think you are meaning to piss people off, you certainly are speaking about things of which you aren't fully informed. I don't post in these boards often. I read them sporadically, but when I do I spend some time checking things out. I check out the songfight! title often and sometimes even participate. That doesn't mean the community is dying. In fact if you look at how many songs have been submitted in some recent fights I'd say it's still pretty damn strong. It's all perspective.

As to the OP: I've taken that coursera course with Pat (over a year ago, now) and I find it has some very helpful tools in it. I also don't use them unless something isn't working for a song. For me it's usually a musical idea and then a phrase or line or something to go with it and then I develop it into a song structure. I then flesh out the lyric. It's almost backwards compared to a lot of songwriters. It's almost completely perfect for me. And sometimes I change how I do it. I love the songs I start bass guitar first. I hardly ever do it. I should do that more.

Welcome. I hope you enjoy your stay. You seem like an intelligent and thoughtful guy. Try not to piss in the wheaties.

darricklucas wrote:Yeah man the other guy nailed it - we give the songs the same title to make it easier for everyone and then we change it to our choosing when we promote it on our personal site.

I have done this, but feel guilty about it. If you play Song Fight purely, you write a song that is clearly, utterly appropriate for that title and you OWN it. Anything else is pretty weasely and not in the spirit, IMO.

I would tend to argue that Song Fight is about craft, not art. And therefore as a craftsman of songs, your challenge is to write to spec. Do art on your own time, using the craft you develop at Song Fight.

[EDIT: Pigfarmer said it first and probably better.]

JB

I've renamed SF songs after the fact for my own website. But generally only when the SF title feels a little too long. But they were all written for the original title from the beginning.
-bill

jb wrote:

darricklucas wrote:Yeah man the other guy nailed it - we give the songs the same title to make it easier for everyone and then we change it to our choosing when we promote it on our personal site.

I have done this, but feel guilty about it.

Remind me never to ask you to hide a body for me.

jb wrote:If you play Song Fight purely, you write a song that is clearly, utterly appropriate for that title and you OWN it. Anything else is pretty weasely and not in the spirit, IMO.

I see your point - but the simple fact is that in the life of a song, a better title sometimes emerges - even if it was written specifically for the original title. An example is my "The Thing Most Easily Forgotten" - written for a past Nur Ein. The story of the song being about every little detail I remembered about a lady, but I forgot her name. It fits the title perfectly. But, I play it live a lot now and it seems to be the current favourite of the punters of my songs - and a large part of that comes from the fact that I re-titled it. When I say: "This next song is called "You Had A Screaming Orgasm (While I Drank a Beer)" (the first line of the song) - people sit up and take notice.

Mind you - I am also pretty weasely, so..

jb wrote:I would tend to argue that Song Fight is about craft, not art. And therefore as a craftsman of songs, your challenge is to write to spec. Do art on your own time, using the craft you develop at Song Fight.

There's the problem. I only do art. Craft usually involves sharp objects - and my cell has been stripped of those.

Sometimes I'll be working on a song and it just isn't gelling and so I look to see what this week's Song Fight! title is, and I end up burning the song I have down and remaking it because the SF title pointed me in a better direction anyway.

In particular, "Better Than Before" started out as "Meat," and "Husky Youth" started out as an untitled instrumental that came to me in a dream that involved Lego monkeys dancing around.

That dream sounds fun! Or terrifying. I can see how re-titling makes sense, but I figure if I made a song called Cookie, it'll always be Cookie. Doesn't mean there isn't an exception somewhere, though. Of course, I was writing songs to (my own) titles for a long time. It was like magic when I bumped into this place.

fluffy wrote:"Better Than Before" started out as "Meat,"

Better Than Beef Ore.

I don't think changing the title after the fact is anything to feel guilty about, but if you're writing a song already planning on changing its name before you've even turned it in, then you're probably not playing the game how it was meant to be played.

I've changed the titles of songs that started as Song Fight entries... I think four times. Out of those, two of them were from times I had submitted multiple songs and just didn't want to have two songs with overly similar titles in my catalog. For one, I just added an S to the end. The other, I added a parenthetical.

My "Birthdays and Breakups" became "Birthdays and Breakups (B&B)." My "A Variation on Two" became "Infinite Variations." My "Bad Attraction" became "Bad Attractions." Big Mistake's "Bad Attraction" became "Stupid Crush."

All of which is to say, I agree with Caravan Ray. Sometimes it's totally appropriate to change a song's title as you revise it, even if the title was what inspired it.