The Song Fight Bulletin Board

signboy wrote:ok, fair enough. I offer a public apology for the personal hack at your professional integrity. It WAS uncalled for. It just confuses me that we are last again this week because we "still have the high pitched, out of tune singing." Out of tune, yes. I'll agree with that. high pitched? I just can't see how a range of pitch could be bad. Maybe the timbre IN that range. Anyway, I don't want to carry on about it, as the point of this post was to apologize for the last post.

I just said "high-pitched" to distinguish it from the other vocal part. I grew up loving Geddy Lee, so I'm not automatically turned off by that range or timbre. But sustained out-of-tune notes in that range are hard to get past when judging a song.

frankie big face wrote:WHY IS THIS CALLED ’97? BECAUSE 97% OF CLIMATOLOGISTS AGREE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? THAT’S WEAK, DUDE.

Yes, that would be weak - but this is called '97 because it is about the 13 years of inactivity since the Kyoto Protocol was initially adopted in 1997.

frankie big face wrote: A WISE MAN ONCE SAID “SONGS SHOULD BE ABOUT SEX OR DEATH.” HE WAS RIGHT.

It was my opinion that a song concerning a species compromising the viability of its own progeny does in fact address both of those general themes.

frankie big face wrote: Jon Eric – You guys are going to think I have a genre bias against EVERYTHING. I don’t, but I’m not a huge fan of this style of rock and roll.

Yeah, I knew what I was getting into when I asked King Arthur to be my guest.

frankie also wrote: That being said, this is so well-performed and has a catchy hook (“without a name”) that I can’t help but like it a lot. Great guitar solo and what has become commonplace skillful piano playing. SECOND LISTEN: Unfortunately, this song doesn’t have much staying power because it’s, well…about an element. Still love the performance, but…you know, the element thing. Caravan Ray knows what I mean.

Yeah, I hear you completely. I wrote the lyrics unusually quickly by my standards, because I needed to rush something out to King Arthur almost immediately, and I wanted him to share the vocals with me, so it was imperitive that he had to know what to sing. I had the full demo recorded less than 12 hours after the title came out, and he had returned a full demo back to me less than a day later (more on that below). In the intervening days, it occurred to me that writing about an obscure synthetic radioactive element with no practical applications might just rub some people the wrong way, but I was kinda counting on the catchiness to ride me through this round. Looks like it worked.

Thanks for the review!

Then, Niveous wrote: Jon Eric: I always like appearances by the King, though I must say that he totally took over this song. This felt a lot like Jon guesting on a King song and not the other way around because this is very much his style and he provides the sweet guitar solo that dwarfs its piano accompaniment.

I'm glad that the rankings don't seem to have placed too much weight on that missing apostrophe.

Anyways, I was also concerned, in the days leading up to the deadline, of comments like this one. I recorded a full demo to send to King Arthur on Wednesday evening, and he wrote back saying "Is it just me, or is that track really slow? I sped it up to 125 bpm and rerecorded the whole thing." This caught me off-guard, because I'd been expecting just a guitar track and some vocals, and he sent me an entire song. I used his guitar and vocals without qualms, because that what I asked him for. I hesitated about the drums and bass, thinking that I could do those instruments myself, but decided to use his because, in the long run, it made for a better song. Added my piano and vocals, and mixed it up, and we were good to go!

It was a really fun song to work on, largely owing to its catchiness, and because I'd never actually harmonized with another singer for a recorded song before (I've done it live, but it's hardly the same thing). I think the voices blended really well, and to my surprise, there were points where I couldn't tell which of us had the lead and which of us had the harmony.

Anyway, Charles went above and beyond the call of duty on this song, and I'm glad it was good enough to take 4th place overall. Thanks for the reviews, everyone!

Niveous wrote:Therman wins Round 3

frankie big face wrote:Therman – I know the softies are going to tear up over MintyHandy’s song, but this is the one to really get you balling your eyes out. It’s just beautiful in a completely visceral way. Are your guests Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin? Because this certainly has some of the same qualities of Mellon Collie-period (i.e. '97) Smashing Pumpkins. As much as I like Milo’s song, it’s hard for me not to put this first—I like it that much. And it’s 100% falsetto-free!

Thanks! I didn't even notice that I cut the falsetto, so I'm glad you pointed that out. I haven't written a song without falsetto in at least a year, haha.

As for my immunity, I might not write a song for next week. I'm pooped from my new job, and I haven't had any good ideas for the next title. But who knows, maybe inspiration will strike and I'll write something for it.

Caravan Ray wrote:

frankie big face wrote:WHY IS THIS CALLED ’97? BECAUSE 97% OF CLIMATOLOGISTS AGREE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? THAT’S WEAK, DUDE.

Yes, that would be weak - but this is called '97 because it is about the 13 years of inactivity since the Kyoto Protocol was initially adopted in 1997.

Okay, well that was pretty unclear.

Caravan Ray wrote:

frankie big face wrote: A WISE MAN ONCE SAID “SONGS SHOULD BE ABOUT SEX OR DEATH.” HE WAS RIGHT.

It was my opinion that a song concerning a species compromising the viability of its own progeny does in fact address both of those general themes.

Touché!

signboy wrote: This might have gone over better had it been mildly constructive. I understand that people may simply "dislike" something eg: I don't think Billy Corgan should ever have been allowed a mic, but if I ever met him in person, I'd probably try to be a tiny bit tactful about it. I also kinda expected that you might have known the difference, given your profession, between pitch and timbre.
Sorry to Rone your review.

Incidentally, he's very self-conscious about his voice (he thinks it sounds too girly). But I grew up on alternative, so I loves it.

Lunkhead wrote:frankie, I think my criticism was that I didn't think yacht rock was your "A game" to me personally, since I personally most enjoy your guy and guitar songs. EDIT 2: OK, think I've figured out my confusion, was mixing up Nur Ein's II and IV. Not sure where I got the "whole tone scale" bit, though I think those are briefly in that final Nur Ein II song, but whatever.

From "By Night, Rock Star": "For the final round, Puce and Frankie were challenged to "bring their A games, facing each other one-on-one, with the past contestants voting on the final winner rather than the judges. Frankie for some reason decided to turn in a totally cheesy yacht rock sounding song, and Puce turned in something that really sounded like a work in progress. We voted for Puce because we really didn't like Frankie's song. In the end, Puce won, again by one point. Overall the final round's songs and results were very anticlimactic."

I will never forget this, Sam. NEVER.

Ha! Apparently neither will Google. I, on the other hand, keep forgetting.

Niveous wrote:

Generic wrote:

Wages wrote:
The lameness factor changes by half a point based on what is said. That means, it's still pretty lame.

Oh, absolutely, I'm not trying to convince anyone that the situation doesn't suck. Just that it's beyond the control of anyone besides the one (?) offending juror, and that juror is apparently unrepentant and has no interest in changing this behavior.

It's the same judge and they are repentant. They've just been having some personal issues that have knocked them for a loop. I know the waiting game sucks and we're sorry about leaving you all hanging.

Sorry for the delayed apology, but I was way out of line with this post. Obviously, if the judge has something in his real life that's getting in the way of ranking the songs, then it would stand to reason that he doesn't have time to post about it here. My apologies to the late juror, and I hope things turn out okay.

Generic wrote: Sorry for the delayed apology, but I was way out of line with this post. Obviously, if the judge has something in his real life that's getting in the way of ranking the songs, then it would stand to reason that he doesn't have time to post about it here. My apologies to the late juror, and I hope things turn out okay.

I fully accept your apology. I just could not get this souffle to rise quite the way I wanted and before I knew it, three days had passed and I hadn't listened to the songs. The week before that I was doing a Moderately Difficult sudoku and, well...you know how that goes. The week before that I was in prison for public lewdness and the internet there was down. The week before that...

frankie big face wrote:

Generic wrote: Sorry for the delayed apology, but I was way out of line with this post. Obviously, if the judge has something in his real life that's getting in the way of ranking the songs, then it would stand to reason that he doesn't have time to post about it here. My apologies to the late juror, and I hope things turn out okay.

I fully accept your apology. I just could not get this souffle to rise quite the way I wanted and before I knew it, three days had passed and I hadn't listened to the songs. The week before that I was doing a Moderately Difficult sudoku and, well...you know how that goes. The week before that I was in prison for public lewdness and the internet there was down. The week before that...

MintyHandy wrote:
TRY THE VEAL!