The Song Fight Bulletin Board

DRC: This day has been awfully long. But getting to install my new hard drive today will bring back up my spirits.

QotD: What has your "Year in Music" been like?

This has been a pretty good year for me musically.
- I covered Gary Numan for the GOM and it's one of my favorite covers.
- I hosted a 2 night long "Songfight Presents" show in Brooklyn. Got to play alongside Heuristics Inc., Roymond and Glennny. And my "Cute Boots" song from that show was very well-received.
- I wrote a lot of the songs on Zinkline's "Grace of a Car Crash". I also got to write a song for LOIANO (aka Dre), Merisan and a few songs for Billy's Little Trip.
- I wrote a concept album.
- Glenn Case & I waged a crazy war against Prince, only to get k.o.'d by our own busy lives.
- Reunited the Transatlantic Fight Club.
- Took part in the Judgeblood collaboration.

Not a bad year at all. There were a couple of failed collaborations. The "Crime of the Scene" album never came out and I never did figure out my drum machine. But all things considered, this wasn't a bad year. A lot of good music and I stayed involved throughout the year. Good stuff.

How was your year?

QotD: Let's see.

- One (first, even) Album-A-Day, containing 9 songs (seven actual songs and two fillers).
- 9 songs for SongFight! (which I joined this year, incidentally), 6 of which got finished, 5 of which I submitted.
- 3 unrelated new songs, 2 of which pretty much finished, 1 of which won't ever be released.
- New acquisitions: steel string acoustic guitar, electric guitar, REAPER
- Gradual improvements, overall

A good start, I guess. More music than I've ever made before (excluding the purely electronic stuff of The Olde Days).

-Had a couple of highly ranked entries in the aforementioned war on Herr Purple.
-4 nights on the SF tour, as a Primitive Screwhead and occasional Octothorpian.
-2 or 3 entries here as myself or as a Primitive Screwhead... I think.
-Some Whoregasm fun, though no shows.
-Brief stint in an acid rock/prog group on the theremin, before genre bias got the better of me.
-Bought a 12th-hand PA, and finished getting all the electronic drum gear out of my frankenkit.

Guess I've done a bunch, but it really doesn't feel like all that much.

Having been burrowed underground for nearly the last 17 years in marriage, my musical rumblings have re-emerged this year like a swarm of locusts. I bought a lot of gear, most recently the Rickenbacker 360 and Laney L5T that make their way into most of my recordings. I joined a mediocre cover band last year that I was happy to leave in early 2008. Hooked up this chick who's all into this recording and posting stuff on the internet nonsense, and got me involved. So I picked up a decent interface and let my son teach me how to operate GarageBand. Which all led directly to here.

Feels like 2008 has been a year of brushing the dust off, only to expose the layer of rust underneath. But I'll take it.

QotD:
*9 songs for SongFight
*Put out my 2nd soundclick CD "Love, Hate, and Everything Between" comprising some SF an some non-SF songs.
*Just recently ordered 10 copies of my 1st physical CD entitled "Fluffy Lives" to spread around my local town and get my name out there. It's a mix of songs from my 2 soundclick albums with 1 song that will be on my 3rd in early '09.
*The movie "Shred" was released 3 weeks ago on DVD, of course #1 SF'er Melvin has some songs in there but most importantly his cover of my "I Like to Pretend" is on there. (funny, I've had the DVD for a week and still haven't opened it!)

The 9 songs I did for songfight was my 2nd highest total. I did 17(!) in 2006. 5 in 2005. Just 1 in 2007.

Looks like Niv's been time traveling again...

QotD: I was in a pretty decent local band for a couple years. A couple months back, the singer-songwriter guy flat out fired me without warning. That stung more than a little, but whatever, these things happen to people all the time.

Anyhow, from the very beginning, the frontman asked me not to expect to ever sing lead or write songs because this band was 100% his deal. I was totally fine with just playing bass (I enjoy his music & he's a good songwriter). Only now that I'm not busy helping this particular songwriter find his sound, I'm left with this gigantic empty musical void to fill. I have no idea what I want to do. So, I guess 2008 was about losing the rudder, and hopefully 2009 will be about finding it again.

QOTD: It was a mixed bag.

Submitted three songs as Octothorpe this year, and played in a couple more. That's way better than one last year.
Added a new guitar and sometimes bass player to Octothorpe - "Elvis". Yay!
Did the North American West Coast Song Fight Tour for four nights, just like Rabid. That was a blast.
Played probably our best show ever with Patrick Clayton's band and the Pathetic Wannabees, who showed up this time.
Had our studio broken into again. Lost 4 guitars, a snake, numerous effect pedals, and a bunch of other stuff.
Got a better bass and a better guitar with insurance settlement.
Collaborated with BLT and Paco on "Rattlesnake", even wrote some of the lyrics. Had a blast.
Started getting serious about my bass playing. Have done numerous CD and DVD lessons, now practicing scales, arpeggios, blue scales, major and minor walking patterns, etc.
Recruited a new drummer, who hasn't practiced with us yet. Was snowed out of practice last week, and it looks like it might happen again this week.

So the bag wasn't so mixed, after all. Mostly good. The only bad part was getting ripped off. That sucked.

UPDATE: A couple of things I forgot about:
Several Nur Ein entries done solo under the Octo banner, and one with the full band.
Made Niv's top ten list three weeks in a row. WOOHOO.
Played lead and rhythm guitar on an Octothorpe recording: Walking the Border (I don't play guitar).

Niv, don't rush this month. I have too much to get done and I don't need a push.

QOTD: I've opened up new mental doors musically this year and have enjoyed the growth. I seem to be getting more in touch with my creative soul and allowing it more freedom, instead of trying to give it a socially acceptable facade to adapt to the masses.

edit: but I'm still hiding under the skirt of my emoticons, because you can't see my facial expressions nor my hands flailing about as I talk.

Anybody realize that its actually December 18th?

This year has been pretty good, I think. Here's what I did:

Dollar Bill & the Inkpoints: "Still Waiting" (that Purple thang), "Calico Alley" (SF)
Heuristics Inc: Covered "The Maker" for GOM (not great), "Takin' Out the Trash" (a remix using fourstones source files, but it's really a 'rock instrumental' song), remixed Brad Sucks "Fake It". Also did 4 electronic instrumentals for a comic book project.
The Tyrrell Corporation: new collab, covered INXS "Never Tear Us Apart"
Brainpipe: "I'm Outstanding" (SF)
The Creeping Foam: "A Walk in the Park" (SUK)

12 songs! Hmm... need to do more. GOM is in progress but not done yet.
Oh, I also did the NYC live thang with Niv & Roy et al. Fun! And I did "I'm Outstanding" and "Lemurs" for our work Christmas party
-bill

PS Yes, somebody mentioned time travel too.

Yeah. So?

Hoblit wrote:Anybody realize that its actually December 18th?

Not everywhere. For example, it will be December 19th here in about two hours. The highest positive timezone offset is UTC+14, so whoever has that has been living in December 19th for almost ten hours now.

Billy's Little Trip wrote:QOTD: I've opened up new mental doors musically this year and have enjoyed the growth.

Somewhat related: I still love your "Stomach For It". It's playing now.

Cool, thanks Jast. I'm thinking of adding that one to my album that I'm finally going to finish putting together.

Also, I'd like help on picking the songs for it, if anyone wants to play A&R guy for me. I'm willing to re-record anything that has potential, if needed. I'm experimenting with a mastering program as we speak, so I'm pretty much ready to move forward with this.

This year started strong, with a few SF entries and an 'album' of drinking songs. I attended SFLive in Brooklyn. I played shows with a trio, and it was the first time I did sets of original material with a band. We opened up (well, on the Second Stage) for Weird Al in July. Then songwriting pretty much stopped. The show schedule got real lean in October and November, but life stuff kept me from writing and recording.

EDIT: Oh, I guess I was in Nur Ein for a few rounds too. I thought The Blitz came out pretty good.

qotd: not a lot of finished songs, but definitely a lot of new material. I need to start work on one of these albums, but I'm really not sure how to start.

Since November I've finished 4 songs and shared them with actual other human beings! That makes me more prolific in the month than I've been here than in the last four years combined. Which makes it my best year ever! (not that the bar was set very high).

Teplin wrote:(not that the bar was set very high).

But the songs were rather cool so far, so keep 'em coming!

jast wrote:But the songs were rather cool so far, so keep 'em coming!

Thanks! And thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions.

Teplin wrote:And thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions.

Sure thing. Actually I was going to tell you about my newest finds during mixing the current song, but then I noticed it sounded awful, so I went back to what you already know. Too bad. I may go and write my own gain compressor soonish, I'll let you know about it if it turns out to be revolutionary.

DRC: One more day of work, and I'm on holidays till January 5. I've been on doctor-ordered light duty for the past two weeks due to RSI in my wrists, so I've been doing stupid crap like inventory, filing paperwork and stuff. Basically, the company needs me to show up every day and do nothing worthwhile, otherwise there will be a WCB claim and their rates will be affected. This makes the days drag on forever.
Taking my kid to sister's place for xmas, should be good. I got her Guitar Hero for DS, I dunno if she'll like it or not, but since she won't give me any clues as to what she wants, she gets a video game.

QotD: Hmm, I entered 7 SF!s, and I even like 5 or 6 of them. Entered the Nur Ein, sort of... flaked out after the first round. Bought a nice bass and real reference monitors. Learned how to play Bach's Bourree in Em, almost fluidly (the very last phrase is a real bastard). Started seriously practicing guitar again, after not having done so for probably 15 years.

I've been in 7 (counting half million nerds) songfights this years under the Chadderandom Abyss name, probably more than that before just giving up on stupid names. I change the filenames back to the songtitles after submitting them, so I'm not sure which ones I submitted. And I had to check my archives on this site to see which ones I've submitted under this name, because I know I recorded a song for In The Valley before the fight deadline but I apparently forgot to submit it. All I know for sure is that I have a folder full of songfight title based songs that I made, whether they were actually submitted, who knows.

I also released 6 albums this year, just because I could, posting them in places like Jamendo and LastFM for free download.

1) A Sea of Space Age Redundancy - released in January this year but recorded through out 2007, just a bunch of self-indulgent instrumental post.... whatever, post-everything? Someone on soulseek told me they were downloading it because a friend recommended it as being really good and they wanted to know if I agreed and I made it so I wasn't going to disagree, then I started asking random people who were downloading it why they were downloading, just because the folder suggested they might like it or if they'd heard about it via recommendation and lots of people said they were told about it. So, either its really good for what it is or people are recommending it to laugh at. I choose to believe its awesome in all the appropriate ways.

2) Drenched in Drama: An Electroacoustic Poetry Meltdown - released in February but most of it was recorded 3 years ago, the title accurately describes the album, I think. I released it mostly because there's a song on there called "Indie Pop Hip Hop Post Country Punk" which I felt needed to be released to fully explain the next album I was going to release.

3) Smoke Em Up - Released in April, its an experimental hip-hop-ish type album that was made just so I could be goofy and make references to things like dendrophilia. Also it explains my approach to music with a song called "Vomit Art" which features actual unsuccessful attempts to vomit. Not just for the song, but I'd been drinking and, well, it felt like something was coming up and I was sitting next to recording equipment, so I mean, obviously it needed to be recorded for the sake of the song. Its called commitment.

4) On A Giant Bowling Ball - Released in May, I got a ukulele on April 1st and decided that April would be record one ukulele song per day month and thats what I did. Title references a song that talks about following through with your bowling technique and riding down the alley on a giant bowling ball, so I guess theres a metaphor there or something.

5) The Horse That Laid The Egg of Fire - Released in August, a concept album of sorts, in that there was going to be interlude type songs between the actual songs that sort of built into the other songs and the interludes were going to be comprised of 32 1 second songs since I took part in a one second song compilation a while back and knew how much could be achieved in 1 second of song but there was too much continuity between the 1 second songs that were made up to make the one interlude, so the concept slightly took turns until the last interlude type song became absolutely nothing at all to do with the concept beyond bridging songs together. The album as a whole is basically inspired from listening to too much Frank Zappa, ambient drone sounds and Noise Rock at the time. It also features a sort of songfight-esque take on an existing songtitle, Alice in Chains "Them Bones", where I turn it into a song ripping anorexics... or at least helping them rip their skin off to show me their bones because them bones are the prettiest things I've ever seen.

6) 71 Miles - Released in September, I signed up to take part in 50/90 but got distracted by other stuff during the summer, and my involvement was kind of pathetic, so to try to save it I did an Album-A-Day which ended up being just a bunch of Dark Neofolk type stuff, along with the closest I'm ever going to get to making a country song which sounds pretty country for not sounding that typically country, its a song that is not that far from something that could happen, since its about being loud and drunk and talking shit about people but when I do that, the people usually aren't there, running away from angry mobs make for better songs though. I used a couple songfight titles for inspiration for a couple songs, as well as the same type of deal with "Them Bones" in that I was looking at Moldy Peaches songtitles and thought I saw something about Helen Reddy and Rob Van Winkle, instead of Hellen Keller and Rip Van Winkle, so I wrote a song about Helen Reddy and Rob Van Winkle hooking up.

I guess thats a lot of stuff. It doubled last years because I released three albums in 2007. I wonder if that means I have to release 12 albums in 2009. I... I... I probably could. I have lots of songs already sitting around unreleased and plenty of concept ideas for songs and albums that need written. All I know is that I shouldn't plan to release 12 albums next year, since that would slow my creative process and make it a thing that needs to be avoided. I like it better when things just happen naturally, no real planning.