The Song Fight Bulletin Board

At my new job, I've had a number of varied tasks, but the one I've been given for the next two weeks is something else. I have until the end of the month to produce what is essentially a karioke album consisting of the following songs:

Faith Hill - Breathe
Bruce Hornsby - Mandolin Rain
Doobie Bros - Long Train Running
Jewel - Hands
Shania Twain - You're Still The One
Avril Lavigne - Complicated
Blackbird
John Mayer - Your Body Is A Wonderland

Yikes. I basically have to do one of these per day to be done on time. I don't really have a lot of creative license obviously, but there are things here that just can't be done by me. The female backing vocals, the pedal steel, the percussion, and the drums are all things I'll be stretched on with such short notice.

My biggest gasp was Blackbird, but I've secured a guy who can actually play it right, so that one's in the bag. Mayer shouldn't be a problem, and neither should Avril or Hornsby. Jewel, Shania, Doobie Bros, and Faith will give me the most trouble I believe, based on arrangement.

I also had two other tracks to do. I had to take songs written by my employer's kids and produce them into real songs. I've got one of those done and another nearly done, and I had a lot of license with them.

So, for the things that I just can't do, what should I do? Should I replace them with different instrumentation? Leave them out entirely?

Or, should I kill myself?

Sorry this post isn't to help...just curious... what do you do for work?

Can you say CoverFight?

at least in this case, MIDI is your friend.

You could find someone else's karaoke version of the songs, and see how they approached it (or, depending on the nature of your project, use the other version in its entirity.)

There are countless karaoke compilations available via bittorrent. Go to http://www.isohunt.com and search for "shania karaoke" for example.

What about all that reverse polarity stuff to cancel out the center signals (where the vocals reside)?

No, really, aren't there signal processing techniques to achieve a near-karaoke effect. Oh, here

I'd like to start using MIDI, but my experience with it is very limited, and I don't know that I want to spend any time trying to work that out for this project.

And I'm not asking for Songfighters to put forth actual contributions, mainly because I'm getting paid for this project. And... I don't want to pay you

And as to what this project is really for, it's really more of a test of ability than anything. This company does a lot of that. They had a contract with Samsung, and usually what would happen is Samsung would come to them and say 'hey, we've got this new cellphone technology. We need you to make a game or something that will test this technology, to prove that it works.' The games or programs that were made would never see consumers, but instead investors, trade reps, etc. That's kind of what I'm doing... I guess.

http://www.ko3d.com

So I assume you'd also want to recreate the songs - sans vocals - rather than filter the vocals out, since you'd only need to pay mechanical royalties and not performance royalties. But you should secure performance royalties for yourself in your contract, if possible!

karaoke

http://www.findmidis.com/download.go/15 ... Faith_Hill
http://209.197.89.57/19580222/pop/bruce ... n_Wind.mid
http://209.68.63.220/19580222/rock/doob ... Runnin.mid
http://www.miditext.ru/midi/16032003/jewel_hands.zip
http://www.findmidis.com/index.go/S/Shania_Twain
http://www.gothangel.org/midi/complicated.mid
http://marge.uvm.edu/sdempse/Midi/John_ ... erland.mid
http://www.beatles.ws/midis/blackbrd.mid

I vote for 'kill yourself'












(I'm KIDDING. Jebus.)

I agree with JB, start with a free midi arrangement as the basis/click track and overdub as needed.

Ken