The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Liberty Street
Due: Tuesday, 02/04/20 9:59am PST
optional challenge: Try something new
yourbandname_ls.mp3 sent to fightmaster@songfight.org
Subject:
Body: (your band name)

Honestly I have no idea what this title means or where it came from. Deep Throat can be very cryptic sometimes.

Try something new, eh? Hmmm...maybe my vote count would go up haha. What to do, what to do?

Liberty Street is a highlight of the New Basement Tapes project:

https://youtu.be/qn6yck_ObJQ

I think I’m done. I’ll check it tomorrow when my ears are not so tired.

I think this could be the closing track to my unrecorded new album “the unbearableness of being”

I've got most of my lyrics done, though I'm not sure the first half and second half come together as smoothly as I intended. Oh well, I'm dabbling with something unusual for me: major keys!

I added another guitar and remixed the vocals.

Then I listened again with my wife and we adjusted the vocals again because I had been reckless.

Now I’m almost certain I’m done.

It’s weird feeling ‘finished’ this far ahead of the submission date - I’m not sure what to do with myself.... (I’ll eat those words later when someone suggests maybe I could write another verse or something...)

Firstly, fuck this title, and fuck the shadowy forces behind Song Fight for picking this title during Brexit week, and fuck this song I've written.

Secondly: In.

Because of this song I just shook the Taoiseach’s hand.

vowlvom wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 01, 2020 5:03 am

Firstly, fuck this title, and fuck the shadowy forces behind Song Fight for picking this title during Brexit week, and fuck this song I've written.

Secondly: In.

Hugs. That's probably all I've got to give, but they're yours.

Appreciated! Very much hoping I can still write songs about things other than Brexit-related misery tbh. Feel like a stuck record.

Brexit on the same day the U.S. became a dictatorship. Quite a day in history.

Anyway, pre-fight.

I'm in with Brown Word, though I'm not sure what I've done can be said to be something new or not. I tried not relying on a bass guitar, and that felt a little seat-of-the-pants. I offered to provide a recorder solo for the WreckdoM track, as I'm sure that hasn't been attempted yet, but it didn't take and so maybe next time it's suggested to try something new, that opportunity will show itself again. The WreckdoM tune is just about finished, we're polishing it up this afternoon. Despite every American citizen taking a daily stroll down the idyllic concept of liberty street (provided the freedom you pursue fits the popular bill) I think Brown Word and WreckdoM had other ideas than the red-hats on what sorts of liberties we find available...

I am having the most fun making a supremely weird song.

WreckdoMelle wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 01, 2020 3:04 pm

I'm in with Brown Word, though I'm not sure what I've done can be said to be something new or not. I tried not relying on a bass guitar, and that felt a little seat-of-the-pants. I offered to provide a recorder solo for the WreckdoM track, as I'm sure that hasn't been attempted yet, but it didn't take and so maybe next time it's suggested to try something new, that opportunity will show itself again. The WreckdoM tune is just about finished, we're polishing it up this afternoon. Despite every American citizen taking a daily stroll down the idyllic concept of liberty street (provided the freedom you pursue fits the popular bill) I think Brown Word and WreckdoM had other ideas than the red-hats on what sorts of liberties we find available...

Nah, my song's got nothing to do with America at all either. Or politics, for that matter. But it's certainly about liberation. Woohoo!

As of tonight, it's pretty much done. I'm just going to listen to it several times to make sure that it still sounds good in the morning before I submit.

Most of the instruments are packed for moving and I had to balance a mic on top of a shelf to sing into while holding the pop shield with my hand, but I'm in!

Submitted, with a couple days to spare!

sleepysilverdoor wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 02, 2020 3:54 pm

Submitted, with a couple days to spare!

To be quite honest, I only submitted with a couple of days to spare because I read the date like an Australian (and also only looked at the first number).

Well yeah, I even got around to submitting my Liberty St.

Send hugs.

I'm in, with a non-political song, after a delay due to a Superbowl party I unexpectedly ended up at last night! (It had cake! And we got there in time for the halftime show!)

I did the optional challenge, although the new stuff is process-related so all pretty boring:

I was having a horrible time trying to get this done with my usual process for drums, i.e. figure out a structure, put together drum loops to fit the structure, and then track the rest of the instruments to the drum track. Or at the very least, to a click, to be replaced with drums later on.

I spent a day or two trying to do it that way and just could not get it right due to the verse rhythm, which I was having a terrible time figuring out how to program and I kept getting off when recording to a 4/4 click, and finally gave up and recorded vox and DI'd electric guitar at the same time, at some random BPM, and then played MIDI drums on top of that track whilst desperately hoping I had stayed at least kinda sorta in time with my guitar/vox track. So it's a little bit shaky and I'm aware the drum track is a very odd and simplistic arrangement, sorry in advance! As a worldly and musically sophisticated woman, I do know intellectually that things like "hi hats" and "cymbals" exist and are occasionally used in songs by fancy show-off Neil Peart types.

The first mix of this I did had a ton of weird, metallic unplugged-electric string noise in it because the vocal mic picked it up as I was playing. So tonight I went through and overdubbed lead vocals without all the string noise and it's somewhat less terrible-sounding now, but also still kind of terrible-sounding because I ran out of time and figured I should just put it down at some point and move on...

I also used the Reaper "punch in at a certain spot" feature for the first time on this project. I've known about it for years but for some reason have never used it! I have no idea why, I guess taking 2 seconds to figure out how to do it seemed like more effort than frantically trying to time the manual punch-in every time and then going back and adjusting it. It's pretty useful!

I would like to be able to punch in, but I’m not interested in losing my magic drummer, or $300

gizo wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:36 am

I would like to be able to punch in, but I’m not interested in losing my magic drummer, or $300

You should be able to do it with GarageBand I think. Same process as in logic. https://www.dummies.com/consumer-electr ... arageband/

New things I tried this time around:

• Field recording

• Letting the field recording entirely dictate the structure and content of the song

• Symbolic panning choices

• While I used a lot of panning in the mix, most of my time was spent listening and mixing in mono

• Chorus with no words, which will probably be interpreted as “no chorus”