The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Basically this song is about how even if society has become more accepting of homosexuality, they want you to be a certain type of gay. They want you to know your place, to not challenge them in any way, to be a sexless sitcom gay couple like Cam and Mitchell from Modern Family. So you're allowed to be gay, but you'd better do so in a way that doesn't disrupt straight people's happy heteronormative existence. I think that's why there's been such a big move to reclaim the term "queer" in recent times - it puts the emphasis on otherness, on not conforming to some straight person's narrow, comfortable idea of what gay people are allowed to be.

So this is about that, and trying to become more comfortable with making straight people uncomfortable. The first verse shows me bending myself to fit the monolithic straight experience, and the second verse shows me trying to tear it down. One of the most euphoric experiences of my life happened at Primavera Festival a couple years ago, watching the rapper CupcakKe with a couple hundred queers screaming along to every filthy word, and the bridge quotes the lyrics to her song "Deepthroat", which I've put in italics. Anyway, it felt amazing to be surrounded by hordes of gay men shouting along to a song about sucking dick, you should try it some time, would highly recommend.

Re: challenge, hopefully I've got it right, the chorus goes down two semitones from the verse, so that's a downward modulation as far as I could understand it. But I think we all know this is probably the end of the road for me, so I'm not too upset if I've somehow gotten the wrong end of the stick with this challenge

This was another one that I struggled with up until I started mixing then I just adding distortion and I grew to like it. It is definitely one of my more wordy tracks. It's all about scamming the scammer.

Musically it is actually very simple a lot of the guitar parts and that distorted piano are just one finger hits. I also wanted the drums to be a bit more organic so tried to record the hits by hitting the base of my acoustic and fed them into grooove bpm.

Again, not sure this will be enough to get through but it was fun.

This title lent itself immediately to a certain type of song with a certain type of story for me. These lyrics are based around one of the great Icelandic family sagas, The Saga of Burnt Njal. However I added a twist - in this song the intended victims of the house-burning are victorious. Njal and his family weren't so lucky, only a couple of people escaped to seek justice according to the laws of the land at the time. The challenge also naturally lent itself, in my mind to this style of music. So I took the plunge and went with my inspiration, perhaps a daring deed of my own at this stage in Nur Ein. You can hear the downward modulation during the middle guitar solo and also the final round of vocals. Musically, the song changes as the lyrics move from realizing that there is nothing to do but certainly die or try to fight and then facing down the enemy. I really enjoyed putting this together and learned a few things along the way.

Back on labyrinths again; a fascination of mine. Specifically, unicursal labyrinths, which are the type that have a single path to the centre. The idea is that you walk in, face yourself (the minotaur), then walk back out again, changed.

From wikipedia:
In English, the term labyrinth is generally synonymous with maze. As a result of the long history of unicursal representation of the mythological Labyrinth, however, many contemporary scholars and enthusiasts observe a distinction between the two. In this specialized usage maze refers to a complex branching multicursal puzzle with choices of path and direction, while a unicursal labyrinth has only a single path to the center. A labyrinth in this sense has an unambiguous route to the center and back and presents no navigational challenge.

Unicursal labyrinths appeared as designs on pottery or basketry, as body art, and in etchings on walls of caves or churches. The Romans created many primarily decorative unicursal designs on walls and floors in tile or mosaic. Many labyrinths set in floors or on the ground are large enough that the path can be walked. Unicursal patterns have been used historically both in group ritual and for private meditation, and are increasingly found for therapeutic use in hospitals and hospices.

The last song I made about labyrinths modulated down through four different keys, then back up again. Apparently I was a bit too subtle with the modulations then, so let it be known that the modulation down this time happens in the first chorus.

I started in the key of A (but the chorus is in Ab). Then I modulated downwards to Ab and chorus in B. Thanks for this super tough challenge, I learned something!

This song is about the experience of having to end a toxic friendship, One where you can't just drift apart, you have to set boundaries, and the toxic friend lashes out at being challenged. Downward modulation (still not sure that's a quantifiable thing) comes at the bridge when we go from F to Dm, and then again at the bass drop, when we go down into something in the Realm of Em.

The other day, I was doing my job at target, when a guest came up to me,
holding a plain blue toddler jacket. She seemed a little frantic and asked me
"could you real quick tell me if this is for a girl or a boy? Cuz I can't tell, but
it would be really bad if I got my son a girl's jacket."
I looked at her, and I said,

what the fuck difference does it make? You just admitted to me that you can't tell the difference, so what, is it some indescribable quality that only retail workers, the true oracles of gender, can perceive? Are you just gonna stand here and stare at me, a queer retail worker, and be like, "can you gender my child's jacket for me?" Like no, fuck off, gender your own child's shit, project your own shit, I'm busy doing my job... *fades beneath music*

For this challenge, we interpreted and executed on "downward modulation" in a few ways. There is a low pass filter on the main synth and the cutoff frequency is modulated downward over time, much of the vocal melody descends in pitch, the verse chord progression is a descending chord progression, and during the bridge, the tempo slows.

Criticism on organized religion, especially those weird-ass sects, but also generally, from an agnostic POV. I like how the bridge, "What are we doing with our lives? Should everything be sacrificed?" could be said by either a manipulative preacher or someone criticizing his followers.

This song features not one, not two, but six instances of downward modulation. Every modulation is down a whole tone, so that it's back in the original key at the end, suggesting a never ending downward spiral. It goes from F#m to Em (second verse) to Dm (instrumental) to Cm (second half of bridge) to Bbm (penultimate chorus) to G#m (final chorus) and back to F#m on the very last chord.