The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Just an observation, lately.

Some questions that come to mind:

1) Would you point to specific examples you feel should be filtered out of Song Fight due to extravagant production at the cost of songwriting?
2) How does one NOT produce their music during the recording process?
3) Should everything be G&G or something?
4) What would you like to be the criteria for submissions?

Or, is this more a comment about the voting results, and not submission?

It's a comment about the reviews. I like well-produced music as much as the next guy, but don't consider it too important in a songwriting competition.

I think Jon's post above pretty much sums it up. I guess I'm just weird.

You're not weird. People just need to think about a variety of criteria when reviewing. Production stands out, so it's often the easiest to critique. Songwriting takes a little more work to critique and sometimes a review is based that initial feeling.

I like reviewers like Jan who have a concrete grading system that will always give details on every part of the song. It's production, it's lyrics, etc.

If more people used that format it would help everyone all around. Of course I don't believe for a minute that's going to happen!

Rone Rivendale wrote:It's production, it's lyrics, etc.

You gonna take this one, Spud?

Seriously, though, I agree, Jan has a good system going on.

I guess the closest analogy I can come up with is: It's like people are grading a creative writing assignment on the author's handwriting.

Märk wrote:I guess the closest analogy I can come up with is: It's like people are grading a creative writing assignment on the author's handwriting.

Well it doesn't matter how creative the writing was if you can't read it.

Märk wrote:

Rone Rivendale wrote:It's production, it's lyrics, etc.

You gonna take this one, Spud?

Well, he did get the apostrophes in the right places.

I explained a little of this in the IRC room shortly after posting that picture (seems we have this argument in a review thread every couple of months or so), but here's my take on it:

Production is the filter between the song as you envisioned it in your head and the song as it comes out of the listener's speakers. Every song on Songfight gets produced, in some sense. Guy-n-guitar songs can be done well, and done poorly. Thickly-arranged songs can be done well, or be done poorly.

I don't speak for every Songfight reviewer/voter. I'd like to think, though, that the average voter will not vote for a song that he/she doesn't actually like simply because it's well-produced. Conversely, I don't think the average listener will want to withhold a vote from a song he/she genuinely enjoys simply because of a production flaw.

Here's where the issue gets sticky, though. Minor production flaws are one thing (Mark, I thought your song's production was just fine this week... just for the record), but what happens when the production is so horrible that it intrudes on the listening experience? What if the vocals are mixed so low that you can't hear the lyrics, or mixed so high that they hurt your ears? Then it doesn't matter how good the song is on paper; no one will vote for it because it's unpleasant to listen to.

But barring major production issues that make a song unlistenable, I think when it comes down to it, if someone didn't vote for your song, 99% of the time, it means nothing more than they didn't love it. Music is really subjective; if I don't love your song, I'm not going to vote for it. And if I don't love your song, no amount of tweaking the production is going to make me love it.

On the boards, we have a strong peer preference for reviews which make quantitative suggestions and specific points. Sometimes, this is a good thing, because there are those of us who do want to know what it was about the mix that needed improving. But it also results in some flimsy excuses because we, as songwriters, don't usually like to hear "I just don't like it, and I don't know why." So when that is the case, the reviewer tends to throw out some excuse like "the bass sound is weird" and hope that no one cries shenanigans.

A review is a gift. If someone spends their whole review talking about some aspect of your song that you don't care about at all, then you still have to put on your present face and say "Thanks for the review; I appreciate your insight," even if you're just going to stick the present in the crawlspace under the stairs and never look at it again.

Märk wrote:It's a comment about the reviews. I like well-produced music as much as the next guy, but don't consider it too important in a songwriting competition.

I think Jon's post above pretty much sums it up. I guess I'm just weird.

No, not weird. I just haven't been very involved in all the review threads. Jon's second post sums it up well, and I do think that reviews are allowed to drift to "what I'm listening to" and in that context, commenting on the mix or production may raise its ugly head.

For better or worse, I do listen to the production critically, alongside the songwriting. I am interested, and it does affect how the song is presented to my ears. My own songs are composed in the studio these days, typically during the recording process. That may make them shit to the listener, but the recording/production process and the songwriting process are often inseparable. Occasionally I'll get to write a song on its own, then record it, which often produces a stronger song, but not always.

Anyway, that's why I asked those questions. I like how this process feels and I like how the results have evolved the past 6 years. As a result, I appreciate feedback about not just the songwriting, but also the production.

Then I digress into some other related topic:

I am, decidedly, a studio musician. I like studio/virtual bands (Gert being my favorite around here) and it never bothers me that a song can't be reproduced live. I appreciate hearing Jonathan Coulton say things like "I often get asked to play this or that song and I have to explain that I don't know how to and I've never played it all the way through" because I know what that feels like. I also love Yes' Relayer, which was stitched together in the studio and reportedly their least favorite album. It just shows how, to me, it's sometimes all about the experience while listening. But I also love Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan and so many others who write songs that can be interpreted in zillions of ways and survive based on the strength of their songwriting.

It's also cute to hear covers of Pink Floyd as country western, but those simply aren't songs that stand as well on their own without the treatments they received in the studio, and I truly believe they would not be as well known otherwise. Also, when I hear covers of that sort, my ears fill in the space with what I know was going on in the original production. This doesn't happen as much with Beatles covers. I don't know what to call this phenomenon, but I am curious what others think of it.

Roymond digressed a little, but continuing with that train of thought, there are a lot of bands who stopped worrying about whether their songs could be reproduced live because they stopped touring, and their music is excellent:

The Beatles
Steely Dan
XTC

Probably others, but those three jump to mind instantly.

It seems like the format of the contest mandates that production be involved somehow, since we're sending in mp3s, not sheet music and lyrics. YouOne could try to remove production from the picture to get people to focus on yourone's song itself by using really stripped down sound, like guytar or guy and piano or something.

Just to clarify: I don't feel this way because of any comments on my songs in the last while. I'm seeing that in general, a lot of reviewers are focusing way too much on the production of the submitted songs. I used to love reading other people's reviews of all the songs, but now (a lot of them) are full of "I don't like the hihat sound" or "You should have EQ'd the bass" and almost entirely neglecting to mention anything about the song itself. Yes, I know, if a song is recorded so badly as to make it unlistenable, why bother, right? But not everyone has quality gear to record on, and not everyone has taken a fucking mastering course at university. We're amateurs, remember? (and if you consider yourself a professional musician, why are you wasting your time at songfight?
Listen to pretty much any song from the early days here. And read the corresponding reviews. The reviews were centered on the song itself, the arrangements, structures, lyrics, melodies.. Tell me that I'm just imagining this. Something happened in the last few years, and I've seen a few people just give up here because they got nothing but grief about their production values, even though they were submitting good songs. If this place has evolved into a "get better at producing or stay home" place, then fine, but rename it to "Production Fight!" so as to not confuse people. Full stop.

Just went back and looked at a couple of songs from 2004 -- seems like everyone was talking about intros, melodies, guitars sounds, percussion, misc instrumentation and overall sound stuff back then, too.

Kevin

...aaaannd?

...And who cares? If people aren't reviewing the parts of your song that you want them to review, that's because people are people, and they don't intuitively know what you want, nor do they much care. Most reviewers - even those who write songs of their own - don't know how to experience your songs the way that you do. Does that mean they're not reviewing the song? No, it just means they're not reviewing the song the way you wanted them to.

So, your options are:
1.) Start taking what you can from the reviews, maybe improve your production quality to the point where it's good enough for the production snobs and they start focusing on the aspects of the songs that you want them to focus on.
2.) Stop submitting songs.
3.) Stop caring what they think and keep doing your thing.

I know which one I'd do.

Another option is to find out where the production snobs live, and do a shit in their letterbox.

Ok - it's not a great option - but it's an option.

I am a complete hack when it comes to songwriting and composition and whatever so production is really the only thing I feel comfortable making concrete suggestions for improvement on.

I don't withhold a vote from a song specifically because of poor production values though. But it's also rare that something is both poorly-recorded and well-written (especially in this day and age of cheap high-quality recording gear/software with automatic mastering voodoo and whatever). It seems likely to me that people who can't listen to their own song for quality from a production perspective also can't listen to their own song for quality from a songwriting perspective.

Also, if something hurts to listen to, I'm not going to listen to it.

I haven't read any of this fight's reviews yet so I don't know if it's a case of people going to a ridiculous extreme though, like saying a song sucks because the EQ needs a 2dB boost at 1200Hz or whatever.

I don't understand the mindset of people who can slave for hours getting the lyrics right, but dismiss those who slave for hours getting the sound right as "not real musicians".

Though I have noticed two things:
(1) Most of the good songwriters here are also good producers.
(2) Anti-production snobs don't understand production.

EDIT: Just noticed the date on this thread. Apologies for reviving an old argument.

Eh, it seems to have been on the way back anyway.