The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hello, I am medavox (Adam IRL), a guitarist, bassist and drum machine programmer from North Wales (UK).
I heard about songfight in about 2004, when I'd been playing guitar for about 30 seconds. As could be predicted, the results were awful. Screaming, clipping and thrashing everywhere.
But that was then.

More recently, I have already blasted you with one yawntastically awkward blend of 808s and overdrive under this very moniker, and as of this writing have just unleashed the sonic wave front of The Colour of Infinity (which is me and my partner Aimee).

In reference to your oft-pleaded request for non-suckery, I should mention that I do have some production values (along with a decent mic), understand compression and EQ, but haven't quite got my head round that whole mastering thingummy quite yet. Hopefully that will change.
As for the music: well, I hope it speaks for itself.

I'm influenced by:-
Radiohead; Pixies; The Red Hot Chili Peppers; Rage Against the Machine; The Libertines; Muse; UNKLE and DJ SHadow; The Arcade Fire; The Strokes; Joy Division (and of course therefore Interpol); and Kasabian.
Lots of male guitar groups. Oh well.


Pleased to meetcha.

I never medavox I didn't like.

Welcome to Songfight. Please be awesome.

With a list of influences like that, I'm eager to hear what you come up with.

When I first arrived I was clueless about mastering too, but practice, and advice from my fellow songfighters, has definitely helped me improve. There are lots of talented/experienced people around here who are more than willing to have their brains picked about that sort of thing.

Welcome!

Oh, and... kindly fail to suck.

what you are influenced by is not always the style you write in. i'm not going to hijack this person's thread with the stuff i listen to all the time, but it's nothing like what i write. i don't know if that's a function of lack of musical ability, lack of instrumentation/recording equipment, or some other more philosophical reason all together.

And what you're influenced by isn't necessarily what you like or listen to. That's why my stuff comes out all Sunny and Cher.

Just speaking for myself, I started making music with the limitations of what I had to bring to the table. I did ALOT of techno when I first started, mostly without any sort of lyrics. And then eventually I started doing Trip Hop when I started submitting to SF because of course instrumentals aren't real big here. Rapping isn't my thing at all but I couldn't sing to save my life so that's what I did.

Eventually I bought an electric guitar and I started to play around with that. And after nearly a year with it, I'm still a total noob at playing it. But I found a few kewl tricks and made some tracks that didn't suck so much. I played the hell out of Rock Band and my vox got better and more melodic. And now that my performances have began to improve I am doing closer to the music I always wanted to do which is less toward techno and rap and more towards Industrial, Emo, Pop Rock, Metal, whatever. I like alot of diff kinds of music.

And on the main topic, welcome Sir. Please make me look good... I mean please don't suck. ^_^

roymond wrote:And what you're influenced by isn't necessarily what you like or listen to. That's why my stuff comes out all Sunny and Cher.

good point, good point.

Yes, I agree that what you like and listen to and your influences can be two different things... I'd only list a small fraction of what I listen to as major influences. But your influences, by definition, are bands and artists that have had an influence on how your music sounds. That doesn't necessarily mean you write in the same style, but some aspect of that band or artist's sound has impacted the way you write and play music.

I have a couple of influences in common with Mr. Medavox, and while that's not a guarantee I'll love his tunes, it piques my interest a bit more than if he said his influences were... I don't know... Metallica and Celine Dion.


...ok, that would pique my interest too, but for entirely different reasons.

Teplin wrote:I'd only list a small fraction of what I listen to as major influences.

Perhaps influences you are consciously aware of directly influencing you. But in general, I would say <what you like and/or choose to listen to> is a small subset of <what influences you>.

Eric Y. wrote:I would say <what you like and/or choose to listen to> is a small subset of <what influences you>.

I've wondered about that too. I play guitar in a band and bass at home, and what I produce on each instrument (partly due to technical and skill limitations like Rone said, but also obviously cause they're pretty differently purposed instruments) sounds pretty different in style. I would say the three biggest things in my musical life that happened to me and influence my playing are the Red Hot Chilis, Pixies and Radiohead. They are the tentpoles in the larger circus tents of styles I indulge in.

Apart from my brain adding 2 and 2 to make 5 stylistically (accidental Radiohead reference already; jeez), the other wildcard in my sound is my girlfriend. She sang on the current fight, and wrote the lyrics. I'm hoping she'll play some piano too.
I also have a "toy instrument" fetish, kinda, so expect some lovely twee ukuleles, recorders and spoons.

medavox wrote:

Eric Y. wrote:the other wildcard in my sound is my girlfriend. She sang on the current fight, and wrote the lyrics. I'm hoping she'll play some piano too.
I also have a "toy instrument" fetish, kinda, so expect some lovely twee ukuleles, recorders and spoons.

These are the things that interest me. Collaborate with her more, and use more toy instruments

What people say (wish) are their influences and what are their actual influences are two different things.

Eric Y. wrote:

Teplin wrote:I'd only list a small fraction of what I listen to as major influences.

Perhaps influences you are consciously aware of directly influencing you.

Well sure, but anything we're not consciously aware of isn't exactly going to make it onto a list you make of your influences.

Eric Y. wrote: But in general, I would say <what you like and/or choose to listen to> is a small subset of <what influences you>.

Absolutely, I think we're influenced by an enormous amount of things, many of which we're not even aware of. Anything we've liked about any music we've heard, anything we've hated about any music we've heard, books we've read, movies we've watched, art we've seen, collaborations we've done, conversations we've had, the sound of rain pounding on the windows when we were small. At a certain point it becomes impractical to talk about. I couldn't make a list of everything that's ever influenced me, and you wouldn't want to read it if I could.

So when people talk about their "influences", you're usually getting the highlights. The conscious ones that loom the largest in their minds as influencing the sort of music they try to make, as an artist in general or in whatever project they're talking about (my lists of major influences for Howl Down the Chimney and Humboat, for example, would be very different). Just like when someone asks you what you did today, it gets whittled down to things that you think are the most important, or the most interesting.