The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I do feel much better now. Thanks!

Lyric thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11957

We have a void but as of yet, not much screaming

Songs posted!

Hmmmm...SF website is showing that I already voted for this fight when I haven't yet.

the panna cotta army wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:39 am

Hmmmm...SF website is showing that I already voted for this fight when I haven't yet.

Same for me.

jkelver wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 5:12 am

the panna cotta army wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:39 am

Hmmmm...SF website is showing that I already voted for this fight when I haven't yet.

Same for me.

Same.

Your residence moved but the database table didn't!

Same with me.

Oh right. The very last step in the process, which since it's the last step I sometimes forget, is to clear out the old votes and make room for the new ones. Should be fixed now.

It's fixed on my end. Thanks.

Get a title and a date
Send a song in
Everybody votes then we... uh
Lunkhead forgets to clear the history
Somebody reminds him
THEN we do it again

Lunkhead wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:07 am

Should be fixed now.

Yep
Ta

add - Really like this very tight arrangement. A particularly great song from you, and great guitar work to boot. Great start!

Balls To Monte - Another bummer one from us, though I still kinda like it.

Brown Word and the Big Whine - Really great sounding track, and great lyrics. Extra points for “3-2-1,” etc. My favorite one I’ve heard from you so far. A definite contender.

Galoshy - Wow. You play and sing beautifully, and these are some great lyrics. Who the hell ARE you? Fantastic stuff. The ONLY (completely superfluous) critique I could possibly give you is maybe use either a bit of reverb and/or added EQ in the mix. Otherwise, this is INCREDIBLE. Another favorite so far. DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!! [But seriously, welcome.]

Gaping Maw - Are you new too? Damn, you know good production, that’s for sure. This is a great track. It really holds together through all of the changes in shift. Are you an Alice Cooper fan, by any chance? This is like a mini-opera or something. Great job!

JP Nickolas - You’re definitely getting better with each entry (the ones that I’ve heard, anyway). The lyrics are great, clever fun, and your guitar work is stellar as usual. The mix still seems a bit off to me. On this track, the bass and drums need to come up a bit. Great song overall.

Lichen Throat - I love the story here. From someone that will never have a talent for woodwork, I appreciate this. “To create is to destroy” is a great touch.

Ozro Falls - Another newbie. This is really good. Great arrangement and harmonies. Nice, understated lead guitar. Really good, solid song. Welcome!

The Pannacotta Army - Another super-solid one from you guys. DAMN! This is a hit! What can I say? The vocals, the guitar work (lead and rhythm), are ALL fantastic! Maybe the winner (so far).

Phlebia - A somewhat different approach for you, and it’s mostly good. Kinda having trouble making out the lyrics (thank god you posted them). Really like the atmospheric feel of this followed by the rocking (though still atmospheric) feel of this. Somewhere between the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. Good stuff.

Pigfarmer Jr - Another solid one from you too. Are people really stopping you from kissing your wife? That seems odd. Hang in there.

Robyn Mackenzie - You’re just a great pop-smith. Practically everything I’ve heard from you I can easily imagine hearing on the radio [if radio still played anything good, of course]. This is no exception. Your harmonies are so well-blended, dammit! Another potential favorite.

Shoehorn TC - Another newbie maybe? You definitely sound pro (unlike myself). You ever hear of a band called Lincoln? Well, you should. This sounds like a lost track from their brilliant (and sadly, only) album. I cannot tell you how high a compliment that is. Great stuff. This is catchy as hell.

Sober - Whoa! This is AMAZING! This is another potential winner. The vocals and performance are both incredible.
PS. What’s an “O-T-H Joe”? I honestly don’t know.

SunLite - Wow. Another really solid entry. Are you new too? Great arrangement, lyrics and feel. What else can I say? It’s fantastic. I SO hate your guts.

Sweeney Toad - This is SO Sweeney Toad, and that’s priceless. I’m sending you a goddamn volley ball for your trouble. You’re welcome!

Tomdg - Really like the feel of this. That digital-delayed guitar really makes this match the feel of the lyrics, which are excellent. It sounds like The Cure being slowly smothered by a pillow, and I mean that in a very good way. Honestly.


Wow. I have quite a few to choose from this week. Good job, everyone! Happy Thanksgiving [only for those who celebrate it, of course]!!!

genecawley wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:09 pm

PS. What’s an “O-T-H Joe”? I honestly don’t know.

I put a bunch of links in the lyric thread, because I do use a fair bit of jargon in this tune.

OTH = 'Other than honorable.' Servicemembers typically leave the military with an 'honorable' discharge. This is great! I am exceedingly lucky to be in this category, despite by best efforts not to be

There's a whole range of other discharge classifications, though. One's situation can range from inconvenienced (general/administrative discharge) to completely fucked for life (dishonorable discharge). 'Other than honorable' is a rough place to be, and it's especially fucked to consider that many of these vets were kicked out for self medicating mental and physical issues that were caused by the military in the first place.

Went through the fight in the car and on my bassy bluetooth speaker. Now going through on my mix headphones. Spent about 3 hours typing these up.

add: Very Doors, when Jim was doing his lounge weirdness like Touch Me. Really like it. Snare sounds great. Curious about where your drum sounds all come from. The guitar in the right ear is pretty farty sounding, but I guess it fits the style. Would like that organ patch to do more Ray Manzarek work. Bass sounds super solid through the bridge. I do feel like I'd like to hear a cut of this with you ~5 drinks in, really belting this, instead of doing the (charming! and good!) add delivery. Treating this more as a period piece, I'd want to hear more tape and tube all over this mix. As it is, parts of it are too clean and modern sounding. Great stuff, Jeff.

Balls To Monte: Left guitar sounds great - is the right channel the same guitar plugged in? Hate that. Mic it like you did the left one, but capo it up to where the different voicings make the stereo split interesting. Could use more energy in the bass performance. Will never get over your Robert Plant pipes. Need more precision and confidence in the guitar solo. A few more takes, or time spent loop recording then comping would clean that up. The snare is too dry for the space; give me a touch of the same send you have the vocals on. Really impressive as usual.

Brown Word and the Big Whine: Oh my, there's a lot happening here. Those toms sound terrible. So does the sax, but I hate sax. Lots of little musical flourishes in here; this is gooberish and messy in many ways, but I appreciate the mindful intention. Your voice sounds quite dry for the most part - I want tube burn and a bit of slapback on there. This is one of your better performances.

Galoshy: Welcome! Nothing wrong with a sparse track! Would love to hear 1: A stereo capture of your guitar and 2: A pop filter on your vocal mic. Or, you can automate a ~60hz cut whenever the pops happen. I have a filter and still have to automate a few pops every time. The extra vocals being the only panned elements draw further attention to your mostly-mono mix. Sounds like we have some overloading happening here and there, like around 1:55. Some Roy Harper vibes here. You have lots of great melodic and arrangement instincts; looking forward to hearing them polished.

Gaping Maw: Hey THC! Holy shit that intro. It's a shrts song. This is... quite the journey. The funk is good - fake bass? More sax Your voice sometimes takes on a Les Claypool quality, like in the 007 riff section. That's fun. I feel like this is jazz. Like, I need to sit down at the piano and study this to fully appreciate it. I'm more likely to do that with this than with jazz though, so good job. Not much to say production-wise, as you don't really spend enough time in one genre to develop something that I can sink my teeth into. Impressive getting the kick to punch through like that in the middle rock section.

JP Nickolas: Very Scott Tenorman. Clearly you're going for something in the realm of Iron Maiden - you're getting quite close with the guitar tone/writing/performance, the drums sound fine, and you even have the bass gallop going. But the vocal just sits on top of the band, making it sound like karaoke. Spend some time referencing tracks as your mix starts getting close to 'done' and really try to understand why Bruce Dickinson's voice sits the way it does in the mix. Lyrics don't do it for me - too cliche without poking fun at the genre. Prosody is all over the place, too - accents falling on words like 'the' etc. Tons of good ingredients here; needs more time in the proving drawer.

Lichen Throat: The drums desperately need humanizing. The fake bass guitar or whatever in the left is a mess. The string patch has that telltale too-slow attack and weird <> phrasing. It takes some work to get them sounding natural/good. "He ignores it like a clown" and "So dumb that everyone's annoyed" are easily the worst lyrics this week. The lyrics aren't all bad though! My usual notes about vocal performance. I guess I just don't get it.

Ozro Falls: Welcome! Trying to place the vibe here.. maybe Doobie Brothers? Bass is anticipating that pickup note almost every time. Lay back on another take or time correct it. It's a bit too high in the mix, too. Overall the mix is pretty crowded - there's a melotron or something fighting with the piano for upper mid space. A proper balance would help sort out some of the more fine detail issues. Boooo fade out. Booooo. Great first entry, look forward to hearing you grow with the rest of us!

The Pannacotta Army: Doing the prom-rock thing really well right out the gate. Can't decide if I want to hear a little more air in your vocal or if I like it as dark as it is. There is a slight imbalance in the highs - the tambourine brings some much-needed high end, but it's mostly in the right channel, and when it goes away, we're back in the dark. Boost that left-channel hihat against it, or automate a high shelf boost in the synth when the tamb is gone. Something. Kick gets overwhelmed outside of the verses. Could be a minute shorter. This is great.

Phlebia: First time I listened to this, I was playing Civ 6, and I thought the thunder was the game. Neat! Obviously the electric stuff coming in half way is way too fucking goddamn loud. But this is your thing, so it's fine I guess. Can't really make out the lyrics, but looking at them... "Sabotage my inner spectrum" sounds like something I ask my gf to do when I'm really drunk "The iris's penumbra?" You and JP should write for each other This seems like it would be an opening track to whatever album you might eventually release.

Pigfarmer Jr: Kick is a little too mechanical - randomize the velocity a bit. Some more humanizing work on the drums all around would help. Acoustic guitars sound good. I don't know that the electric adds anything - it's too overdriven and too far back when it's not doing sloppy solos 2nd verse is pretty cringe. Bass is completely lost. No harmony? On that repeating 'think about,' would like to hear the phone filter or whatever turned up more, as it sounds cool there. Trim the tails on the end, especially whichever track is bleeding click. I've switched to tracking with earbuds instead of my mix headphones, as they leak like crazy. Competent songfight song.

Robyn Mackenzie: Wow, the eq on this master must be a big smiley face . Guitar sounds phenomenal. Bass has great bottom end and retains punch (though it feels a little ahead of the beat). Losing a bit of kick though - get surgical with slotting them - I usually give kick everything up to 55-60hz, and bass gets 60-80hz to itself. This would be a great track to compress the hell out of the vocal and overdrive it. That 'you think you're so tough' line has the kind of burn I want on everything. Would like to hear the chorus 'oohs' pushed back - not volume-wise, but with reverb. The vocal needs a ton of tiny tweaks to make it really shine - it's 98% right on every parameter, but that 2% compounds. Killer work as usual.

ShoehornTC: This feels very classic songfight. Drums sound good except for the lack of kick. Nice one-finger guitar solo You're nailing the lofi demo sound. Not really moving me though. The lyrics are very throwaway, and the performance seems to match. Let's hear you spill your guts into a track.

Sober: Banjo is very hard. 153bpm is very fast. I am a hack. Oh, on the mandolin I'm trying out split tuning, which is fun.

SunLite: Lots of lip/breath noise - back up, or get a pop filter or something. Take the time to humanize the drums - every kick/hihat/snare hit shouldn't be the same velocity. The prosody of lines like 'I would chase you forever but your trail is getting cold' - rewrite it so that there isn't an accent on the word "your." Good job arranging the buildup. Don't know if the bass playing every eighth note is good. Not a fan of the guitar-solo-in-the-shower sound, and it should be cut in half if not cut altogether. When the drop hits, those bgv have to be 100% spot on. As it is, it sounds like you were caught unprepared. By the time everything is in the track, it's quite a wash. Dial back the reverb on some of those elements, and maybe get rid of the synth. About a minute long. Who is this, by the way? If you're new - welcome! Some really good sounds here, look forward to hearing more.

Sweeney Toad: Your tracks are solid walls of sound. And not like an Angus Young wall of Marshall amps; more like a wall of Fender Super Reverbs (ask an older blues guitarist. You'll have to yell. They're deaf because of the fuckin' Super Reverbs). There's no breath, no space for the beat or the lyrics to settle into. No contrast; if everything is a 10, then 10 means nothing. I'd love to hear you experiment with space. As it is, there's a harshness to the eq and how hard everything is limited that's painful to listen to. I appreciate what you're bringing to the table, but we have some work to do.

Tomdg: Neat descending line gets slushier and sloppier as it repeats. Lyrics are kind of a goth We Didn't Start the Fire This is classic songfight; kind of a mess all over. The overdrive on the vocal sounds good.

Interesting fight! Weird abundance of saxophones! Add, Balls to Monte, Pannacotta Army, and Robyn Mackenzie brought the goods.

Sober wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:59 pm

genecawley wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:09 pm

PS. What’s an “O-T-H Joe”? I honestly don’t know.

I put a bunch of links in the lyric thread, because I do use a fair bit of jargon in this tune.

OTH = 'Other than honorable.' Servicemembers typically leave the military with an 'honorable' discharge. This is great! I am exceedingly lucky to be in this category, despite by best efforts not to be

I missed the links somehow. I really like that term a lot.

Sober wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:40 am

Very Doors

How dare you sir

genecawley wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:09 pm

Are people really stopping you from kissing your wife? That seems odd.

Yeah, well, the advice is to basically not be in the same room as anyone else for the duration. That means 'No huggy, no kissy..." not even with a wedding ring.

Sober wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:40 am

Interesting fight! Weird abundance of saxophones! Add, Balls to Monte, Pannacotta Army, and Robyn Mackenzie brought the goods.

I'm bummed that I ended up sitting this fight out, because if I hadn't it would have been LOADED with saxophones and it would have been fun to watch you twitch.

mholland wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 5:16 pm

I'm bummed that I ended up sitting this fight out, because if I hadn't it would have been LOADED with saxophones and it would have been fun to watch you twitch.

I like what you do with your horns! Solo alto sax is just the worst sound in the world to me. I ran sound at a jazz/blues club for 3 years in the early 2000s, so I'm permanently scarred from that I guess.

Sober wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 5:26 pm

mholland wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 20, 2020 5:16 pm

I'm bummed that I ended up sitting this fight out, because if I hadn't it would have been LOADED with saxophones and it would have been fun to watch you twitch.

I like what you do with your horns! Solo alto sax is just the worst sound in the world to me. I ran sound at a jazz/blues club for 3 years in the early 2000s, so I'm permanently scarred from that I guess.

Thank you! A confession, though: I've been doing most of my solos lately on alto and soprano (on the premise that soprano is probably more offensive than alto) in part to troll you. Alas, I'm away from my saxes this week, so the next fight from me is going to be EWI, electric guitar, and soft synths, because that's what I have access to.