The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Today I played with both Garage Band and NanoStudio (http://www.blipinteractive.co.uk/) iPhone apps and was really happy about perhaps blogging about the different pros and cons of utilizing each in different situations. Nanostudio is really neat and I wrote a succinct and beautiful post talking about the wonders of it; and the similarities and differences it has to Garage Band (a very useful app in it's own right).

My post disintegrated when I got kicked off the forums. So I got growly and left. But I may post the results of my experiments soon enough. Perhaps in a songfight entry entirely SmartDevice recorded...
(with me, this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen)
if they make pianoteq portable the joy you see from me will be really annoying...

Was your original thread on said iphone?

Billy's Little Trip wrote:Was your original thread on said iphone?

No, it was on the iPad, and I know better than to write longLong posts in a browser rather than a note. My own silly fault but Ack!

Well, the iDisintegrated button shouldn't be right next to the enter button.

I've lost my review post so many times to this exact same iPad daemon. It really ruffles my feathers. In other news, I have a friend who carries his damn iPad with GarageBand around with him to make impromptu recordings. My problem with it is that unless you are the most amazing musician in the world, it still sounds like crap through the little built in mic.

BBABM wrote:It really ruffles my feathers.

So, it puts you in a fowl mood?

the thing that frustrates me about all that is...well..
it's engineering fail, really
I have all these fantastic mics surrounding me, and I can make really cool pianos and nifty arrangements. My mixing has even improved..
The one fight I've ever won by myself as RangerDen (Vest Factory) was recorded with the laptop mic in my Smackbook inside my closet. I clipped twice. I apologized with reverb and effects and mysteriousness. whateverlybrothers to that!
now that I have Complained about the Way of things I shall have coffee again I guess and foist more audio madness upon the unsuspecting populace first I shall copy this post..

just now i gave it another shot, and i have found that on the ipad version of garageband it is impossible to get your vocals sounding good. i have tried the built in mic, and another mic going through the iRig... both sound like im at the bottom of a well, with a cold, and a ball gag.

RangerDenni wrote:The one fight I've ever won by myself as RangerDen (Vest Factory) was recorded with the laptop mic in my Smackbook inside my closet. I clipped twice. I apologized with reverb and effects and mysteriousness.

Goes to show that there is a sweetspot between songwriting and production in order to place well on Song Fight! Plenty-- plenty plenty plenty of great songs have been submitted (old-school go-to example is everything by 15-16 Puzzle) but placed poorly because they just don't sound good.

Plenty of shitty songs have won just because they sounded radio-ready. Go-to examples of such mediocrity landing at the feet of Josh Woodward like shit from a pigeon.

Make your production good enough that people will want to listen to your song. Put the rest of your effort into the songwriting. And you won't see me writing pigeon-shit comparisons about your music.

JB

BBABM wrote:just now i gave it another shot, and i have found that on the ipad version of garageband it is impossible to get your vocals sounding good. i have tried the built in mic, and another mic going through the iRig... both sound like im at the bottom of a well, with a cold, and a ball gag.

Yeah, I don't think it's possible yet to make a good vocal recording in GarageBand on phone/pad. Closest I can get is using my iRig (actually I have an Apogee Jam), and getting up close to the mic, and then using one of the room effect but turning the reverb all the way down and moving the compression up and down. There's no EQ though, which is the real bitch.

So for now, full on productions using iPad are out of my reach. I can do an ok uke/vocal recording though, which is useful.

JB

What about using something like one of these?

http://tascam.com/product/ixz/

Lunkhead wrote:What about using something like one of these?

http://tascam.com/product/ixz/

that is basically what an irig is, but that one is specifically for a mic.... the irig has a 1/4" input, rather than the input that one has. they make a microphone version... for $60

jb wrote: Make your production good enough that people will want to listen to your song. Put the rest of your effort into the songwriting.
JB

I learned this the hard way during my solo 'Circle Me,' which I recorded with an awesome mic and sent in devoid of any production. That was a failed experiment. :/

In slightly more progressive news perhaps, some of these links may yield interesting fruit. By the folks that bring us that nifty SPL meter ... http://www.studiosixdigital.com/

also, apparently gearslutz has an iPhone app now.

jb wrote:

RangerDenni wrote:The one fight I've ever won by myself as RangerDen (Vest Factory) was recorded with the laptop mic in my Smackbook inside my closet. I clipped twice. I apologized with reverb and effects and mysteriousness.

Goes to show that there is a sweetspot between songwriting and production in order to place well on Song Fight! Plenty-- plenty plenty plenty of great songs have been submitted (old-school go-to example is everything by 15-16 Puzzle) but placed poorly because they just don't sound good.

Plenty of shitty songs have won just because they sounded radio-ready. Go-to examples of such mediocrity landing at the feet of Josh Woodward like shit from a pigeon.

Make your production good enough that people will want to listen to your song. Put the rest of your effort into the songwriting. And you won't see me writing pigeon-shit comparisons about your music.

JB

I love SongFight! and the deadlines have given me all the motivation I need to write and record even though I'm a father of three, a husband (of one, ha ha), and have a more-than-full-time (a.k.a. academic) job. I love the challenge of having to write a song called "Our Love Violates Corporate Policy" in a matter of days (if not hours). I love the fact that people here will actually listen to that song and consider it in a voting decision.

That said: precisely 100% of what I have learned from the SongFight! community is about recording and production techniques. The review threads are a forum where people will tell you how much they like/dislike your voice, your drum sounds, your microphone choice, your use of compression, the EQ settings on your guitar track, your use of panning in the mix. Feedback about the song itself is invariably about the length or the style (i.e. "...I got bored halfway through..." and "...it's not my kind of thing but...").

I don't mean this to be dismissive: production is important and music performance is to some extent a form of salesmanship. People want their ears pleased and it's hard to do that with a tinfoil mic and a detuned guitar. But I have stopped writing reviews and almost stopped reading them here because I've gotten about as good at production as I care to get and I've given up expecting discussions about the use of meter, modulation, prepared dissonance, word painting, story-telling, phrasing, and structure in crafting a compelling song.

This is why I like GarageBand: even a crummy vocal take can be normalized, pitch- and time- corrected a tad, and Creamy Male Lead Vocal'ed into something listenable without any technical know-how. It levels the playing field in a way that would have made my SongFighting life a lot easier in 2002 when I started submitting here (TASCAM 4-track -> Archos Jukebox mp3 encoder). Then people are slightly more likely to say something about your lyrics than about your crummy vocal take. Slightly.

Mostess wrote: This is why I like GarageBand: even a crummy vocal take can be normalized, pitch- and time- corrected a tad, .

Oh? Can it? Do you use that stuff?

I haven't. Not out of any sort sense of it is "cheating" or anything - I know my vox very often need pitch or time correcting - I have just never found the garageband stuff very useful because they seem to make things sound funny....which is probably because I have no idea how to use those things anyway.

I shall go back and have another look at them one day

Caravan Ray wrote:

Mostess wrote: This is why I like GarageBand: even a crummy vocal take can be normalized, pitch- and time- corrected a tad, .

Oh? Can it? Do you use that stuff?

I haven't. Not out of any sort sense of it is "cheating" or anything - I know my vox very often need pitch or time correcting - I have just never found the garageband stuff very useful because they seem to make things sound funny....which is probably because I have no idea how to use those things anyway.

I shall go back and have another look at them one day

But your vocal flow is your unique characteristic that makes you original and interesting. Without that, you'd just fade into the background and become a wealthy famous pop singer. Yuck!

Mostess wrote: I love SongFight! and the deadlines have given me all the motivation I need to write and record even though I'm a father of three, a husband (of one, ha ha), and have a more-than-full-time (a.k.a. academic) job. I love the challenge of having to write a song called "Our Love Violates Corporate Policy" in a matter of days (if not hours). I love the fact that people here will actually listen to that song and consider it in a voting decision.

That said: precisely 100% of what I have learned from the SongFight! community is about recording and production techniques. The review threads are a forum where people will tell you how much they like/dislike your voice, your drum sounds, your microphone choice, your use of compression, the EQ settings on your guitar track, your use of panning in the mix. Feedback about the song itself is invariably about the length or the style (i.e. "...I got bored halfway through..." and "...it's not my kind of thing but...").

I don't mean this to be dismissive: production is important and music performance is to some extent a form of salesmanship. People want their ears pleased and it's hard to do that with a tinfoil mic and a detuned guitar. But I have stopped writing reviews and almost stopped reading them here because I've gotten about as good at production as I care to get and I've given up expecting discussions about the use of meter, modulation, prepared dissonance, word painting, story-telling, phrasing, and structure in crafting a compelling song.

This is why I like GarageBand: even a crummy vocal take can be normalized, pitch- and time- corrected a tad, and Creamy Male Lead Vocal'ed into something listenable without any technical know-how. It levels the playing field in a way that would have made my SongFighting life a lot easier in 2002 when I started submitting here (TASCAM 4-track -> Archos Jukebox mp3 encoder). Then people are slightly more likely to say something about your lyrics than about your crummy vocal take. Slightly.

I guess mileage varies on this, depending on what type of engagement you've had with the community, and what level of expertise you have in non-production topics, but I feel like Songfight can and has taught its users (and myself) about a variety of topics related to the creation of a song and its recording, as well as how to listen critically.

I've participated in several lively discussions about lyrical scansion. Also, a few fights ago, I had a discussion about tone in lyrics - should the words of a song always be conversational? Can you get away with phrases and archaisms in song that would have sounded funny if you tried using them with your co-workers?

Just this past week, I learned quite a bit about microphone technique (which is related to, but I feel ultimately different from, "production").

JB once pointed out here on the boards that brevity of lyrics is one the things he most values. He urged us to take a look at the lyrics to some of our favorite songs and note how few words there were. I did, and I was amazed.

I've seen discussions about the purpose of bridges in songwriting, and whether they're necessary. Ditto for instrumental solos. I believe it was roymond who offhandedly dropped a piece of advice that I almost always think about when writing: the bridge should introduce another point-of-view or approach to the topic of the song.

Collaborating with Jim of Seattle taught me a lot about how to introduce variety into chord progressions.

I've learned lots about arrangement from making my own mistakes and letting those songs get reviewed. When is a song too bare, and when is it too cluttered?

Don't get me wrong, I've also learned a ton about production, too, since my first couple of songs were guy-and-guitar recorded in a single take into my computer's stick microphone being piped into a computer running freeware direct-to-mp3 recording software. I pretty much had nowhere to go but up from there. But the expertise of this community has assisted me in literally every aspect of song creation that I can think of.

Sorry to hijack the thread. As you were.

Caravan Ray wrote:

Mostess wrote: This is why I like GarageBand: even a crummy vocal take can be normalized, pitch- and time- corrected a tad, .

Oh? Can it? Do you use that stuff?

I haven't. Not out of any sort sense of it is "cheating" or anything - I know my vox very often need pitch or time correcting - I have just never found the garageband stuff very useful because they seem to make things sound funny....which is probably because I have no idea how to use those things anyway.

I shall go back and have another look at them one day

Yes I have! Our Pink Ribbon is a GarageBand preset masterpiece and it got us a win quite handily. Re-reading reviews of our song, I'm seeing more non-production-related comments than I remember ("This may not be crispy tight, but the sunny air is very nice. Nice melody and progressions, the bridge is excellent and a nice fit, good build.", "I wish the piano part was a little more interesting. The middle part is very John Lennon.")

Oh and I see that furrypedro wrote "I should really burn off a best of HM for my parents I think they'd really dig it. Not that I don't, I definitely like this but it's not the kind of thing I listen to a lot, and they're big Al Stewart fans." to which JB replied "OH! OH! FOR HIS PARENTS! HIS <B>PARENTS</B>! ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE THAT FROM HIM HOSTESS MOSTESS!?"

So here, nearly 4 years later, I answer: Yes. Yes I am going to take that from him.

Well, these days I probably would too. And when I look at Frankie Big Face's top Spotify artists, I see goddamn Willie Nelson on there for crying out loud. We're all gonna die soon aren't we.

roymond wrote:Alesis iPad thing

I kinda just drooled a bit. That's niftysauce

roymond wrote:Alesis iPad thing

Tremendously cool. Also,tremendously expensive. :-/