The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Welcome to Round Two!

Title: Stolen Diary
Non Optional Challenge: Vocal Harmony
Songs are Due on: Monday, May 4th @ 12:01 AM EDT
Send your MP3 to nurein.sidefight@gmail.com

NUR EIN!!

Not gonna lie, this one's kind of a softball. It's harder to find songs that don't have vocal harmony than ones that do. So this one will be especially about whether the judges like your approach to the challenge—whether it fits the context of the song, whether it's creative and/or unexpected, and so on.

Here are some of the nigh-infinite examples of vocal harmony being used effectively in rock and pop music:

And some more.













And here are some from Song Fight and Nur Ein history:
prayformojo - Adaptation
Brody - Red Flag
Future Boy
The John Benjamin Band - My Sister
Glenn & Rachael - Need Stilts (see also: every other Glenn & Rachael song)

Glenn Case - Pencil Me In (Nur Ein I, Round 1)
The John Benjamin Band - The Blitz (Nur Ein III, Round 3) (see also: all the other entries in that fight)
Minty Handy - Headphones (Nur Ein V, Round 6)

I could do this literally all day; there are millions of examples. Feel free to ask questions if you have any.

Stop guiding people, already. Just let them make songs, dammit!

But then how will I administer the mandatory quiz at the end of the round?

All kidding aside, duly noted. Happy writing and recording!

I was told Johnny Cashpoint was going to mother me.

the judges are going to smother us??!?!? WHAT??!?!?

This is a very good title, by the way.

Got out a very old, actual journal-diary thing from over a DECADE ago to get in the spirit of things. This is some Epic Theater. I'm dying here.

I was thinking of doing the same thing [get old journal]. It was boring. There's also a Sweet Valley High "Stolen Diary" book/ tv episode, but that didn't inspire me, either.
But I think I just got the inspiration for the song I might actually write.

Sweet Valley High! WOW! I just flashed back to pre-teen me and it was, like, SOOOOOOO gnarly.

Not a massive fan of this title. Hard to write it outside the perspective of a 14 year old girl.

I have discovered slide ukulele though guys. You heard it here first, it's gonna rock your world.

adamadamant wrote:Hard to write it outside the perspective of a 14 year old girl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys

The 'Scribes' from the planet of 'Scribbles'....are the power elite. Everybody else is termed 'Sub- Scribes'. IF, you are a Sub-Scribe, and work hard , or marry correctly, or, perhaps win the 'ONLY ONE' contest...etc., being a Scribe is a distinct possibility !!

There ya go Adam....I won't be there to write it....I should of added barking dogs !!!! haha

Doh !!! wrong fight, wrong title, wrong comment, wrong ! wrong !! WRONG !!!!!! (crazy)

furrypedro wrote:

adamadamant wrote:Hard to write it outside the perspective of a 14 year old girl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys

I probably shouldn't go on about it. It is only my opinion.

But... It's not the idea of keeping a diary, but the idea that a diary has been stolen, or more precisely writing a song about the person who stole the diary. The teenage girl thing is not just diary keeping, but also publicly feuding about minor things and keeping secrets in a diary, secrets that other people want to steal.

If we are not allowed to winge what are we allowed eh?

.. Get someone else who actually has an imagination to write the lyrics for you this time? ;p

So I'm curious to hear peoples' interpretations of the prompt's requirements in general (not just this round). So far I've been playing it safe and explicitly including the assigned titles in the lyrics, but how much leeway is this here? If song centers, for example, around a metaphor that's obviously tied into the title, does that suffice? What are some criteria we can use to judge whether we're still, in the judges views, writing to the prompt?

Obviously there're no hard and fast answers, but I'm interested to hear how everyone's been interpreting things.

MichaelJSamuels wrote:So I'm curious to hear peoples' interpretations of the prompt's requirements in general (not just this round). So far I've been playing it safe and explicitly including the assigned titles in the lyrics, but how much leeway is this here? If song centers, for example, around a metaphor that's obviously tied into the title, does that suffice? What are some criteria we can use to judge whether we're still, in the judges views, writing to the prompt?

Obviously there're no hard and fast answers, but I'm interested to hear how everyone's been interpreting things.

As stated before, I am not a participant in this competition. However, I love interpretation, especially the flexibility related to interpretation and artistic expression. Therefore, I am going to reply to your post

It is my opinion, from a creative standpoint, that you can interpret the theme or subject however you wish. You are merely at the mercy of the judges. If a judge interprets the subject in a similar fashion, then you should do well in the competition. If a judge does not, then you won't. The good news for you is that there are multiple judges, creating more of a chance that a judge can see the work from your perspective. I would say this site has been the cornerstone of teaching me that people do not see things from my perspective. For example, my songfight entry for the subject "Suitcase" was based upon a secret agent trying to keep his locked suitcase away from bad guys. This interpretation flooded my mind the moment I read the word. However, the other entries were focused on leaving a bad relationship or moving on or something metaphorically tied to packing things into a suitcase.

In regards to Nur Ein X, I have interpreted the challenges in this manner:
Standing on the Edge - a two part song from the perspective of a 12-year-old female caller requesting help from an anonymous help line who ultimately commits suicide and some time later, a 20 year old musician with a dream calls the same help line asking for help and referring to a news article where he read that a 12 year old girl committed suicide and he didn't want that for his life. (My daughter is learning the first part and still wants to sing it... that's why this one is taking so long.)
Average Circus - a two part song from the perspective of a person arriving at a circus and being led around the big tent by the ringmaster. The ringmaster notices the person is uninterested in the events, so he sends the person outside to the carnival games being run by the carnival barker. (I haven't written the big-top part yet )
Stolen Diary - I wanted this song to be like Rilo Kiley's song "My Slumbering Heart" wherein she describes three distinct dreams over three verses in her song and incorporating feelings of dreams that are common to everyone (for example, repeating the line "and we better hurry up" at the end of every stanza). I don't believe I referred specifically to a diary in my first draft, but I was going to. Anyway, my song was going to be a person, like a brother or sister, reading dreams that were written in a dream journal by the other sibling.

In the end, your creativity is your own. Interpretation should be up to the creator and each song is likely graded on its own merits. At least, that's what I have seen so far from a community as musically diverse as this.

Everyone else can feel free to crap all over my post if I am wrong.

-jd0

I really love the challenge as it gives me an excuse to really focus on vocal harmonies in a way I often mean to get to, but don't. ... the title on the other hand; well I agree that it's a difficult one to work with but I do have a story idea that fits the title that I now need to somehow turn into lyrics that fit my music ...

j$ wrote:.. Get someone else who actually has an imagination to write the lyrics for you this time? ;p

BURN!

MichaelJSamuels wrote:So I'm curious to hear peoples' interpretations of the prompt's requirements in general (not just this round). So far I've been playing it safe and explicitly including the assigned titles in the lyrics, but how much leeway is this here? If song centers, for example, around a metaphor that's obviously tied into the title, does that suffice? What are some criteria we can use to judge whether we're still, in the judges views, writing to the prompt?

Obviously there're no hard and fast answers, but I'm interested to hear how everyone's been interpreting things.

You are correct that there are no hard and fast answers. One of the defining characteristics of Nur Ein is that the competitors and judges both have a lot of leeway for making these determinations. A title and challenge are both given, but the challenge is usually worded to be succinct as possible (sometimes at the expense of clarity). The judges can choose to clarify what their take on the challenge is, or not, depending on their mood. The rules do not specify how important that challenge implementation should be in the judgement of the song, or what to do if the judge feels that a song hasn't met the challenge. There are no formal rules for disqualification, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever been disqualified from Nur Ein - however, the judges can choose to give low scores to songs they find distasteful, or songs that haven't met the challenge... or for any reason at all.

As for titles, it's true that most entries contain the title verbatim somewhere in the lyrics. It's not a hard-and-fast requirement that they do, though, as long as the song appears to "match" the title, or be inspired by it. Billy's Little Trip did a whole year's worth of songs without using the titles in his lyrics (can't remember what year that was; anyone care to refresh my memory?). I don't think I used the title in my "Colourblind," and hey, I even did an instrumental once (but that got eliminated, so I didn't exactly "get away with it" in that case).