The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Man, the crazy nights I've pulled for Song Fight.

Heine's lyrics are good. It's a similar idea to what I had in mind but didn't write
-bill

Damn, I was sick and couldn't make this. It's a fine title/concept. My idea was around "You drink yourself to sleep but it's not enough", "A different girl every night but it's not enough" etc and I had a schweet tune too. Looking forward to the entries, anyway.

Hellz yeah. Shot Pounder pounded out a pounding pile of pound cake.
<<is happy!

Hopefully the Guiterrorists entry really captures the essence of the thought-"Shut up, Sven and Mo. That's Enough."

Nice cover art MG!

Manhattan Glutton wrote:Man, the crazy nights I've pulled for Song Fight.

Um, yeah. Totally worth it. This one gets a download and a place in my iphone. I've only listened to two entries so far: yours and Guiterrorists'.

Condensed Mini-Reviews:

Guiterrorists:

Manhattan Glutton: [I'd put more smilies in, but apparently the limit is 4]. One of the best tunes I've EVER heard on SongFight and certainly the best that I've heard of yours.

Hi all. When I was told you were not kind to newbies, they were right But i did learn from it. This week I put out a love song for my fiance' ... and done away for now the horror-core wicked cripple stuff . (maybe for good) Don't Reply mastered this weeks effort, and did a great job. .. BillyOh (my real name) is entered .. and I hope it does better ...

So NOW here are my reviews ... i pulled little punches on this ...

Great week.



Mike Lamb (feat. Suckweasel) - At first, I didn't like it ... but, it really grew on me.
Great music and fx ... The voice was a bit to get used to, but works well for the song.

Hip Hop Anonymous - LOVED it!! Great Ryhmes!! I like the horror-core influence.

BGM - tripple Threat SONG right here ... Great Lyrics, voice, and music.

Monkey Touchers - Funny! The beats suck, but that can be easily fixxed. Sounds like he's
got a twisted sense of humor, I like it

Life In Decibels - Nice SMITH's influence. I Like the 80's/90's flare to it.

the pannacotta army - Man I picked the wrong week to enter ... the pannacotta army has never
let me down with any of their songs .. I'm new to SF, but i listened to all their archived
tunes .. and they have a great future. This song was probably one of the songs from them I
liked the least .. but still a GOOD tune.

ShotPounder - Great bass line - love the power punk stuff.

The John Benjamin Band - nice piano .. love the synths, Sounds like alot of auto-tune .. but
i kinda liked it.

Berkeley Social Scene - Not their best effort .. But Love the bridge though! Their Music
was great .. the singer was off .. alot.

Dejected Motives - Levels were way too hot, barley understand the words ... Nice beat
though.

Pigfarmer Jr - love the lyrics! nice driving beat.

Ripping Hammer - not sure about this ,,, like the chorus (rap) .... nice guitarrs. very
original.

Guiterrorists - Nice instrumental. I only wish I can play liek that!!

GreaseMonkey - makes me wana break out the Sega.

Klownhole - nice guitars, driving sound .. the lrics are cool .. the delivery of the vocals
are a lil rough. but I can see it improving with time.

Semolina Pilchards - Beautiful guitars .. i feel some Jane's Addiction influence there

Ross Durand - making me hungry. lol is that a ukulele?

Billy & The Psychotics - eghhhh. at first the voice was irrating ( no offence ) but got
nice afterwards.

Paco del Stinko - Sounds like Talking heads had a baby with Weird Al Yankovic - ABSULUTLEY
LOVED IT!

Manhattan Glutton - Nice tune ...Loved the chorus, nice Harmonies.

heine - Loved the keys




If I offended anyone .. I'm sorry But just check out the Wicked Cripple reviews ... LOL Brutal

Here are my reviews of everyone in this fight. Well, except myself, that's mostly just liner notes because of course I never do anything wrong and there are absolutely no flaws in anything I've ever done.

Most of the reviews have something good and something bad in them. I'm sure I'm not saying anything here that any of you haven't already told yourselves in your secret heart of hearts, but now it's all out in the open don't you feel BETTER?

Ok so here...

The John Benjamin Band - This one's mine. I'm pretty happy with it. Mix turned out well, got some good lines in there, has a good beat. You may or may not be interested in its path toward emergence from the loins of my creative fertility. I had this plane flight back from California, and there was no wifi on the plane. OMFGBBQ. So, being unwilling to like, read a book or some shit like a normal person, I got out my iPad and fired up Garageband. I've never really finished a song on Garageband for iPad, or taken it very far down the rathole of building a structure. But now I had four hours on my hands to fiddle, so I built the skeleton of a song. I got home and imported the song into Logic, and started fiddling with it. Remaining from the original Garageband are: the drums (Smart Drums), the arpeggiation (though I changed the patch), the intro piano, the sort of swoopy synth line that comes in at points, and the bass. I added vocals, a pad, and mixed it down. I did wind up buying a new audio interface, as this is the first time in months that I've really tried to make a full-on JBB song, and my Tascam US-224 has drivers that just don't work on OS X. I tried a Presonus Audiobox for a day, but it had driver issues on both Snow Leopard and Lion so I took that back and wound up spending more than twice as much to get a Focusrite Saffire Pro40. It's a little overkiill for what I need, probably, but it has the basics downpat and I can count on it. Which is SO KEY. Anyway, I hope you like the song, I personally think it turned out well. Edit: the countryfied guitar/vocal break is also straight off the iPad-- it's the Smart Guitar on like setting #2 or something.

bgm - nice sound, nice singing, nice harmonies, nice chord progression. guitar picking might be a tad aggressive for my taste. Like it at 1:20. 1:40 doesn't sound different enough for a bridge IMO. Like the accordion. Overall very well performed. More variation than your last, and I like that, although my heart longs for a true chorus to hang the song around...

BillyOh! - Me gusta arpeggiators, naturalmente. The drum pattern might be a little too lethargic to propel the song like it should. Don't let the melody go too high for your voice, or practice singing it so you can sell it. At 1:10 you lose your way. Needs a good chorus, the whole song seems a little rambly. I hear a section coming back around late in the song, guess that's the chorus, but the music doesn't cue me that "hey here's a chorus". Arpeg needs to go away for a reason, seemed to drop out at random there around 1:40ish. This sounds like you just made one chord progression on your arpeggiator, but didn't quite have the trick mastered of taking one progression and making it into a whole song. And it just stops, it doesn't end.

Semolina Pilchards - Promising beginning with the fingerpicking, like the bass drone under the intro. And now it's got rhythm and a nice soft drumming. Dunno about that crash cymbal yo. Vocals could be brought forward, and you need to practice the pre-chorus more. Sing with more balls I think and you'll have it. I like the "that's enough" part; it reminds me of the 90's, but without grunge guitars. "She's really got a hold on me, and I cannot break free" is a terrible line, poorly sung. Sorry dude. Overall, I like this, but it's seriously flawed. Much more attention was paid to that guitar part on either side of my head than any other part of the song, and that's fucking it all up. Goes on wayyy too long, I was done with it around 3:15, but here we are at 3:50 and I have a sixth of my progress bar left. Waited out the ending, and it's a nice ending, with some interesting contrasty chords and such.

Hip Hop Anonymous - You've almost got the patter down, very few "sounds like a dork in his room rapping" slipups. A few though. Nicely mixed. Really dorky lyrics, and I unfortunately don't mean that in a good way. It's almost like the Schmidt character from hit FOX show "The New Girl" if he was rapping. You gotta spit those words out, sometimes you go pretty mushmouthed, especially if you're going to have a lot of lyrics. The chorus is very plain, needs more inspiration and interest.

heine - Old School patches! Old School singing! Sometimes you can tell when a song just kind of shoe-horns in the challenge title, because it just doesn't flow. This song may have benefitted from more disciplined songwriting, and more attention to the need to really put interesting lyrics together. You've got an ok backing track; if you had come up with a few cool lines and a great melody, you'd have something here. It's unfortunately generic where it should be striking. It's 3:52 and it feels like it.

Ross Durand - Nice ukelizing from the start. "Whipping cream/I've ever seen" is lazy, tsk tsk. The "doodoo doot"s aren't in tune. Love the lead vocals. The harmony vocals are buried, and they're panned way too far, so they don't blend with the lead vocals when they actually have lyrics. I think the bridge should be completely different-- slower and sadder, maybe go into a more obviously minor key. The tenor of the lyrics changes, but the arrangement doesn't, and I think that sabotages your intent. I'm jealous of your uke playing for reals.

Manhattan Glutton - Don't think I needed that intro, kind of wish you'd just gone in with the drums right off the bat, as it gets interesting right then. I do like that chord progression. The lyrics are too neutral, too "universal". They're so general that they don't have any striking lines to catch my ear. A shame because I like the singing, I like the chord progression. Although, dude, I dunno about that constant high guitar line that goes through the whole fucking song. Started to make me want to kill you. I like the singing and the harmonizing. The chorus is nice, gotta say, but god dammit those lyrics are booooooooring. I'm convinced you could do better. Gimme something. Holy shit we're at 4:30 already? No call for that, young man! How long could this song possibly be, seriously? OMG WE'VE CRACKED FIVE MINUTES GOD IN HEAVEN. 5:32 is 2:32 too long for this, unless you're telling me an awesome story about Frankenstein's monster and the Swedish Bikini team getting kidnapped and probed by aliens and the aliens mix up who's a monster and who's the hotness and hijinks ensue. You totally didn't do that, and so you totally don't get to make a song that is 5 minutes and 32 fucking seconds long. PENALTY.

Life In Decibels - Vocals are way too Morrissey for my taste. And I mean that in a "why can't you sing in tune more than 70% of the time" kind of way. I like that synth that comes in. The music in general is nice, actually. Much more interesting than the lyrics, what is with all the boring lyrics in this fight? I'm only a third of the way through listening, I guess, so I shouldn't make any hasty judgements. But so far it's a snorefest. I really do like that stuttery synth line though. Makes up for a lot, though it can't repair my heart from the damage inflected by boring lyrics sung off-key. It's like 2:00 shorter than Manhattan Glutton's song, but it feels just as long because you keep saying "how much, how much is enough" over and over and t i m e s t a r t s s l o w i n g d o w n

GreaseMonkey - Chippy. Here I was thinking "maybe this will get all awesome like Freezepop or something" but then you were all FUCK NO I'M GOING TO KILL YOU WITH MY BULLSHIT CRAPPY SINGING BULLSHIT. Omg I can't keep going with this one, sorry. You spent a good bit of time programming all that chiptune music, and then you piled terrible singing and half-assed lyrics on top. Really not fair to the music. 4:45?! Seriously? DO BETTER.

Monkey Touchers - Why did you bother spending precious moments of your life making this, when you could have been telling your grandmother you love her? You're going to regret that. AT LEAST IT'S ONLY 1:34 *COUGH* MANHATTAN GLUTTON *COUGH*

Billy & The PSychotics - Ok, where's this going? Girls singing are always nice to hear on Song Fight, especially when they do it well, which this one does. Congas are a nice diversion, they sound real are they? Lyrics are little too "empowering" for my taste-- I like that sort of thing if it has an edge or some kind of twist. Or a real good groove, which you guys haven't built here. Pretty short, nice little diversion, still with the plain-jane lyric writing that seems to be plaguing this fight.

Ripping Hammer - I like the music, dark and a little carnivalish. The vocal performance could be better, but I kind of like what I hear in the lyrics (it's a little buried for me to make out). The arrangement is nice, though that staticky vocal stuff is a little too Primus-derivative for my taste. However, that's a minor quibble. Overall I really dig the creativity of the music, and the lyrics are above the crowd for this particular fight.

Paco del Stinko - Digging the music. Wish the lyrics weren't goofy, but it's Paco so I'm the foolish one for expecting anything else. It's true that your vocal style is very Weird Al-- not only in the inflections but in the phrasing. All those short lines, and the sort of angular Devo-esque melodies. Come to think of it, this is really really Devoesque. The guitar solo is unnecessary, yo, wish that had been a synth. The lyrics are, well, what they are, and my wishing they were more interesting won't change cruel, cruel reality.

Guiterrorists - Hey Mo! Hope you had some tissues handy.

Berkeley Social Scene - Who sang this one? Mix feels soft, and I feel like the music could have been pretty rocking in a kind of early 2000's punk style, which would have made the vocals work a lot better. Guess I feel this one should have been taken to the next level in terms of intensity, as it's got that nicely constructed arrangement style that all those late-punk bands had, and which I dig a lot. Dunno about the lyrics, they've got a point of view and that's cool, though I know the hits you're capable of and this one doesn't have that grabby vocal hook in the chorus that really makes for the awesomest BSS songs.

Pigfarmer Jr - "You're a candy necklace that I wear just a bit too tight". Not horrible, but I'm way too tired to try to figure out what that might mean. "That's enough to say I don't need you enough to tell you why I said goodby" isn't bad, but for some reason the delivery leaves me cold. I guess I'm saying that in this one the arrangement and the lyrics aren't matching each other-- either could have supported a good song, but put together this way they're adding up to less than the sum of their parts. Oh, and give me some damned harmony damned it!

Klownhole - What fresh hell do you have for me after so long, old friends? Well, that's a guitar line that I just have to turn my fucking headphones up the whole way for. THAT's a heavy guitar. I dig it a lot. Can't really hear the lyrics, but it's Klownhole so I'm assuming they are kind of gross and who really cares. All I can really make out is "dog shit on the sidewalk" and I think then something like "hairy butthole". WHICH IS AT LEAST INTERESTING IF DISGUSTING MANHATTAN GLUTTON. This is the sort of thing that I could just play three times in a row in the morning right after I wake up, as loud as my stereo will go. Well, maybe only twice in a row, since it's so fucking long and loses its momentum towards the end.

Dejected Motives - Mix is clipping, in a bad way. Hey, this is the first song with a serious mixing issue that I've heard. I mean, I'm not listening on monitors or anything, but almost everybody has at least been within an OK range of mixing. It's indicative of your song, I think, that I just spent thirty seconds writing about everybody else's songs and not this one. I guess I'd dump this one in the "half-assed" bucket. The bass line is occasionally going in an interesting direction, but mostly this one's not worth the electricity I spent vital company money on to download and play the file. And now it's taking up space in my browser cache, and then it'll take up my time to empty the browser cache to free up that space, which I'll do just on principle, because really I'd rather not have these two minutes and forty-eight seconds clogging up my chi.

Mike Lamb (feat. Suckweasel) - A little Miami Vice on the drums there. Dunno about this synth line before the lyrics come in. Then the lyrics come in and I wish we were back to the part where the lyrics weren't. I kind of like the vocoder part. The synth lines are kind of noodly, wish they were more directly thought out. Not a whole lot else to say. *shrug*

ShotPounder - Totally a band name this guy I used to chat with on IRC would have used. Ah, and some shouting. Need a louder mix here man, 'cause I think you want to make my ears bleed but this muffly mix can't cut the eardrum mustard. The drums are well-played. Oh, some guitar wanking. People still do this? Got some nice songwriting structure, things come in and go out in a regular type way. This could've been pretty sweet if it had been just like, taken to the max Klownhole style or something. Muffed it.

the pannacotta army - Ok this mix is a lot louder than ShotPounder, and I don't trust any of you people here so I'm turning it down in case you go all Lightning Ear Fart on me. So far pretty nice, pleasant. If you're going to be this pleasant, I hope you have something to say. Come on now, relate to me and shit. "Eagle floating in the sky, I'm wondering just what it's like to fly. That's all I want. That's all I want. 'Cause that's enough for us" ... omg ... you spent way too much time on the music and singing and playing of this song for those lyrics to be acceptable. Oooh, I do like the instrumental sort of jingle-bell part leading up to 3:00. But really, going on to talk about catching raindrops in your hand and drifting across the fucking tidal sand oh my god it really makes me want to kill Manhattan Glutton all over again in a fit of pique, as a proxy for my real vengeance upon whoever sold you the demon pen you used to write these lyrics they're going to kill us all RUN FOR YOUR LIVES EVERYONE RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!

I am compelled, most likely by the power of Christ, to note that exactly half of the aural splooge of Guiterrorists is the contemporary stylings of Canada's Own Sven Mullet. Fierce debated will likely fail to emerge on which parts were "written" by whom.

BTW Sven didn't have enough tissues.FYI.

JB said:

"She's really got a hold on me, and I cannot break free" is a terrible line, poorly sung. Sorry dude.

No worries, I wish I had more time to practice the vocals and several more takes to make them better. I would normally agree those cliche' lyrics are terrible, but it being a song about B & D, I thought it was kinda funny. Your points are well taken. Thanks for the review. BTW Martyr got the Discipline double entendre (one musical other lyrical) on 1st listen, I was impressed.

BTW JB your song is AWESOME! and what the Hell? I thought you hated auto-tune, you certainly don't need it. Is that the joke? It struck me quite strange.

Bgm--- good picking, guitar sounds soo clean. Love the progression.

Pannacotta---sweet, enjoyed

Git-anamo Bay for you bastards!

Bwah ha ha! It's actually just as well that I was too busy to blather over all of that. This is actually pretty excellent. Maybe you should throw a blank verse or two in there so that I can try to be all MET-ALLLLLLL on a remix.

AYYYYYiiiiiAAAAHHHHHH AHHHHH!

(woo)

glennny wrote:BTW JB your song is AWESOME! and what the Hell? I thought you hated auto-tune, you certainly don't need it. Is that the joke? It struck me quite strange.

Thanks man. I don't hate auto-tune in certain styles. For this sort of thing it kind of feels like if those vox weren't auto-tuned it wouldn't give the same feeling of mechanical precision. Also it contrasts with the chorus parts that were somewhat less processed (aside from the masses of reverb and delay).

JB

Very quickly... Giving each song like 5 seconds to grab me - if nothing, moving on. All I have to say is this:

If Pannacotta Army doesn't win this by at least 10 votes you all have no taste in music. Brilliant.

jb wrote:The John Benjamin Band - ...I added vocals, a pad, and mixed it down...

Dearest JBB,

For the sake of bettering all our recordings, would you mind going into a little bit more detail about this "pad"? I have a friend that tried to explain what a "pad" is to me once, but this is the sort of guy that, well, let's just say you'd never ask him for directions unless you wanted to end up really, really lost. He was able to convey that most pop songs have some sort of pad and that without them they often sound thin and trite. What specifically did you do on this tune?

Also, very cool story about the initial composition. A "Mile High Club" of sorts?

dirgetheband wrote:

jb wrote:The John Benjamin Band - ...I added vocals, a pad, and mixed it down...

Dearest JBB,

For the sake of bettering all our recordings, would you mind going into a little bit more detail about this "pad"? I have a friend that tried to explain what a "pad" is to me once, but this is the sort of guy that, well, let's just say you'd never ask him for directions unless you wanted to end up really, really lost. He was able to convey that most pop songs have some sort of pad and that without them they often sound thin and trite. What specifically did you do on this tune?

A pad is usually an "ethereal" synthesizer sound played in the background of an arrangement. It can be anything from a spacey sound, to long held-out strings, to long tones on an organ. It's something that fills in the spaces of your arrangement-- it can be subtle or really obvious. Kind of like when you see a movie, if they don't have any room sounds recorded, it sounds weird. You need that atmosphere to make things seem "real". Or it's like The Dude's rug-- it really brings the different parts of the arrangement together. Which helps when you record like most Songfighters do: one part at a time in their rooms at home by themselves.

On my song I put the pad, which was a synthetic string sound, under the last verse that starts out "The collider is proving..." it fades in until at the end of the chorus it should be pretty audible. I put it there to make that last verse get more "complex" and full sounding (there are also several more vocal parts on that verse). When I didn't have those parts in there, that last verse didn't sound as interesting as the one before it-- which has the "bell" arpeggiating over it, which is the musical equivalent of the melody between the stars. Which I hope doesn't come across as corny as it looks there when I type it.

The pad sound is also over the repeating choruses that end the song, hopefully helping it sound really grand and full after the relative dryness of the instrumental section preceding the ending chorus vocals.

Of course, the absence of a pad has its uses as well. If you have a lot of full arrangement, it can be nicely refreshing to break things down and make them a bit more sparse-- that's what I tried to do at 1:37.

Oh, and I guess you could call the "Hip Hop Sub Bass" that is under the ending chorus section a pad as well-- a bass pad, to thicken that part even more down at the bottom. Long sustained bass tones, with all the rhythmic action going on on top of it. (That was also straight out of Garage Band on the iPad.)

Here is a page full of pads for some examples: http://www.soundsnap.com/tags/synth_pad They're not exactly what I would normally use, but that's the type of thing a "pad" is.

Hope this helps,

JB

if anyone can transcribe the guiterrorists song, i will buy them a beer
also, I still like my mix better Also, mo's mix is awesome.

yeah probably in hindsight i should've used a bit less delay, and your vocal ending ties it all together, like the Dude's rug. i am really not a fan of this mastering though

dirgetheband wrote:If Pannacotta Army doesn't win this by at least 10 votes you all have no taste in music. Brilliant.

Thanks muchly Dirge - if my limited experience of SF is anything to go by I think that's highly unlikely to happen.

There is a classic SF quote from MC Frontalot: "If you go in thinking you're going to win, you only wind up mad at Octothorpe."