The Song Fight Bulletin Board

sdfgd

....? I mean, yes, sweet. Browncoat and whatnot. Is this clever in a way that easily escapes me?

fireflies are...

blue wrote:fireflies are...

Absolutely blue...I got it and am excited for the movie too

Go Serenity!!!!!

blue wrote:fireflies are...

And I am... ridiculously stupid.

Wowzers, bunches of really nicely done songs in this fight!

Puce, Lonbobby, Jute Gyte, Max the Cat are all standouts. Rad brass in Steve Durand's entry-- I assume you got your brothers in the act?

I find fwc's entry oddly compelling too. Slap a noise gate on your vocal mic, tho, yo, it'll get rid of some of that hiss.

Nice Job y'all.

JB

Awesome fight... I agree some great finished songs...

all i can say is Lonlobby, Puce and the BeWells (beautiful voice!!!!) ... Still listening...

Steve Durand: Sweet brass opening....and great throughout. I like some of your chord progressions a lot. Really well composed. I wish voice were a little more on-tune and clear. Great ending.

Max the Cat: Your vocals are so unique and awesome, like how you overenunciate the syllables of bioluminescence. Backing vocals also great. Typical MtC sound.

Shovel: Nice jazzy vibe from the start. I like that electronic beat that comes in. Zero 7-like. Wow, I really like your voice and performance. Really great but gets repetitive.

Axo: I like your experimental song, but it sounds dissonant to me. The best part is the cheesey applause at the end.

BeWells: Awesome piano and guitar vibe that only gets better with the addition of your amazing voice. Everything sounds so authentic so the electronic drums coming in seem jarring. I get used to it really quick though. Overall, I think this is amazing and some of the best I've heard on SF.

Dr. Frown: Excellent song. Great opening and really great chorus. Verse I wish grabbed me more initially but it's still really good. Relistening this song is growing on me a lot. Really well produced and performed.

Rant: Not feeling the lo-fi. Don't really like the lyrics or vocals that much. This might be better live and with more electric guitar.

fwc: I love the cheesey opening. Ooh...it's the whole song, isn't it? Would have liked it to explode into something (like Beck's Girl from his new album Guero).

Phunt: Hey, it's Phunt doing something I don't understand! Right on!

Caravan Ray: That piano part is great and I like the harmonies a lot. Well composed and nice vibe. Kudos for the latin. Great job.

Jute Gyte: I can totally appreciate this without liking it too much. Just can't get into the screaming, but this is so well done and well produced and awesome. Just don't like it.

Puce: I think I have a crush on you. VOTE.

Evil-E: Nice guitar but a little repetitive. I like the guitar solo. Cool folk song that I'd like to hear live.

This week, I listened to songs on the car stereo, cheap in-ear headphones on a portable player, and on cheap Dell non-subwoofer computer speakers. Then just to make sure I'm not making crazy accusations I re-listened to some of them on Grado SR-80 headphones.

Despite my complaints below, let me stress that I really enjoyed the fight. I haven't listened to some of you folks at all before, and was quite excited.

Phunt Your Friends - Please explain why I liked this, because I can't. Something between the decent sample quality, the mix between them, and not having listened to much Phunt before. Not something I'd listen to in heavy doses, especially because it lacks harmonies and melody, but still enjoyable.

Steve Durand - Huh. It feels like a marching band broke into a barber shop, and the barber shop quartet just went with it. A funny image on its own, but not something I'd usually listen to. Nice chord and rhythm changes. Very skilled brass coordination.

Puce - This turned out pretty well, glad you used your signature high-pitched voice as an effect rather than a centerpiece of the verses. Risky intro, but short enough to work. Almost thought you forgot to kill the click track. Lots of cool stuff going on in the mix spatially and EQ-wise, but I EXPECT this from you. I especially like the twinkling notes in the first chorus, as well as the barely-audible low-pitched "la la la"s. Lyrically not catching me. Very exciting and unexpected sound-effect break. Probably the weakest point in the song is that the chorus goes out of synch between guitars and drums. Is this something you could have maybe fixed in Melodyne, or recorded slower and sped up later? Near-miss of Votination Airlines flight #20050706.

fwc - Weird lyrics. Weird sounds. The vocals try to sound sincere, which is in direct contradiction with the background instrument choices. I'm not feeling it; would recommend to either make the vocals more crazy (see R Mosquito's back-catalog for examples), or the instrumentation less so. Good twinkling around 3:00, reminds me of some effect of Super Mario Bros but I can't place it. A long song that never really reaches a peak or evokes emotion. Try speeding it up or cutting stuff out.

Caravan Ray - The panning is cool, but seems to go too extreme for my tastes (maybe keep it within 30 degress of center, and split up the tracks you're panning so not everything holds the same pattern). If it didn't pull the center of the mix with it as strongly, I'd be less whiny about it; even some (not all) of the backing vocals seem to follow the same hard panning paths. EQ-wise, sounds pretty good, and vocally strong. I usually associate your brand with goofy lyrics, but this is strangely serious (at least, at the surface - I have no clue), for which you get major props. Still using GarageBand? Pretty piano.

Lonbobby - Relaxing. Tasteful vocoding for this style -- the vocals are spaced out enough to make it work. I like the percussion and spatial/environmental choices in the mix (incl panning, reverb, water sounds, shouting contrast). Filtered harmonies toward the end (3:20+) are a nice touch. Kind of long for an active listen, but I don't think the song was meant for that anyway. Great chill-out track.

The BeWells - Woah, color me "blown away" (I'm sure you'll find it in a Crayola 300-pack). Where to start? Very clear, strong-as-hell vocals, the timbre and harmonies reminding me strongly of "The Pierces" (a good thing). Guitar on the right has a great distorted tone to it -- how did you record/filter that? Seriously, it's great, fits perfectly with the bass/percussion. Percussion has a lot of neat stuff going on, especially with your panning the cymbals forward and backward in the mix (major bonus points). Everything feels smooth and ethereally effortless, in a very powerful way. The biggest detractor is that it feels you actually panned the bass to the right, which is probably not noticeable on anything with a subwoofer, but I felt it on several headphones. This could just be my perception, but if it's a hallucination, at least it's a consistent one; it might have to do with the kick on the right too. If that felt more balanced, I'd say it was an absolutely perfect chill-out song on all accounts. But I can still say it gave me the chills (this is coming from someone who typically listens to faster-bpm tunes); great emotional work. Major Votination.

Evil-E - It's a pretty song, but the mix hurts. Guitars sound very bassy/reverby (from what I can tell); try playing with the EQ and reverb if you can help it. Anything to get rid of that strange bassy reverb. Nice Mexican (?) approach. What's with the lack of a fade-out or muting at the end? The "pbbbbttt" at the end really killed my mood . Remember not everyone's music player fades the song at the end.

Shovel Sitting Down - Cool groove but minimal instrumentation. I would have enjoyed hearing more harmonies thrown in, or even instrumental nuances that don't last the whole song. Spice it up for me. Drums sound a bit too loud compared to the rest of the mix, and feel a bit abrasive compared to the rest of your instrumentation. Silky vocals -- I like your voice, especially in this style but would kill to hear them recorded with a better mic. The vocal filters get annoying after a while; cool at first but get annoying by the end of the song. Let's hear your voice on a condenser mic.

Axolotl - I don't understand the words, so I can only really judge the music, which doesn't feel too cohesive. Would be neat to hear real seashore sounds instead of the samples. Points for language change.

Max the Cat - Similar wishes as Shovel's; you have such a sincere, happy, expressive voice I would love to hear it on a more expressive microphone. Unlike Shovel's, you've got a bit more variation and harmonies. Plus funky piano. I like this. Any chance you can vary the percussion even more (e.g. a multi-layer sample, varying velocities, etc) where the same sample is played in close succession, or use real instruments where it can be done cheaply (e.g. shakers)?

Doctor Frown - A friend inspired me to try writing a song with serious-y lyrics (versus your standard Cow Exchange fare), this is my attempt. Also my first with studio drums, that arrived out of the Blue; now that I've had a taste of the acoustic kit, I may never go back (when given the option). I even got to use a cheapo Casio PT-10 on the right channel ("flute"). Amped piano. Amped vocals. A real bass instead of standard MIDI fare. I love the chorus' melody/harmonies, and general "raw" feel of the track. Biggest regrets are that I didn't have more time (or less earache) to play with the EQ, make the intro hookier, and fix some minor timing issues. But hey, that's what remixes are for, right? Maybe?

The Rant - The intro was sonically painful, but the lo-fi approach sounds great for the rest of the song. Sounds like Green River but more listenable. Great voice for it, everything "fits". I wish the solo had more expression to it, more bends or something -- it feels half-assed compared to the extreme feeling in the song. At first I didn't like the "night night night" self-echo, but it grew on me. Would have liked to hear that doubled by your backing vox. Fun lyrics, quote-worthy.

Jute Gyte - I really want to appreciate it, but I can't this week, sorry. I think it's something between the realism of very angsty vocals, and the not-so-real drums and what sound like virtual-amped guitars. The best way I can explain it is like, if you watch (on TV) someone who's falling down a 20-story building, except you can still see the cords holding them up, or the green screen behind them. Even the best actor/actress won't evoke as much emotion from it as they could with the special effects in alignment. That said, the song itself feels like it has potential, and I always like how you stray from the mainstream. A very welcome break around 1:42, and neat how it evolves back into something more intense; that extra guitar line added a lot.

oops

Phunt Your Friends – I liked this a lot! So you aren’t just an annoying little noise maker after all! You not the new Wreckdom yet – but this is a step in the right direction

Steve Durand – This should work – but it doesn’t quite. A lot of good things there – but they don’t quite work together. Like when a $1000 hooker comes to your house and you eat vindaloo and talk about footy – individually the things are good – but together they seem a bit weird.

Puce – This is too good. We are not worthy. Wonderful chorus – “..there’s no subtlety with bioluminescence…” – that’s a beauty! All lyrics are beautifully written

fwc – No – I’ve had just about a gutfull of Casio sounds

Lonbobby – I like this a lot. Not real sure about that voice thing – but I can overlook it – this is really nice. I like the lyrics too – even if I don’t understand them

The BeWells – Wonderful vocals – you sound a lot like the girl who sang in the Headless Chickens from NZ. The beautiful voice though isn’t really enough to make up for a fairly generic sounding song – in fact, it actually sounds like a Headless Chickens song – and since I can probably assume you have no idea who the Headless Chickens are – then that shows what I mean by generic sounding – I think – I don’t think that made any sense…

Evil-E – Great little melody. Very cool song – I like the bass. Wow – this is one that really grows on me the more I hear it. Well done

Shovel Sitting Down – Very smooth – and once again, wonderful lyrics. I’m not really a lounge bar sort of guy (I usually get thrown out for vomiting in the pot plants) – but this is another one that grows with further listening.

Axolotl – I’m guessing that that isn’t English? Japanese? Hard to tell – vocals too soft. Good to have another cunning linguist on board – but while this could have been a pretty good song – it’s let down by very bad mixing

Max the Cat – Mr Cat has a polarising effect on me – I either love him, or I don’t love him. Unfortunately this is in the later category

Doctor Frown – This is great, and it gets better every time I hear it – it’s going on my car CD. Great vox and just a general very cool groove – even the Casio thing works.

The Rant – I love your style – though this song not completely winning me over. Not sure how anyone could confuse a jellyfish with a dinoflagellate.

Jute Gyte – Awesome! You’re vocals are great – that’s a hell of a scream you’ve got there. And your lyrics!! – Dude – that’s just plain disturbing – I assume you do your recordings from a mental institution, strapped to a trolley wearing a muzzle.

…and

Caravan Ray – This is just a list of some bioluminescent sea-creatures (3 fish, 2 cephalapods and a jellyfish). That panning thing from side to side wasn’t intentional – but I didn’t bother trying to fix it – I was hoping somebody would mistake it for being ‘artistic’


This was a great fight – I very surprised to see so many entries for ‘Bioluminescence”.

On first listen – Puce was a standout favourite – but on further visits, Lonbobby, Dr Frown, Evil-E and SSD also shone out to be voteworthy. Even the Phunt Friends are contenders.

I’ll have to think about this one – but for the moment I’m tossing up between Puce and Dr Frown.

Caravan Ray wrote:Phunt Your Friends – I liked this a lot! So you aren’t just an annoying little noise maker after all! You not the new Wreckdom yet – but this is a step in the right direction

Glad you like it! With all due respect, we don't want to be the new WreckdoM. WreckdoM is awesome, but there can be only one. They're definitely one of our many influences, though.

Plat wrote:Shovel Sitting Down - ... minimal instrumentation... more harmonies ... better mic ... condenser mic.

Thanks for the kind words, but get your shit straight. This is a rode NT1, but the modulation does mask that a bit. I was thwarted from revisiting this track and working on two other collaborations this week, so I sent in what we had. I agree on everything exept the mic isn't the problem, it's the effects.

quite a few good tracks. some comments:

Lonbobby: so good. one of my all-time fav songs i've heard on songfight, i've had this one on repeat. robot songs are always fine by me, but also the mood here is amazing, lyrics are great (great rhyme scheme and i love "my steel will turn to flesh/put your ear to my chest"), love the vocal effects, and the production is first rate. i love the layered vocals on the "i'll shine" part of the chorus. also, the piano sounds fully integrated, which can be hard. great job.

Caravan Ray: another one w/ a great mood. on the surface it sounds like it might be a bit cheesy, but it's actually pretty compelling. nicely assembled. the monk-ish-ness of the music is enhanced by the latin lyrics, which is very cool.

Doctor Frown: a solid track. nice use of electronics. i like the barely-present backing vocals on the verse.

The Rant: pretty straightforward, but i enjoyed this one. the last line was esp. great, although i have no idea what a "dinoflagellate" is.

Axolotl: i liked the quirkiness of the vocals and the east asian-sounding strings.

BeWells: i def. enjoyed this, but a little more variation in the melody line, better lyrics, and a better chorus would've improved it a lot i think.

<b>Axolotl</b>
Your foreign language vocals are appreciated, but I wish they were crisper. I don't think this is too synthy. The seashore sound is cheesy, but not because it's artificial. It's just sort of a cheesy way to end a song. But this, as a whole, doesn't strike me as cliche. I think this is a good starting point and you might want to spend more than a week working with it.

<b>Caravan Ray</b>
I saw you were doing Latin and I'm impressed. The end seems more abrupt than the Romans would've wanted it. But this has a nice feel to it. You usually manage to tap into something interesting with your structure. Consider rerecording with a bunch of choir kids.

<b>Doctor Frown</b>
This sounds familiar. But it's fun. It's very fun. I don't know what to add. Umm, Rockin'? I might think of something interesting to say and edit this by Wednesday.

<b>Evil-E</b>
It sounds like there are some drums or something that are super buried in this. And they're switching ears a lot. I'll check since it might just be my headphones. It might also just be you shuffling your feet or something like at the end of the file. Hmm. It's pretty organized. Now it's spooking me out. Interesting. I think these sounds should be a little higher if they're intentional. I also feel like the strings that start at :33 don't fit the tone of the song as well. It's all sort of mellow but they sound very tense/plucky. Interesting vibe though. Those drum sound things are really creeping me out at times.

<b>fwc</b>
This is well-labeled. I hear you picking up the mic. And then I hear you with bad recording quality. Now, who am I to point fingers on this one... but I think if you managed to get a better mix, mostly your vocals, I'd be really into this. Also, besides mixing, I think your voice falls short sometimes. But voice is a tough cookie to master or eat or something! So good for you. "Swimming under water" hits me in a bad way. But ya, I like this NES silliness. Maybe you could even cut lyrics entirely. It's like the midi, choppy version of what I called trance earlier in my reviews, which is a funny concept... Additionally, it should be noted that you made the visualizer on my mp3 player go totally crazy. It's set on a pretty boring one that always does the samish thing...until this song. At least Windows Media Player will be joining you at the bottom of the ocean, which might be a good thing.

<b>Jute Gyte</b>
ROOCCCCKKKKKK! I think the percussion is just fine. I also think this is awesome. The heavy pan to the right toward the beginning is something I don't understand. The slowdown is cool, although abrupt, and I especially like its return into the song. Is there talking in this one underneath those raw screams? Your lyrics don't mention that voice.. Hmm.. maybe I'm just hearing things.

<b>Lonbobby</b>
Colorblind? There's a Lonbobby and The Counting Crows concert at the beach? No, no, it's got its own thing going on now. I like the concept here a lot. I think it's a good outlet for your vocal effects. This is just grand. I wish it didn't share that bit with the super popular Counting Crows song and that probably means that it's just a realy popular progression/rhythm or something but that's what I'm hearing and it takes me a while to get into the song. But now, here I am and wanting this robot to keep on wailing. I also like those samples going on, they really help the music without disturbing the gentleness of this song. This also avoids being too slick. I don't think it's as over the top as some of your work. I like this one a lot.

<b>Max the Cat</b>
You are doing some funky shit every week and I'm enjoying it. Your vocals are so sweet that they can carry this backing stuff that doesn't keep my interest that long. This happened on some of your other recent entries. But... ya, maybe spice that backing up and you have more of a winner. Oh, and I don't like the fade out. It sounds like a fade out. If you really want the song to end this way, I suggest just to keep on singing while you march out of the room clapping your hands and whatnot and keep on walking til' your mic can't hear you anymore. More natural. More character.

<b>Phunt Your Friends</b>
Sideeffects may include nausea, tears, irritability, drowsiness, the clap, explosive diarrhea, acetomenaphin and an uncontrollable light emerging from the center of your life force.

<b>Puce</b>
You are bioluminescent. Ya, this is awesome. If I come up with something, I might edit this by Wednesday to add something with warrants.

<b>Shovel Sitting Down</b>
You too are one producer of funk. This feels like a remix of a song that I've never heard. That's a very high hat or whatever those are called. You know what I mean, that thing that sounds like tin on the inside of my left ear. But it all enforces that groove you have laid me to rest in. I like the way the keyboard goes crazy on the "I'm so in love with you" beat...but I'm not in love with the way that lyric is delivered. I wish your songs changed me! That was a garden path sentence with poetically ambiguous dual meaning!

<b>Steve Durand</b>
Your vocals strike me as a little fuzzy. Not in the way that people usually mean when they say audio is fuzzy. I mean the voices sound a bit fuzzy. . .like a puppet on Sesame Street is singing them. Which works sometimes. But those horns are just so crisp and well-enunciated that it's easy to get mad at the vocals for not carrying the same clarity of meaning. But ya, I love the brass .. a lot. I mean, I might listen to this sort of frequently and I almost definitely would if it was an instrumental.

<b>The BeWells</b>
Whoa, this lazy reviewer thing dre made noticed your definite article. Okay, The BeWells sound so good. You're so soft and easy to listen to. This is a cool trancey thing. I'm in Europe, so I'll pretend I'm into that. I think the way to make this kind of song take the leap from cool to super amazing is by layering even more and layering some things that only appear once. And maybe those one time occurences fit a mold which is then used to sculpt other one time sounds. Good job though. But, honestly, this genre is limited. You don't get to show off as much as normal. I keep refering to it as if it's a specific type of music, like trance, but I might be wrong. Either way, there are a lot of vocals for that kind of genre, and that's impressive.

<b>The Rant</b>
Puce was a hard act to follow. This is less energetic. Maybe if the vocals were higher. Ya, the vocal mix at 1:45 and on is much more to my liking. And then when they're together, that's cool too. But the early vocal mix puts me off a bit and makes me think the song could use some spunk or some rage.

=====

I'm a big fan of wasting a vote just to see a number greater than 2 in front of Phunt every now and then. But there are some real winners this week.

While still trying to give all the songs a closer listen, I have particularly been enjoying Puce and Lonbobby. There are many good things going on in this fight. I'll post some review comments later this weekend.

For The BeWells entry this week, I was finally able to record with my sister again (always a pleasure and much too long between songs). With the holiday travels and change in vocals, I ran out of time to fully develop the music but did have enough early takes to put something together by the deadline. By the way, I have a practice take with me trying out some vocal ideas as an example of where this was heading before going with the female vocals... http://www.thebewells.com/songs/bewells_bio_preview.mp3

Oh, the idea behind the song is that of Elliott's farewell to E.T. I think I ended up keeping the lyrics a bit too generic to tip off the source of the bioluminescence connection.

bwell wrote:I have a practice take with me trying out some vocal ideas as an example of where this was heading before going with the female vocals... http://www.thebewells.com/songs/bewells_bio_preview.mp3

I really like the guitar laying on top of that track. Cool stuff both ways.

Mogosagatai wrote:

Caravan Ray wrote:Phunt Your Friends – I liked this a lot! So you aren’t just an annoying little noise maker after all! You not the new Wreckdom yet – but this is a step in the right direction

Glad you like it! With all due respect, we don't want to be the new WreckdoM. WreckdoM is awesome, but there can be only one. They're definitely one of our many influences, though.

As a side note, I really liked some of your first entries. A&A and Pasty White Man are both in my permanent mp3 collection.

<b>Doctor Frown</b>

Are you The Cow Exchange? If so, stop screwing with my head! Cows can't frown!

*collapses*

My song is late because I am lethargic.

http://www.pedestrianisaprettygoodband. ... es_bio.mp3

Feel free to poke fun anyway.

DELETED

Gemini6Ice wrote:<b>Doctor Frown</b>
Are you The Cow Exchange? If so, stop screwing with my head! Cows can't frown!

Yep, Cow Exchange + Blue (drums). How now, frown cow? I'm not sure, but I see some mad cows waiting to be unchained.