The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Welcome to the 6th edition of Songfight's Spring classic, the Nur Ein.

Here is how the Nur Ein works.

The Nur Ein (german for "Only One") is a music competition that runs in 8 rounds. Each round is runs from Tuesday to Tuesday. It's a challenge of skill, creativity and a battle against time.

This year's Nur Ein will start on April 12th with Round Zero. Round Zero is open to all who wish to take on the Nur Ein. That day, participants will be given a song title and a challenge.

The Song title will not be a songfight title and will be chosen by the members of this year's Nur Ein Jury.

The challenge (also chosen by the Jury) is non-optional. Examples of past challenges: Must include handclaps. Must not rhyme. Must include a change in time signature.

The participants will have until Monday at 12AM to create a song from the title and complete the challenge. When a competitor completes a song, it is to be e-mailed to nurein.sidefight AT gmail.com.

The songs will then be posted here in the forum as well at the Nur Ein website (nurein.songfight.net), which will debut next week.

The Monday of the round are the Judging period where the members of the Nur Ein Jury listen to all the songs and rank the songs from best to worst.

Reviews and loud talking are encouraged but the jury will not be swayed, except by large amounts of money in our swiss bank accounts.

On the following Tuesday, the jury will make their decision and competitors will be eliminated, leaving us with the 25 official Nur Ein competitors and the cycle begins again.

Round 1 will start right after that with a new title and new challenge and as the weeks go by the bands will be whittled down.

Round 1: 25 bands, 5 eliminations
Round 2: 20 bands, 4 eliminations
Round 3: 16 bands, 4 eliminations
Round 4: 12 bands, 4 eliminations
Round 5: 8 bands, 3 eliminations
Round 6: 5 bands, 3 eliminations

The final stage will be a battle between the two remaining competitors. The vote of the eliminated competitors and the Nur Ein Jury will choose the winner.

In rounds 1, 2 & 3, the jury's favorite song gets immunity.

Here is the projected dates for this year's Nur Ein: April 12th to June 5th (just before SF: Live)

The title and challenge for Round Zero will be announced on the forum on 4/12.

The game is on. Nur Ein!

We are in need of judges.

So who's in and who wants to be a judge?

Niveous wrote:We are in need of judges.

So who's in and who wants to be a judge?

I'll be a judge

I'll be a contestant

Me too. Contestant pleese!!!!!

I think I can do this this year. It'll be good to put a little pressure on me.

Niveous, I love Nur Ein, and I'm looking forward to being a contestant again, but I'd like to raise a concern.

It seems that, once again, the schedule doesn't build in any time between rounds for the judges to listen and rank the entries from the previous round. This was a big problem for the last two years because often we'd have judges who took longer than expected with the results. The time delay was always taken out of the following round's writing and recording time. I appreciate that part of the intensity of the challenge is the tight deadline, but whereas seven days keeps everyone on their game, I feel that the frequent shortening down to five days often made the competition unpleasantly demanding and probably resulted in some songs that weren't as good as they could have been.

It seems disingenuous to assume that these problems won't recur. Why not actually put a judging period into the schedule?

The last 2 years every round has been 5 days for the contestants. The worst that happened was that was delayed, and the judges had less time.
There's plenty of time for a committed judge.
The one week cycle is the most fair.
I disagree (shockingly) with Generics concern.

The change I would recommend is posting the new title and challenge on time, even if the previous round is not completely judged yet. The worst case in that scenario is someone works on a song for a couple a days only to find they're not eligible for the current round. Which doesn't seem to be a big deal to me.

Maybe you could give the judges more time in the early rounds when they are dealing with more songs...?

PS Don't listen to glennny, he's shockingly crazy when it comes to Nur Ein.

I think you should shoot to keep the rounds to 50 minute albums. Time limits:

25 bands- 2:00
21 bands- 2:23
17 bands- 2:56
14 bands- 3:34
11 bands- 4:33
8 bands- 6:15
5 bands- 10:00
2 bands- 25:00

glennny wrote: I disagree (shockingly) with Generics concern.

This is, like, the first thing we've EVER disagreed upon!

In all seriousness, however, I guess I'm misremembering the schedule for the last two years. This year's schedule seems to state that the songs are due Monday night at midnight, and that the next round's title and challenge are to be released immediately at that point. This leaves literally NO time for judging, which I think is problematic.

Niveous? Am I misreading it?

Just a misread. It's running the same way as last year. All the songs are due by Monday @ 12:01 AM EST, then the judges review the songs on Monday with the results coming out on Tuesday.

Speaking of judges, so far we have a judging triad of myself, Roymond & Caravan Ray. Ben Kreiger has the option to judge as well as Nur Ein champ but he hasn't told me if he wants to.

w00t! I'm excited that it's finally time for Nur Ein. If you get stuck & need a judge I'll help, but it's probably best you use others if there's enough volunteers. I would be reliable, but as most of you know, I don't know jack shit about music. So the feedback I would give wouldn't be as helpful.

NUR EIN!

Spintown wrote:but as most of you know, I don't know jack shit about music. So the feedback I would give wouldn't be as helpful.

NUR EIN!

Which would make you a good judge in the mix. It expands the range of the judging.

NUR EIN!

Dang, I was going to volunteer to be a judge, but I am (ironically, I suppose) in the US 16th-21st April, which by my math means I wouldn't have time to judge that round, let alone compete. Ah well, no great loss for anyone else. But every year!

PS Glennny did I read you right? You're suggesting for the judge's ease that people write their songs to be under a certain length? I would only agree with that if it was the only challenge each round. My feeling (when I was a judge back, back,back in the day) is that if you sign up to a system, you find the time. It's the music that's important, maaan, no the convenience.

2 points off Glennny for trying to suck up to the judges before it even starts.

I'm going to enjoy this judging caper

I'd be up for judging.

I don't know if you need people to declare their intent to participate, but I intend to participate.

J$ wrote

PS Glennny did I read you right? You're suggesting for the judge's ease that people write their songs to be under a certain length? I would only agree with that if it was the only challenge each round. My feeling (when I was a judge back, back,back in the day) is that if you sign up to a system, you find the time. It's the music that's important, maaan, no the convenience.

I agree it's the music that's important, but listening to 50 minutes of music 5 times over to really sink into the songs is a lot more doable than 110 minutes of music. When i was a judge for NE-IV, I thought the 2-2-2 challenge was great, Round Zero was soooo long. There was lots of good music, but it was hard to take it all in and judge properly. Also the peer reviews go away when the fight is too long for the same reasons.

It would be sweet to have those 10min and 25 min songs for the last 2 rounds though! Especially last year had BK been inclined to create another 20min song-cycle.

I like the judging panel, couple questions:

1- Can Tex B participate whilst C-Ray judges?
2- Even if Spin is a judge, can we please have musical challenges? (I was a judge at Spintunes- NO MUSICAL CHALLENGES, all lyrical, drove me nuts)

jast wrote:I'd be up for judging.

Jast makes 4. So now it's up to BK. If Ben wants in, he'll be the 5th judge. If not, it's Spin.

Emperor Gum will return for Nur Ein VI. Good luck everyone!