The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hello all, I'm not a fighter but may be if I ever get my hands on some newfangled technological doodads. My purpose here is one of information and word-spreading.

You see, I am a student at Louisiana State University studying journalism. The end-of-semester assignment is a feature story on a topic of my choosing. The story I hope to write will be about the decline of the garage band and the rise in the use of the internet to share music.

I already have a confirmed correspondence with sporadic fighter MC Frontalot, but would love to hear from others.

If you would like to comment on the advantages/disadvantages, unique experiences and/or personal philosophies regarding music and the internet please post below, shoot me a PM or email JBanks8@lsu.edu.

EDIT: you can also catch me on AIM at "JudgeofMaat"

Any comments are greatly appreciated, I thank you all.

Just my thinking, but are those TWO SEPARATE TOPICS?
the decline of the garage band
the rise in the use of the internet to share music.

My thoughts are that more garage bands are emerging because they know they can still distribute without having to be signed.

I'll probably think about this some more.... but those are my initial thoughts.

It's more of a conjoined uber-topic. I guess an alternate wording for clarity/simplicity would be "Why make music on the internet instead of jamming in the garage?"

Innsmouth Look wrote:"Why make music on the internet instead of jamming in the garage?"

I don't see them as mutually exclusive. God I'd love to have a garage. But I don't. meanwhile I'm jamming online, and sure if I had a garage I'd simply use it to record more in...to put online.

roymond wrote:I don't see them as mutually exclusive. God I'd love to have a garage. But I don't. meanwhile I'm jamming online, and sure if I had a garage I'd simply use it to record more in...to put online.

Right on. I know that one can surely do both, I'm just focusing on the appeal of internet distribution.

Innsmouth Look wrote:I'm not a fighter

Gert is a lover, not a fighter

I think..well...IF there IS a decline in garage bands it might be because of the internet sharing and what not.

Technology has made it so that I don't have to 'deal' with getting a band together to practice every week...I don't have to keep my lead singer from drinking too much (well, I do actually) or dealing with the bass player trying to EF my girlfriend or cars breaking down on the way to wherever. I'm my own band. The software has cut out the middle men. I have complete artist's control over my music. No butting heads with an arrogant lead singer who has to 'have it his way'. My music doesn't get warped by other people's insistance on playing it wrong. (Just my own)

Long story short... I don't look too hard to find a band to be in ...because I don't really feel I need to.

Now, nothing replaces a real band playing a real live show. Nothing like it. I have recently started jamming with a guitar player/singer guy and a drummer. (I'm playing bass) I'm having fun, trying NOT TO GET TOO excited about it...because I've done this a million times already. I know a million ways it could end. No matter what happens with it though, I have MY OWN band inside of ME to fall back on. And I AM WAY MORE efficient.

Sorry about the book I just wrote...but I thought I'd get two cents in. You want more Hoblit? hoblitygoodness at Yahoo.

Awesome topic by the way.

I've got to agree with everything that Hoblit says.

The internet is just an additional tool in the ever expanding, and ever cheaper arsenal of the musician. In days gone by you would pay a HUGE amount of money to put a studio together, or record an album. Now it's cheap and you get the added bonus of instant distribution.

You still ultimately need a fan base, but your computer is your office, and there are a lot of reputable on-line sources for pluggers, publishing, record companies if you don't want to do it yourself.

Like Hoblit I have a band in the real world too, and there really is nothing like playing live... Except watching rising stats, and reading relatively unbiased comment... On occasion that comes near.

Song Fight rocks; but so does http://www.tapegerm.com, which is a loop mixing collective. I would never in my wildest dreams have thought of loop mixing before I read a thread on the subject. Now I love it.

Garage bands will never die (they are the driving force for the dream) until we have a totally real VR, which might be closer than we think.

A most excellent topic.

FYI: My story: I made music on the internet so I COULD form a garage band. I had to put a product together FIRST to attract musicians. Through the course of a year or writing, then recording on my eMac and a handful of submission to SF, I managed to do that.

I'm sure there is a niche of computer techie musician shut-ins who like to create music and NOT perform them LIVE. Perhaps that will be your audience for your article.

Which came first? The internet music or the garage band?
Feel free to plug Moxie Prophets as a counterpoint to your article.

It is the same with Octothorpe. Well, not quite the same, but you know - the internet actually created a garage band, rather than the other way around. We started on the internet with one lyricist, one vocalist, and one musician, specifically for the purpose of submitting to SongFight!. I played all the music on the early stuff, and we recorded in an office, not in a garage. Eventually, the opportunity to play live came along. We had to change things up a bit, because while I can play everything if we're recording, I can't do it live. Crash (the artist formerly known as Bud) was enlisted, and we each played two keyboards on stage. At our first gig (SongFight! Plain and Tall), we enlisted a bass player, a guitar player, and a drummer from the Song Fight community to play with us. No garage yet, but a band. To make performing more realistic, I took up the bass, and we got a big garage so we could practice. About two years were spent there, being an actual garage band, before everything was stolen and we had to retool. Eventully, fluffy dropped out of the sky to play guitar for us. Now we have a four-man front line, and are looking for a drummer. Oh, and about that garage. I'm building a house so that we can have one again.

SPUD

Wow, you guys are awesome. This is some really great and interesting stuff. I'll be sure to post the finished product up here in a month or so.

I guess I can throw in some personal experience here to be fair.

First off, I was never a garage band member, we were basement rockers. Housing on base made sure that only officers got nifty garages, and I was the only officer's child. My garage was filled with cars, so we rocked out in one of the enlisted basements (often getting in some trouble for causing a ruckus). We only made a couple songs, performed one show, then disbanded due to creative differences. It served to release some creative frustration, and I was good for a while. This situation repeated a couple times.

I moved here to Baton Rouge and decided that college was a fine place to start a band in earnest. Unfortunately I've never been a fan of "flyer bands," always opting to rock with friends. My friends here have zero musical talent. That's when I remembered Songfight! and other online musicians' havens. I'm fairly certain that as soon as I can get some recording equipment I'll be able to use the internet as a suitable creative outlet. So my interest in this subject actually stems from my own musical frustration.

At least they didn't steal the garage too.

I was in a garage band first, but like most people it seems, minus the actual garage. It was a couple of friends and myself, getting together every couple of weeks and just recording songs. Some peeps may remember with loathing Jonny Juice and the Good Time Boys. Thats how it all started.

We worked on a bunch of songs, made a CD, and then worked on some more songs. In an attempt to push the group a little, I started pushing for the band to work on SongFight titles. SongFight a site I just came across, probably in some teenage wanderlust for free pornography.

So we were a garage band who turned internet band. JJ&tGTB fell through in the end, but I had enjoyed the community of internet musicians, and struck out on my own as a fully fledged internet muso.

In many respects I enjoy the internet music scene more than the garage band scene. Because of the anonymity of the medium, I could get quite a few honest and constructive responses. And not just from my friends or guys drunk at the bar, but from gay guys from the UK, creaters of genres and Spud.

But I have found for the cycle to endlessly... cycle. I was in a garage band, which led to me becoming an internet musician. And now that I have spent the last 3-4 years of my life recording as an internet musician, I want to take those songs and introduce them to a garage band environment.

I posted this on my blog a while back (October 02, 2005), and parts of it apply to this thread, so here we go.

---------------
Why I do this music thing:

I have written similar stream of consciousness entries such as this in recent history. Stop me if you've heard this one before...

So I got to thinking about why I have these Myspace/Multiply profiles, and websites with music. I am 31 as I type this out. I no longer have the delusions of grandeur that I had at a younger age. I honestly don't believe that I will be signed to any record label in this lifetime. I don't know if I would WANT to be on any major label, with the state of the music industry as it sits.

You used to have to be on a label if you wanted your music to reach ANY audience. This is no longer the case. I may not have a gigantic fanbase, and I probably never will. If this stuff even reaches a handful of people, and as long as someone other than myself is enjoying what I make? I will continue to make music. Honestly... even if I WAS the only one who enjoys it, I probably still would. I like making songs too much.

If you are reading this, it is because you probably clicked the link to this from my music website. Thank you. Some of you don't even know me, others are good friends in what we call "real life." Truth is, the songhole website is the absolute hub to a BUNCH of side projects that I do. If you do your research, you will easily find WELL over 100 free songs that I have online, (and growing). You might even like some of them.

I will post this exact same statement in my livejournal, and in other outlets available to me... because that is what I do. I make songs, I promote them online, and I think it's cool that other people can hear them, if they want to.

Thank you for reading these words.

ROCK!

Glenn (DR FUNK)
http://glenncase.songhole.org

Innsmouth Look wrote:the decline of the garage band and the rise in the use of the internet to share music.

How do you define "garage band", and why do you think they are on the decline?

Yeah I agree with erik and others that the motivation behind 'the garage band' ideal is still alive and is actually fed by new possibilities.

As a side note I know you're not a practicing journalist yet but I'm sufficiently ticked at my available news sources enough to take it out on you: Shouldn't the goal of journalism be to let the truth take you where it will without preconception, and to follow that truth doggedly and with a perceptive eye? I think if you approach this in that way you'll find many more interconnections and you may get a better sense of why making music is and has been so widely popular and how technology mediates and modulates these tendencies.

abecedarian wrote:Yeah I agree with erik and others that the motivation behind 'the garage band' ideal is still alive and is actually fed by new possibilities.

As a side note I know you're not a practicing journalist yet but I'm sufficiently ticked at my available news sources enough to take it out on you: Shouldn't the goal of journalism be to let the truth take you where it will without preconception, and to follow that truth doggedly and with a perceptive eye? I think if you approach this in that way you'll find many more interconnections and you may get a better sense of why making music is and has been so widely popular and how technology mediates and modulates these tendencies.

Aren't we the little idealist.

In all seriousness, yes news stories should be a steadfast pursuit of the truth. This, however is a feature story/opinion piece. If I wanted to write that the internet is evil and all of you write music for Satan I could, and I'd probably get praised for it if I wrote it well.

Well, there is a difference between "The internet is evil" and "Garage bands are on the decline". The first is an unprovable opinion, and the second is a provable statement (which may be proven true or false).

Innsmouth Look wrote:stuff

Yup erik,

My critique is precisely against the journalistic laziness behind the idea that if you say something in a clever enough way that it's worthwhile regardless of the factual merits.

Read Borges short story 'Library of Babel' and maybe you'll see why I believe that the unanalytical multiplicity behind this type of journalism renders it utterly useless regardless of how well written it may be. http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia ... babel.html

So that's all negative criticism about your field. Let me offer you something constructive that might tell you how to reach a reader like me. My favorite opinion pieces point me to new information that I wouldn't have been aware of otherwise - their opinion is valuable only in proportion to their judgment of what is useful information to present and how they make that information as accessible as possible - not their analysis of the information (which I like to do for myself thank you very much).

Innsmouth Look wrote:all of you write music for Satan

Bwahaha!.. Never quote out of context!

ps I've always wanted to use this emoticon...

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets is a good band.

are they a garage band? Also, I suppose my band is a "Garage Band" band... the first version.

Satan's Garage: a cool songfight title.

Hey, ya'll

The 'journalist' has made a valid statement of a possible opinion. No need to skew that. IF he is wrong, then prove it. It's a question in the form of a statement.

I mean, attack the 'on your side' people for painting 'myspace' as an evil portal for teens portraying themselves as sexual beings and that it has no purpose for anything else. (An actual expose' here in Tampa recently)

He has brought up a valid point. He (assuing he is a HE) has an underlying question that he has made in the form of an opinion stated as a possible fact. I know exactly what he is saying/asking. I've NOTICED some of what he is saying as truth within my own experience. I answered with a CAPITAL IF.

Don't question his way of questioning...or digging if you will. It works. Thats what they are taught to do. Now, if this offends you, move to Minnesota and hide on some ranch somewhere. Otherwise, tell him WHY you feel he is wrong. It seems just as invalid to state that his reasoning in the way he has asked his question was invalid, than to just accept it that way. As to say... do0d(s)..you missed the point entirely.