Join me in a toast from my (Christmas In A Bottle reviews)

[Pigfarmer Jr]

CHEERS!!!

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Please post your song lyric here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12403

[Lunkhead]

Songs posted!

[Paco Del Stinko]

Some quick remarks for a quick fight. I liked them all, and was tempted to rank them, but yeah. Only voted for three...Hmm!

Paco del Stinko - Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Too crowded but some parts kinda work, noisy. I had intended to keep it simple and choired, but yeah, I overloaded the Clampett Mobile as usual. Ha! Much drinking making this, too. Tsk tsk!

Pigfarmer Jr - Homey Crazy Horse type song, totally works. It's allowed to breathe, bit of air. Great how the melody and hook line conclude, it's right every time but doesn't let the tear fall. Could use a nudge of sparkle in an occasional corner, but very warm. Genuine.

The Portaloo Massacre - Wow. It's actually like bottled Christmas. Tasty and comforting, but easy to drink. I'd have played this at the house during the holiday if I had it, so next year. Most excellent, balanced, easy roll and brandy edged lighting. Thanks!

WreckdoM - Gets lost in the bottle after a rockin' good goon ball power party. Was hoping the dissolve at the end was going to turn back into a singalong or something, but the wash away end works great. Some very good lyric lines, some better'n others. Good party tune for middle of the second side.

[WreckdoMelle]

Portaloo Massacre - As soon as I heard this I thought, "This sounds great, this is gonna win", and then as you said you mixed in several Christmas clichés, I tried to detect them all, like Easter eggs in a Dan Piraro comic: I guess the reindeer bells stood out most and perhaps the idea of getting wrecked at Christmas, which is a great family tradition wordwide. Other than sounding really good, Colin was disappointed there was no mention of Debo's chicken coop (I guess some people use "sherm" at Xmas? No se.) but he was being slightly facetious as this song has a very safe feeling, like if you got drunk and stoned at Christmas in this song, everything would be fine, the vibe would be chill.

Pigfarmer Jr. - I do enjoy a song from Santa's perspective, and what a singular being he must be to perform his tremendous feats, right? He keeps track of naughty and nice, he gets his elves making all the toys, he's jolly in spite of all this, he's a logistics genius - I can go on and on, but about this song - the lyrics were fun and certainly, as this fight will show, simpler desires sometimes come to the forefront on the holidays. The guitars always sound really good on your tracks. This acoustic sounds great here.

Paco del Stinko - Rollicking and anthemic with almost a folk metal bounce. Angelic harmonies in the breakdown. This is right to the point and just the thing I could see some rowdy crew of natural and chosen family bashing their steins or drinking horns or whatever together and arm in arm raising a joyful noise unto the heavens. Very fun!

WreckdoM - In a fit of originality we decided to talk about altered consciousness at Christmas. It's the time when people allow themselves more, foods they don't normally enjoy, the kids can stay up a little later, and certainly adult refreshments abound. Musically speaking I had the Christmas spirit a couple of times this year, which doesn't really happen because like everything when you've had time to think more about it, it has become complicated; and it didn't feel bad, in fact I grow nostalgic and go back to the times of grade school when every year the big Christmas program meant weeks of intense Christmas song practice and man I loved music class and I loved learning all those songs. This song isn't about any of that though.

Well this was a small and inebriated fight. I'm having the Christmas goose, or the vegetarian equivalent if need be, sent to Paco's house.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Short and... erm, gritty fight. Except for Tim who brought the smoothies.

Paco del Stinko: Now THAT'S a singalong if ever there was one. I hear a hint of an Irish flavor in the drinking and the singing and it works perfectly. You said it was sloppy and I agree... but it had better be. That's exactly what it needs. Too much polish and you'd ruin the whole damn thing.

Pigfarmer Jr: It kinda is what it is, ya know?

The Portaloo Massacre: I kinda think this and Paco's song are the two sides of the same coin in a way. One is so upbeat and fun and irreverent and the other is so damn smooth and silky. I almost want to do an alt.country version of this song just so that I can get the best of both worlds.
So is this in the key of E with no fifth? It has to be, right? Or maybe A with no fourth? I'm going with E with a major VI rather than the A with the major III. But you gotta tell me if I'm right or not. Seriously, it's driving me crazy.

WreckdoM: I love the noisy guitar, it's a tasty touch. Y'all use vocal samples so consistently well. I should think about that at some point. It took me an embarrassingly long time to come up with the "christmas in a bottle" melody origin.. Like, I knew it but couldn't.. you ,know... THINK!!! Then I slapped my head like Macaulay Culkin. Duh!

[dirgetheband]

So is this in the key of E with no fifth? It has to be, right? Or maybe A with no fourth? I'm going with E with a major VI rather than the A with the major III. But you gotta tell me if I'm right or not. Seriously, it's driving me crazy.

Piggy, when you listen to these and come with the breakdowns of construction, are you listening with a guitar/keyboard at hand or can you do this stuff by ear? ‘Cause you were spot on with the diatonic analysis of my song last fight. Just curious.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Here's what turned out to be a much too long explanation.

Guitar is right beside me and I tend to play along with most of them when I have the time. I can usually figure out the tonal center and then I just use a note card to write the major (or minor) scale degrees and then jot down the patterns for the verse, chorus and bridge etc., (I ignore the sharps and flats, but I have to go back and put them in sometimes.) So something like:

I ii iii IV V vi vii
A b c D E f g

or

I ii iii IV V vi vii
E f g A B c d

For Tim's song, it goes E to A a lot then the C# some (the key of A has three sharps and E has four, both include C# rather than the c I listed.) I forget the rest and I've thrown away my notecard. Because there is no D or B chord (that I could detect,) which would imply a fourth or a fifth depending on the key, it makes it a bit of a mystery. The tonal center sounds like E to me so that's what I went for. However, the Major III is a common substitution so that would lead me to think it was in A. Still, the major VI is a viable possibility so it could still be in E.

I'm not averse to using tools to decipher what I cannot figure out myself, but a lot of the times they are wrong. (For instance I use the site chordify to get started on chords if I can't figure them out, but it's wrong on up to about 33% of the chords for normal songs and more on more complex songs. Also the free version is only three songs a month and they have to be available on line, youtube etc.,)

[Cybronica]

Stopping by to give some reviews. I took a quiet few minutes to enjoy these songs- all of them were ones I’d gladly listen to again, thought these reviews are after one go through each. Good job gang; thanks for making great music!

Paco: really fun groove. What a relatable topic! I love how singable the lyrics are. I could totally see this playing on a radio station in Nov-Dec, and I’d sing along every time with glee! All that’s missing is sleigh bells, but I think you made the right choice leaving them out lol. The play out is too long. I think you could have cut 16 bars at the beginning of it, or made a bigger deal about the kids chorus coming in from silence over a long Crescendo with a guitar obligato and more clearly defined vocal improving over top (but that’s just what I would do- this is a paco song! You do you!)

WreckdoM: I like the lyrics. The doubled vix are a millisecond off from each other which is really distracting. Also, when they are doing the speak sing it works well that they are in different ranges, but when you switch to the singier sections, the voices come in seemingly on different keys. I think if you tightened up the timing and tuning, this would be a contender! The sting allusion and the spoken word sample is pretty cool. I couldn’t catch what he was saying, but it gave me bioshock vibes and I liked it.

Portaloo Massaloo: easy listening with country lyrics and a bass nova flair. I like this one a lot. If your shaker was sleigh bells, it would make this feel more commercially viable as a Christmas tune, but who cares about commercial viability? This song is better the way you made it! I do wish the tubular bells in the middle 8 were louder. They just got lost in the rest of the orchestration there. Why do you switch from drunk to stoned halfway through? I get the desire, but (and I am not an expert here) I don’t think weed comes in a bottle?

Pig farmer jr.: I like the POV here from Santa. Your voice has a beautiful moment of unclamped vibrato on “bottle” right before the bridge. I love the vulnerability in that moment of vocal freedom. Having 2 beats on “real” of ‘real doozy’ in the chorus is a bit awkward. I would either change the lyric to something like “quite the doozy,” or change the straight quarter notes of the line to dotted quarter/eighths, so it becomes iiiits-a reeeee-al doozy. Other wise very nice!

[thirdcatmusic]

Cybronica: Weed comes in many forms these days! (even from a bottle)

Back for the first time in a long time to give votes to Portaloo Massaloo for its really nice laid back vibes and WreckdoM for its total insanity. WreckdoM is always good for bringing the insanity. I liked Paco & PigFarmer's songs too. Nice tight little Christmas EP here!

Also; I released some songs - mostly from songfight - up on the streamers, check 'em out in my signature if you'd like.

Merry New Year!

[Lunkhead]

Paco wins!

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Congratz, Paco!

[Paco Del Stinko]

Wow! Well, thanks for the votes, peoples. I didn't think it was best song of the fight, but there ya go. Peace!