The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Tell us what you liked about this competition!

The rigid schedule was actually nice. Even without the Oblique Strategies challenges, I feel like I would have varied things up a fair amount to avoid boring myself and the judges. Getting feedback on songwriting and such was great, too - though it would be great to see individual scores or at least averages in each category. For the most part this felt much like the Song Fight of 2003-2005 when I was first active - people disagreed and voiced opinions, but it was (almost) always constructive. More feedback was provided for this than several fights in the last year and there was a general sense of camaraderie.

6 songs was a good number. The judges were on the ball reviewing. I enjoyed no eliminations. The timeline felt right. The scoring seemed fine. Hard to tell, but definitely better than Nur Ein style ranking.

It could use a little tweaking going forward, but overall I felt like the competition was a success and produced GENERALLY very high-quality output across the board from all the competitors. I have really enjoyed it and I hope the rest of the participants have, as well.

I liked a lot of things about the competition structure. A bunch of things I liked in particular were the lessened pressure with no eliminations, although (I guess I should've written this in the other thread) I also felt like perhaps people should get the opportunity to drop their lowest score or some mechanism that would encourage people who had to miss a week to keep participating. It definitely felt to me like the non eliminations didn't help keep people who missed a round for whatever reason from then saying, "well I'm out so why bother."

I liked most of the oblique strategies as creative prompts.

6 songs was ok, I would've been fine with 5 songs too, just on the level of when I started feeling like I was starting to lose interest because I kind of hit a formula for what we were doing and that's more or less when I felt like I didn't want to really change up the formula that was working too much because I was in a competition doing it as opposed to just breaking everything down like I would in my own raw creative process, if that makes any sense. Like, I feel like we were still doing ok at keeping it fresh-ish but it was more mental work at that point.

I also very much appreciated that we got judge reviews pretty much every round, which really helps us all understand our own work better and improve, regardless of how much one may or may not agree with any individual judges' opinions. In our case, early on it helped us recognize that we needed to work a little more on vocal melodies and lyrics, and I think if you look at Tomorrow songs, Evermind really shone as the competition got deeper, with that feedback and more reps. So all that work was really appreciated!

Jefff wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 23, 2024 11:25 pm

6 songs was a good number.

Yes. My first 2 songs were done while I was at a beach house at Yamba. So they were a bit crap. But the last one came before I fly to Prague next week. So that was good.

Actually that wasn’t feedback. I just wanted to brag about spending a week at the beach at Yamba then going to Prague 4 weeks later.

Six is a good number of rounds, Spin Tunes at 4 is too few, and Nur Ein at 8 is too many. Some Songs 6 is just right for Goldie Locks.

glennny wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 25, 2024 5:09 pm

Six is a good number of rounds, Spin Tunes at 4 is too few, and Nur Ein at 8 is too many. Some Songs 6 is just right for Goldie Locks.

I’m glad that felt perfect for you…as someone who didn’t participate.

I listened to the songs.
I am the audience.
I watched the competition.
I am the audience.
I participated as part of the audience.
I would have submitted songs if it weren't at the same time as Spin Tunes.

I bet you would have had 10 more submitters were it not at the same time as Spin Tunes.

glennny wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 26, 2024 1:37 pm

I listened to the songs.
I am the audience.
I watched the competition.
I am the audience.
I participated as part of the audience.
I would have submitted songs if it weren't at the same time as Spin Tunes.

I bet you would have had 10 more submitters were it not at the same time as Spin Tunes.

Great! You should have written some reviews or made even a single comment, audience.

I’m glad we didn’t have 10 more submitters. This was manageable and that would probably have been too much. Maybe we’ll have more next time. That’s not a concern of mine. I liked who we had. It was fun.

You did have excellent contenders!
If you want that turn out, you should always do it during Spin Tunes or Nur Ein, otherwise myself and 9 more acts are likely to participate.

If you don't like music, make your own.
If you don't like a contest, make your own.

I admire you guys made your own contest, I was just giving feedback.

Okay, thanks for the feedback.

I kinda liked it was in the shadow of another contest - those that were out in ST Round 3 (which was 2/3 of the artists) had the time to participate, and it seemed like a low-pressure way to get some good music ideas while still having a deadline to get some tunes in the can.

It didn't time out for us to participate this time, but I enjoyed the songs that came out and the listening parties.

Thanks for putting this together - it was fun to listen to and host the LPs!

BoffoYux wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 27, 2024 11:42 am

it seemed like a low-pressure way to get some good music ideas while still having a deadline to get some tunes in the can.

Yes. That’s it.