The Song Fight Bulletin Board

johnsonic wrote:UGH. I'm not really sure I like songfight anymore.

Songfight is an eternal battle between gems and turds. Periodically the turds get the upper hand. All seems lost, but it always starts swinging back the other way. It has something to do with horoscopes and chaos theory.

This is why certain people review with untempered vitriol. Perhaps more people should follow their example, and others should actuallly listen to their advice.

-craig

The pre-thread banter is an eternal struggle between vaguely interesting chatter and self-indulgent verbal noodling. Periodically someone who is frustrated by their lack of success/inability to make a satisfactory song with the titles makes a 'dramatic' post about how they are leaving and never coming back, and it's all OUR fault for some reason or the other. All seems lost, but they always come back anyway. It has something to do with horoscopes and chaos theory.

Now I know why I always thought johnsonic was HANK, who was the last person to make such a pronouncement.

PS - Jack, does T-Money resemble Leaf in any way?

j$

I've gotten plenty of songs [b]I[/b] am satisfied with from songfight, so it's not frustration of never winning, because I've already won. It's frustration with the caliber of talent on here lately, that's all. It doesn't make sense to me to listen to an hour of music that grates the nerves, when I can just listen to the people I like.

Sometimes, especially when I don't have time to review, I just use the next button more frequently to find the good bits... although, I'm easily pleased.

According to Gert.

jolly roger wrote:...I have huge respect for anybody who can put together a decent song and has the balls to post it on the internet.

I have NO respect for some chump that records a piece of crap song on piece of crap gear and then has the NERVE (not balls, nerve) to send it in here and expect people to listen to it. It's an insult.

jolly roger wrote:All I have is a computer microphone and a crap drum machine. Pretty much everyone at this site is in this situation...

It appears that the latter may not be true.
http://www.songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2022

SPUD

jolly roger wrote:I am a drummer, but since I don't have drum mics, I can't record real drums. All I have is a computer microphone.

Yes, you can. It won't sound "right" to your ears, at least at first. Or maybe ever, heh. But you've got an opportunity for experimentation here! Play around with things. Take "stupid" chances (like having a second person pointing the mike at the various heads & cymbals, interviewer-style, while you're playing. Put a fat-ass windscreen on the mike and have someone spin it over your head/the set like a set of bolas while you're playing). Experiment. Learn. Fail. Succeed.

Songfight is neat because there's plenty of suck and there's plenty of genius and there's plenty of everything in between. I don't mind the suck so much- it reminds me that at the very least I'm not the bottom of the barrel.

Meanwhile, I am bitter that I didn't get to record my song this week.

PUT UP YER DUKES, State Shirt spent all day yesterday writing and recording Bitter Orange.

You do realize that such a statement from you is likely to make a lot of these pussies put *down* their dukes, and in fact try to pretend that they never had any dukes in the first place.

Bare-knuckle, or with protective gear? Hell, I was in before, and I'm still in now. Bring it on!

Nukes, Not Dukes!

Aw... I was gonna be in for April AM... but I had to deal with a Cat-astrophe all week. Kitty is gonna pull through for the moment anyway, but I have no music to submit. Sniff.

Rabid Garfunkel wrote:

jolly roger wrote:I am a drummer, but since I don't have drum mics, I can't record real drums. All I have is a computer microphone.

Yes, you can. It won't sound "right" to your ears, at least at first. Or maybe ever, heh. But you've got an opportunity for experimentation here! Play around with things. Take "stupid" chances (like having a second person pointing the mike at the various heads & cymbals, interviewer-style, while you're playing. Put a fat-ass windscreen on the mike and have someone spin it over your head/the set like a set of bolas while you're playing). Experiment. Learn. Fail. Succeed.

I don't really have a computer in my room (where my drums are) ... If I can, next week, I should have a section in a song where I recorded it on a tape recorder and put it onto the computer ... that's about the best I can do for actual drum recording.

boltoph wrote:

jolly roger wrote:...I have huge respect for anybody who can put together a decent song and has the balls to post it on the internet.

I have NO respect for some chump that records a piece of crap song on piece of crap gear and then has the NERVE (not balls, nerve) to send it in here and expect people to listen to it. It's an insult.

Just because someone's not the best at recording doesn't mean they mean badly ... I know I have no equipment ... maybe you guys do ... I don't know the age range or how much money people have here, but I don't have equipment, and if that's the only way I can record, then that's how I'm going to record. I'm not going to avoid making music just because people can't deal with me using a drum machine.

Spud wrote:

jolly roger wrote:All I have is a computer microphone and a crap drum machine. Pretty much everyone at this site is in this situation...

It appears that the latter may not be true.
http://www.songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2022
SPUD

Well, it looks like more people have good equipment than I thought ... I guess I'm just mad because I really have no good way of recording all the things that I want songs to be ... I have all these ideas for the songs, but I just don't have the recording skill, and often, musical skill to make it all sound good ... that could be the problem ...

jolly roger wrote:I have all these ideas for the songs, but I just don't have the recording skill, and often, musical skill to make it all sound good ... that could be the problem ...

that sounds like a well-identified problem that you could work on. a problem, in fact, that i would suggest soundfight would be good for helping you overcome.

i can't be the only one that enjoys hearing people evolve and improve throughout their time on songfight, am i? i know this site been a big help to me as a songwriter, musician and producer, and no one's exiled me yet.

just take your acid bath like every newbie does (and even us not-so newbies); it'll be good for you.

just look at what acid did for the joker...
... or hendrix, for that matter...

- njm

jolly roger wrote:I don't know the age range or how much money people have here

For goodness sake, don't play the age and money card. When I first entered SongFight I was 14 and had a cheap mic that came with my PC. But I made something that sounded vaguely listenable. Then you evolve and ask very nicely for recording stuff for brithdays and other gift giving times.

Sounds to me like you should go to Radioshack, buy a $20 mic, maybe some cables, then drag a cable from your room to wherever your PC is, and record some drums. Then get a friend who can play an instrument really well(be it guitar, bass, trumpet, harp, whatever), and make some music. And if you want to go real crazy, find a friend that sings and make them sing. Read some of the 'Help and How to' on how to record different things. Just work on it, and you'll find something that sounds good.

You can make an effort to record better, instead of just saying "well, this is as good as I can do, and I'm young and broke, so suck it."

I have a lot to learn, and it is very cool how people get better on here. I know I've improved (I hope). And the age thing doesn't matter, most 16 year olds run circles around many of us on computers...

Also, it doesn't take alot of money. Here's a big secret - you can amass a pretty solid software set-up for FREE (to you).

It doesn't bug me if it sounds like there's effort, or talent. It aggravates the shit outta me if you're a scumbag like the spoons entering absolute shit in every fight to hear feedback on their shitty music. It pisses me off if people waste my time.

Dismantle the computer and take it to your drums, then take it back to the family room and set it up again. Effort.

How many of these horrible tracks were worked on for 30+ hours? If there's effort, positive feedback generally ensues.

Oh, and I don't think I'm done with songfight, just in my try to be a square fighter I feel obliged to really listen to every song and give feedback. Been tired of people wasting my time. Maybe I'll be more judicious on the next track button and keep on truckin'. There is some other stuff I need to take care of for a while though...

ROK.

...but I can't resist mentioning that the very excellent TapeOp magazine had a recipe a long while back for building a pretty excellent condenser mic for about 20 dollars.

If you have a soldering gun and some patience, you too can put this gizmo together. It really isn't that difficult, and the resulting mic is really pretty great! (Nice 'n' warm)

My very good friend and (and fellow audio nerd) Kevin is hosting a version of the original TapeOp article here:

http://phonoscopy.com/proposal/BuildYourOwnMics.pdf

He used it to make stereo mics for his recording projects, but you could also make a fleet of drum mics, or whathaveyou.

(Edit: Actually, since this is an omni mic, it may not be the best thing to use for that "one mic to a drum" kinda sound...But I'll bet you'd get some interesting sounds hanging a pair over a kit)

--Em

Bjam wrote:

jolly roger wrote:I don't know the age range or how much money people have here

For goodness sake, don't play the age and money card. When I first entered SongFight I was 14 and had a cheap mic that came with my PC. But I made something that sounded vaguely listenable. Then you evolve and ask very nicely for recording stuff for brithdays and other gift giving times.

It's good to hear that there are people who joined when they were pretty young ... I honestly didn't know the ages ... a lot of the stuff seems pretty advanced ... it seems like most people here are like 20s or 30s, but if there are younger people, that really makes me feel better ... especially about the development of my singing voice ... it's not great yet, but I guess it'll get better over time. It's good to hear that it's not too tough to get decent microphones ... I'll have to check that out ... but then I won't have an excuse for not being good.

For the love of leprechauns!! Did you all get together and decide to enter my fight? Don't you realize that nothing actually rhymes with orange? NOTHING. And how dare you steal my trick of putting "just" after words that end in "orn." But the end result is ...

I am against a metric fuckton of competition.

I am competing against several talented musicians.

I submitted rap.

I LIKE THESE ODDS.
LET'S DO THIS!

COWER BEFORE MIGHTY MOUSE AND MC PUDDING DELICIOUS.

Obviously well-recorded real drums win over fake drums in almost all circumstances. That being said, I don't think (unless they are distractingly bad) the type of drums will make or break the song. Probably my favorite non-Beatles album (Simple Kid 1) was recorded with fake drums on a laptop.

It's not what recording equipment you have, it's what you do with it. Even just knowing how to use EQ and some free plugins can make a crappy computer mic sound decent. I think Songfight, in part, should be a place where people who know how to use their equipment help out those who don't and watch them progress.

I agree with johnsonic about people who just write and produce crappy songs, and then use their lack of equipment as an excuse. I agree that if it is clear that they didn't put a whole lot of effort into it, they don't even necessarily deserve a review. But just keep in mind that there are some people on here, and I think Andrew is one of them, who are willing to learn. I'm actually willing to bet that by the next fight, Andrew will have taken most of this advice and improved his recording.

We were supposed to rhyme "orange"? Crap.

I like your style MC Minimum. Prefights need more trash talking!