The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Or at least, I think it does.

This is a great improvement over the lack of a review thread.

Just did a very quick listen to all of the songs (not all the way through with most of them) and I think Tuners Union is going to get a green smiley face for sure - - - That one really impressed me on the first listen. Berkeley Social Scene is an early favorite too.

Oh, I see whatcha did there, Deep Throat!

AntBut

Likin' the filtered drums... but... is there some kind of MIDI-background music/cliche lyrical generator somewhere online? I kept waiting for the punchline.

Berkeley Social Scene

Yay pop! Like the matching guitar/bass lines. Diggin' the overall sound a lot. Nice going into the chorus. The lead main guitar panned hard left is a little hard to listen to, when it matches up with the bass, my head wants to lean to the left. Still, likin' this. Yep, pretty much only thing I don't like is the overloud insistent guitar in the left channel. Other than the vocals, it's the key to the song, so why is it over there? If it was balanced by something on the right or pushed back a bit and centered, this would be better. You've got plenty of other stuff to fly in panned hard left and right. Diggin' the backwards guitar in the bridge. Like all the sounds a lot. Groovy tune. Vote. Vote

Billy & The Psychotics

I like you guys. Oooh bongos, groovy. As always, lovin' the guitar sounds and drums sound great. Your songs always have great dynamics. Diggin' on DJ's vox as usual. The main guitar riff reminds me of a slowed down 80's hit, can't quite place it. It'll come at 3 am, thanks a lot. I like how this song isn't so easily slotted into any particular genre. Will be listening to this again. Would love to chat about production sometime, you guys get consistently sonically exciting stuff going. Votey vote.

The Chocolate Chips

Autotune on the vocals? Drifty dreamy, pleasant enough, doesn't do much for me.

Jon Eric

Ben Folds in da house! Every tissue in the universe, hehehe. Curious, what's your piano sound? Real piano, digital sample in a computer or a keyboard?

Longfellow Street

So this song is a little schizoid, as I mentioned in the pre-fight thread. We had a Songfight party, had most of the band over, fed 'em and poured spirits down their throats (I can STILL hear the tiny screams...) I came up with a form - ok, I stole it from an old Alvin Robinson song, after Old Crow Medicine Show stole it first - and made up a lyric form to go with it. Drummer couldn't make the party, but he came over for about 15 minutes that afternoon and laid down some beatins. When people arrived later, I showed them a sample verse, handed 'em a drink and asked each person to write one in that form: "It always gets better when *insert your thang here*, then gimme two more lines and repeat the first one and you're done..." Easy, yo, we're not talking fine art here, we're talking something that would be fun to do at a music-geek party. While they were doing that (and drinking...) I put down a bass line - I'm sure it was so much fun for people to hear nothing but a really loud bass amp cranking monotonously away to a loop they couldn't hear - and then everyone took turns playing to a loop of drums and bass. After a while we had a bunch of instrument takes and a scattering of pages with verses on 'em. Everyone got a verse in the final song, including one of our guitarists who wrote some just plain offensive stuff - so his verse got backwards-masked over his solo during the freakout section, hehehe. Then we drunkenly watched youtube videos and went to Taco Bell to get some Doritos tacos. Mmm, Doritos. The next day Mallory and I tracked vocals and added various other bits, and then I got my Edit on. It was a bit of a challenge - but fun! - to patch all this random stuff into anything remotely resembling a song (y'all be grateful that the rap verse got cut from the final mix, it was awful) but it was a good workout for my mad editing $killz. Ahem. So anyway, folks had a good time, people wanna do it again, party was successfully musically geek and once again I'm diggin' on Songfight for giving us an excuse. Because the editing took so much time, the mix didn't really get the attention it deserved, and came out kinda thin. I was working hard to make it so that everything going on could be heard clearly, and I think I overshot my mark into the realm of harsh and brittle. Feedback welcome.

Paco del Stinko

Love the guitar sound right off. Hell yeah. Mmm, half-steps. Likin it all. Oh wait. Mmm, bass is thin in bridge, bridge doesn't really build into the next bit, just kinda ends. Still like it. Vote

Pillar of Paprika

I like the drum sound. Not really into drifty dreamy plodding slow-mid-tempo introspective sounding stuff at this point. Sounds fine. I like the synthy guitary whatever it is.

The Real Sign

"You think you're mad, too unstable / Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables / In a restaurant in a West End town / Call the police, there's a madman around"... cool on the sonic stylings but the phrasing is a bit out of time, and the heavy breathing between phrases is just awful. I mean, really, you actually snuffle back snot between "creepy feeling" and "whenever shit". Adjust your mic technique or compression settings or just cut those out digitally. Ugh.

Ross Durand

Wow, nice acoustic sound. Vocal phrasing sounds a little forced, maybe, but I love the overall sound. "Never to have loved at all", nice little run there. What are you doing to get the lush acoustic guitar sound? Ooooh, love the sound of a hammond when it's pushed into a little distortion like that. Nice. Vote

roymond

Rich sounds. Nicely recorded and played. What is this in, 25/4?!

sausage

Rawk! Fun, rockin' out. Kinda harsh the way it just blasts into the song. I think I saw this band in a bar in Jacksonville once. Is the distortion on the vocals intentional?

The Tiny Paws of Fury

"The Tiny Paws Of Fury" is an awesome band name. Guitar tone is loveably awful. At least I assume it's a guitar. This gets a vote for sheer eclecticism. Vote

Tuners Union

Likin the vocals a lot. Cool when the banjo kicks in. This is great, maybe the best actual song this time around, this one and B&TP. Oh heck yeah, this is great. Nice one, total vote. There's a quality to the voice that makes me want to hear lots more. Cool. Love the instrumentation, really love the various vocals popping in a groovy percussive fashion. Would like to know about the people who made this. Love it. Vote

longfellowsreet wrote:bridge doesn't really build into the next bit, just kinda ends.

This is good motivation, thanks for that and the comments. And vote, too!

longfellowstreet wrote: Jon Eric

Ben Folds in da house! Every tissue in the universe, hehehe. Curious, what's your piano sound? Real piano, digital sample in a computer or a keyboard?

It's this thing, which has stereo phone jacks on the back. I used two guitar cables to plug it into the back of this thing, and recorded it live. During the mix, I used EQ to put a notch in the piano at about 8 kHz, but otherwise left it alone.

And to preempt any questions about the rest of the instrumentation: the cello is from Steinberg's HALion softsynth ("slow cello" setting), programmed on the piano roll with no live performance. The other instrument is a "flute" setting on Ellatron, a Mellotron simulator for iPhone, being played by DJ Ranger Den (thanks, Denni!).

Generic wrote: The other instrument is a "flute" setting on Ellatron, a Mellotron simulator for iPhone, being played by DJ Ranger Den (thanks, Denni!).

Now THAT'S cool. Groovy on playing the piano bits live too, I vastly prefer getting stuff done in a live take. Which doesn't mean I won't brutally edit when necessary... but I do prefer live takes of real instruments. Our entry this time around has one sample, the deep 808 kick, but all the rest of it is real instruments. The synth is a Korg Monotron, finally got to use that thing.

This has been bugging me, so here's a slightly less harsh mix of the song, should be a good bit easier on da ears: http://longfellowstreetmusic.com/mp3/lo ... t_iagb.mp3

JonEric, LongFellowStreet...very nice playlist so far!

longfellowstreet wrote:
"The Tiny Paws Of Fury" is an awesome band name. Guitar tone is loveably awful. At least I assume it's a guitar. This gets a vote for sheer eclecticism. Vote

It is a guitar, an acoustic put through a free guitar amp VST. Deliberately no-fi! Cheers for the vote!

j$

longfellowstreet wrote:Pillar of Paprika

I like the synthy guitary whatever it is.

you mean the ebow?

the idiot king wrote:you mean the ebow?

Is that what dat be? Awesomeness - I love me some eBow. First time I ever heard one was on Big Country's records - they make their guitars sound like bagpipes. Saw Carbon Leaf in Jacksonville, the guitarist had one hanging from his mic stand. Is it really gay that my Mom gave me one for Christmas, or does it just mean I have a really cool Moms? Maybe it's just really lame that I haven't recorded anything with it.*scribbles note to self that eBow must go on next Songfight effort* Dang it, I was feeling all musical-gadgety 'cause I finally got the Monotron on something, and here come folks with eBows and an iPhone Mellotron.

Maybe we could have a side fight, songs only done with musical gadgets and toys. The Monotron will spit out a wicked kick drum sound, deep enough to endanger your speakers if you crank it up. We gotta have enough musical doo-hickies around here to wrangle something cool...

Didn't we have an (unofficial) ebow fight at some point, like a long time ago?

I recall there being talk about it, but you'd have to ask someone else if the songs were ever recorded...

longfellowstreet wrote:Would like to know about the people who made this.

Just a music dork with too much time on his hands. Thanks for comments!

Longfellar----- like this. well done.

Well, I have E-Bow in my song too! Shh! Here comes Glennny...

AntBut - I get an 80s theme song feel from this. I can't say that I really like it, although it does seem well done in its own peculiar way.

Berkeley Social Scene - I find this one quite impressive and it's almost definitely going to get a vote from me (I'm going to give votes/green faces to my four favorites after listening to them all.) On the negative side it seems like the verses repeat too many times before getting to the chorus (which is the highlight for sure...) I also really like the guitars.

Billy & the Psychotics - Pretty rock n roll. Draws me into its world pretty nicely. The main guitar riff is pretty good. Vocals are strong.

Jon Eric - I'm getting a bit of a Ben Folds feeling. I like Ben Folds, so that's a good thing. I'm not crazy about the tone of the piano...

Longfellow Street - Cool backing vocals. Dig the kazoo. Sounds like this was a lot of fun to record and some of that fun does come through to the listener (well.. to this listener anyway.) The backwards vocals during the breakdown was a surprise, but one I quite enjoyed. Keep it weird. Possible vote.

Paco Del Stinko - Rockin' guitars but I'm not crazy about the rest of it.

Pillar of Paprika - Beginning guitar riff reminds me of "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden. Intro was too long I think... but I do really like when the vocal comes in... nice tripped out feel there.

The Real Sign - The rhythm of the spoken vocals could fit the music better.

Ross Durand - This is kind of good but also kind of sloppy... We don't have much time to pull these things together so I'll try to ignore the sloppiness. The chorus is probably the catchiest vocal part of the fight so far. Possible vote despite the sloppy thing.

Roymond - The music is pretty cool but I'm not a fan of the vocals. The guitar solo at around 55 seconds is nice, I like that.

Sausage - Sounds like it was recorded in a trash can... but it's a pretty rockin' trash can. A bit of a Black Keys feeling. Vocals are good, I like their energy a lot. Guitar solo around 2 minutes is awesome. I'm actually getting won over by this song despite being ready to skip to the next one because of the poor sound quality. Possible vote.

The Tiny Paws - The inclusion of the metronome sound is a pretty interesting choice... I'm having a bit of trouble making much sense of the various parts going on here.... at least as far as how they fit together (some of them are quite cool considered on their own.)

Tuners Union - I was curious to see how this would hold up to my initial (very positive) reaction... the answer is very well indeed. This is damn good. The only problem is that it's a bit quiet in comparison to most of the other tracks (not that you need to brickwall it... but a little bit of limiting might be a good addition) ... but the song itself is great. And the production/mix is actually pretty good too I think. This is by far my favorite of the week. Awesome vocals. Definite green face!

chocolatechips wrote:The Tiny Paws - The inclusion of the metronome sound is a pretty interesting choice... I'm having a bit of trouble making much sense of the various parts going on here.... at least as far as how they fit together (some of them are quite cool considered on their own.)

Hey, it's not a metronome, it's a casio vl-tone. All sounds bar the guitar and vox come out of it. I used it live recently and the PA guy just said disdainfully "What is that?"



Can't figure out how it fits together? Listen harder

Loving the avatar, btw

j$

j$ wrote: Hey, it's not a metronome, it's a casio vl-tone. All sounds bar the guitar and vox come out of it. I used it live recently and the PA guy just said disdainfully "What is that?"

Love those little babies. We recorded many songs with it in the 80s. And anyone who celebrates Xmas with my Xmas EP has heard it there.

I don't always vote, but when I do, I vote for The Tiny Paws of Fury and Longfellow Street. Please do bring more of the Cassiotone Nation and drunken experimentation.

Your wish is my considerable pleasure, Father B!