The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Always in Nur Ein, songs will be due on Sunday at a minute before midnight, Eastern time (because I live in New York).

Hm. Sorry, I'm even more confused now. I just went and looked at the schedules posted for the last five years and they all say 12:01AM Eastern, not 11:59PM Eastern. By "Always in Nur Ein" do you mean "starting now and going forward"?

FYI I added a new item for Nur Ein XV to the homepage, linked to the schedule post.

EDIT: And I posted to the Song Fight FB and Twitter accounts.

Lunkhead wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 9:29 am

Hm. Sorry, I'm even more confused now. I just went and looked at the schedules posted for the last five years and they all say 12:01AM Eastern, not 11:59PM Eastern. By "Always in Nur Ein" do you mean "starting now and going forward"?

It's midnight. However you slice it. People have such a problem whenever I try to express it as midnight. There's always mass confusion so I try to say Monday morning, one minute after midnight OR Sunday night, one minute before midnight, because (for reasons I don't actually understand) that seems to work. When in truth, all I wanna say is "SONGS ARE DUE AT MIDNIGHT, That point between Sunday night and Monday morning".

We're developers. The difficulty is that the desired midnight is technically Monday morning, though idiomatically it could mean Sunday night depending on the context. It's 0000 Monday in military time. On the website I've generally used 12:01am to make it easier to wrap my head around. I was pretty sure we were on the same page since this change hadn't been a discussed. I just wanted to verify since in previous years I think you made it more distinct, and because Nur Ein used to have 'days off' (before I lobbied for the rolling deadlines due to to late judging), so it wouldn't be unprecedented.

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:11 am

It's 0000 Monday in military time.

I don't know why, in 15 iterations of doing this, i never thought of just saying it in military time.

Waiting for the definition of "0 dark thirty" arguments between our veterans and non-vets here. With bowls of popcorn and scotch at hand. ;-D

Niveous wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:31 am

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:11 am

It's 0000 Monday in military time.

I don't know why, in 15 iterations of doing this, i never thought of just saying it in military time.

Or switch to 9am, which only causes confusion for people outside the US. And they’re already used to being confused.

May I suggest you simply ban grumpymike and lunkhead for being difficult.

The website is all up-to-date and has a new domain name. Yea, I bought nure.in. I think all the migration kinks are worked out but I'm sure someone will let me know if they aren't.

Subscribe to the calendar so that you don't miss out accidentally due to timezone shenanigans.

Love the URL!

I'm just starting to schedule the LP's. Did you want a link to them (and the old ones?)
While it's the same music, they do keep all the chats playing back in real time, which is interesting feedback.

When you're recording your Round 0 song, think about making an artist ID, or something goofy for the Listening party.

Paco del Stinko has set the bar high with his NE theme and acerbic liners. Are you up to the challenge?

PM me here or just email me a link at boffoyux at gmail.com

BoffoYux wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 2:12 pm

Love the URL!

I'm just starting to schedule the LP's. Did you want a link to them (and the old ones?)
While it's the same music, they do keep all the chats playing back in real time, which is interesting feedback.

I’ll figure out how to link to the new ones. I’d love to link the historical ones if you have a convenient list,

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 11:19 am

Niveous wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:31 am

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:11 am

It's 0000 Monday in military time.

I don't know why, in 15 iterations of doing this, i never thought of just saying it in military time.

Or switch to 9am, which only causes confusion for people outside the US. And they’re already used to being confused.

Exactly. I have never understood 9am.

Love the new domain!

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 11:19 am

Niveous wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:31 am

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:11 am

It's 0000 Monday in military time.

I don't know why, in 15 iterations of doing this, i never thought of just saying it in military time.

Or switch to 9am, which only causes confusion for people outside the US. And they’re already used to being confused.

The real way to "solve" the time thing would be to use 0:00 UTC and it would have the benefit of still confusing everyone.

Lunkhead wrote: ↑

Sun May 03, 2020 7:40 am

grumpymike wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 11:19 am

Niveous wrote: ↑

Sat May 02, 2020 10:31 am

I don't know why, in 15 iterations of doing this, i never thought of just saying it in military time.

Or switch to 9am, which only causes confusion for people outside the US. And they’re already used to being confused.

The real way to "solve" the time thing would be to use 0:00 UTC and it would have the benefit of still confusing everyone.

Everyone except me and Vom, anyway.

That's why UTC stands for "understood by Tom and crumpart".

vowlvom wrote: ↑

Sun May 03, 2020 10:14 am

That's why UTC stands for "understood by Tom and crumpart".

Most of thee clocks at my work are in UTC - my brain is pretty attuned to it! The only time I get tripped up is when daylight savings changes.

Judging Credo

Hi guys, the judges talked about posting statements on how we judge, because it’s something that we thought might be helpful for the competitors. As I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’m finding how difficult it is really to talk about though, because probably like most people, I like a lot of different music for a lot of different reasons, so every time I think of something to say, I also immediately think of like a dozen counterexamples of things I like that don’t fit into that box. That being said, here’s some thoughts that will hopefully help people understand where I’m coming from and not just confuse tf out of everyone:

1. Genres. Like most people, I think I’ve pretty genre-open and listen to a lot of music. That said, there are some genres I don’t listen to very much. Country, Americana, technical metal, death metal, EDM, post 00s hip-hop, those come to mind as things I don’t tend to choose. I am very into most versions of rockabilly, rock and roll, rock, hard rock, classic rock, prog rock, punk rock etc., and those are the artists I know best, as well as funk and R&B. Hip-hop up until the early 00s as well. I listen to a lot of jazz and jazz fusion, but mostly instrumental stuff, as well as classical, and my classical tastes are not that interesting, pretty standard set of composers. Mostly I like good grooves, regardless of genre.

2. Pocket: Actually that’s a good way to talk about it. Usually the first thing I listen for is the groove. If a song has a good pocket, whatever kind of pocket it is, I will engage well with it. I am deliberately saying pocket rather that rhythm section or drums—when the arrangement has those, I’ll gravitate to them, but if a song was just a vocal track and nothing else, if I can feel the pocket, it’s going to sit well with me. Even as a guitar player, I’m a more rhythm-oriented guy.

3. Artistic concept. I will judge pretty quickly if I think a song knows what it wants to be, and has a strong artistic concept—not just lyrically, but as a total work. David Bowie is really one of my favorites at doing this, but I think most good musical acts have that, whether fully consciously intentional or intuitively. And this is a statement that stands for the song as a total work, but also for each individual choice in the song. Like I play a lot of guitar solos, but actually if you go through Duboce Triangle stuff, I pretty rarely play them because IMO the songs just didn’t need them, or they wanted some other idea there. At the same time, gratuitousness can itself be part of an artistic statement, but I guess I feel like it has to work as a total concept. To take a hackneyed example, “Comfortably Numb” works partially because it goes on a journey through the ragged pain the character feels, to the soothingness of the drugs coming on, to the full on high, going numb but ecstatic at the same time. And Nick Mason is not by any means one of my favorite drummers, but it’s very much the right groove for the song.

4. Simple/complex musicianship. This doesn’t really matter to me except that if you’re going to go for something more complex, like let’s say you want to to do something with a lot of altered extensions in the chords, the melody has to make sense, it’s really more about artistic concept again. And the execution has to be right—not necessarily good, because sometime “good” execution isn’t the “right” thing for the song, if that makes any sense. And I might not get what you’re going for if you do something complicated, but them’s the breaks.

5. Intonation. I hate HATE HATE HATE listening to things that are out of tune, which is ironic given how much I’ve recorded where I’m slightly out of tune, and I can’t really sing in tune to save my life. Which probably explains why I never listen to my own stuff.

6. Challenges. In general if someone makes a good faith effort to do the challenge, that’s fine. If someone actually has a really clever, artistically integrated way to do the challenge (some challenges lend themselves to that more than others) then I’ll certainly notice that, and it will sit better for me.

7. Listenability. I want songs that I’ll want to listen to years from now. This really just ties into the above though, pocket and artistic concept, and adds melody, memorable, engaging.

8. Production vs arrangement vs lyrics vs music composition. This has been one of the long-running arguments about SongFight in general, at least as I recall—perhaps you guys have settled it in the years I haven’t been around, but just in case, my take on this goes right back to artistic concept. If the concept is to do a Bohemian Rhapsody-eseque autobiographical epic, then the guy and guitar arrangement with lo-fi production might not work. I mean, it might, but that’s a risk you’re taking. Obviously in general the songs that are most technically production-savvy will sound better and have a better chance, but I’d like to think that I am catholic (small c) enough in my taste that I can appreciate a really well written and executed tune that doesn’t have production sheen, as long as there’s a basic competence in the mixing. But I’m not gonna lie, production helps. At the same time, it won’t entirely mask a mediocre song.

I hope that didn’t entirely come across as bunch of long-winded bullshit, which it probably mostly is. If there’s one thing to take away, it’s simply to be mindful of what it is that you’re trying to say in your songs and have the submitted song as close to artistically integrated as you can, in this short timeframe.

the worst part is that I just realized Glenn is now going to record a dozen shadow entries per fight in which every song has one track that's just a few cents out of tune and make me listen to them