Song Fu 3

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  • MaWMaW
    edited February 2009
    I'm working on another idea now, which has basically no lyric content and is more like an exercise in time signatures. The whole ten words thing got me thinking about counting, and one thing led to another, and it's probably going to end up sounding utterly, utterly foul. If it does, I promise I won't post it.

    ETA: voidptr, it does indeed seem to be a fuge, or something fugue-like enough to fool me anyway. I like it, and I don't think you need to worry about your vocal tuning too much as it was pretty solid for most of the song. The letdown in technique is diction from time to time, but it is entirely comprehensible.
  • @voidptr: Many people have given up wishing they sang in pitch, and invested in AutoTune instead. You are doing great. Nice concept, and the diminished chord at the end is a good giggle in terms of unexpectedness.
  • Too Many Notes...
  • (Look, okay, it was brilliant, alright!!!! Too bloody much better than mine!!!!)
  • edited February 2009
    I doubt it, Covenant. You're not likely to go around singing this like Gle3n was with Molly's last entry. (At least not unless you can sing four parts simultaneously.) Trust me! I was trying for the last two days, and it doesn't work!

    Also, I almost feel like I cheated by completely abandoning the pop music tradition (but the rules do say any style).
  • Show of hands: Is it against the spirit of the contest to spell out one of the ten words?

    Like, would the line, "Bananas! Bee-ay-en-ay-en-ey-ess, bananas!" count as a single word?

    (No, I'm not covering Gwen Stefani.)
  • That'd be bending the rules quite a bit imho.

    I rejected anything remotely ambigious. No oh, uh, ulalala, no I'm, don't etc. I did consider using the first 30-something digits of pi, though.

    I'm tempted to use the f-word to underline the emotions conveyed in the other 9 words I'm using. I try to avoid profanity in my lyrics, so I have my own dilemma, I guess.
  • What about "banana" and "bananas"? Too liberal as well?

    By the way, a song about pi with the eff-word used throughout intrigues me greatly.
  • You could sing all the digits of pi with only ten distinct words, but how would you indicate the decimal point?

    Pi in nonary?
  • I think contractions such as can't don't etc would surely only count as one word.
    (Can't especially, as it is a contraction of cannot... which is one word!)

    ;' )

    (Besides, I have a stake in can;t being one word!!! ;' ) )

    Bananas, and banana.. two different 'unique' words. (In my book!) ;' )
  • I was wondering about contractions too. I think it's clear enough that they would count as one word, but I think that would be true even if you're already using the individual words elsewhere. For example, if you already have the words "it" and "is" in your piece, I don't think you get "its" for free. You'd have to count it as a third word. So in that respect, you might get more bang for your buck if you don't use contractions, unless that's really all you want.

    At least that's my take on it.
  • Yeah, I would take that as read. Cannot, Can't and can not... = four words.
  • So I was recording guitars and vocals for my entry . . . and I couldn't think of anything extra I could add to make it better. Simplicity may be an ally for this challenge, but I'm also concerned that it'll be too, well, clich
  • Oooo....
    I'm wondering if everyone is having the same take on this... I've spoken to 4 or 5 people and all of them (me included) have said that the word *love* features heavily in their song!

    I'm actually going to be spending today re-working mine totally.
    From those I bounce my ideas off of, it didn't seem to want to stand up to repeated listenings.

    But, at least I've an idea what I'm gonna do with it...
    (This one will be tight for me though, I think.)
  • Ten words of advice: Don't waste four on the introduction.

    If you only have ten words, pick the right ones.
  • Nicely done, Angelastic! Gold star for "smartly subtle pithiness"...

    :-)
  • BryBry
    edited February 2009
    Gee, first they let Mike Lombardo submit a song he wrote earlier, and now Heather Henderson gets to submit the same song two rounds in a row?

    /snark off

    (edited to make wording snappier)
  • @Bry
    ???????????? What ??????

    @Angela
    Well.... Yeah...
  • (Not that I mind explaining my jokes, but I'll let this one percolate a little longer before spelling it out.)
  • Hah... yeah, I also thought that but was not snarky enough to say it, nor could I be bothered checking its accuracy.
  • (Are we talking about the fact that Heather's song just seemed to use the words, Happy.. I'm so happy?)
  • (Cov: Yes, and by the way that's why Jutze said in his review that her vocals sounded copied-and-pasted, hence her reply.)
  • edited February 2009
    Wow... so I decided to try to write a ten-unique-word poem as a shadow thing, but when I tried various things in a coffee shop yesterday I always seemed to end up needing an eleventh word. Today I'd basically given up, but typed in parts of what I'd written yesterday anyway, and although I still don't really like it, I noticed that it actually only has nine unique words. So I just need to find one more word which will solve all its problems! Oh, the horrible pressure of freedom! Of course, it's entirely possible that I miscounted. I should write a script to do that.

    ETA: yep, I miscounted. There are already ten unique words and it's going to have to stay not very good. :(

    EATA: Aw, crap... I also pluralised one of the words part-way through. But... I also pluralised one of the characters, so I could pretend it was on purpose.
    </selfcentredrant>
  • @Bry...
    Rigghtt.. see Heather's was one that suffered from *Tape slippage* so I never really heard it properly.
    I must have missed Jutze comments, cos I saw Heather's c&p comment and thought SHE was having a go at someone !

    @ Angela...
    And now try setting it to music and making it not sound repetitive...

    ;' )
    (fun, huh!?)
  • I think music would make it sound less repetitive, there's no limit on word/note combinations. I'm not a musician, so I don't think I'll try it... but on the other hand, maybe I'll simply assign a note to each word and see what tune comes out, just for fun. But I don't think there are that many notes in a key. I still haven't got around to rereading the music theory thread.
  • I was wondering if anyone is doing a song that would build up the words or subtract a word each time through. There is one we used to sing in the SCA to the tune of "Glory glory Hallelulia" where you would take away a word at the end every time through from the phrase- "Oh Sir William do not touch me" with the line "as she lay between the lily white sheets with nothing on at all" as a tag line between verses. It got quite ...interesting... by the end.
  • Remember when Conan O Brien was managing a boy band called "Dudez a Plenti" and they had a song called "Baby, I Wish You Were My Baby"? That's just simplistic gold right there.
  • I'm wondering if everyone is having the same take on this... I've spoken to 4 or 5 people and all of them (me included) have said that the word *love* features heavily in their song!
    Nope - no love here!

    I've done two songs, one is a simple phrase that's been rearranged in varying ways across 3 verses and a chorus. It's a harmless little thing. I've just done it as a rough demo, but will probably put it up on my web site when the next round of voting starts. At which point I'll no doubt wish I had used it as my official entry.

    The other is taking a little longer, but it is the polar opposite of my last one. This song is so hideously convoluted that there's no way it will stick in anybody's mind*, despite its apparent brevity!


    *Robert Fripp's or John Cage's, maybe?
  • edited February 2009
    Well, I put up my shadow poem. It has ten and a half unique words (one of them is there in both singular and plural) shuffled and repeated (sometimes using different meanings of homonyms) to make 117 words in total. It's not at all funny, in fact it's pretty tragic (not based on a true story) and I'm not sure whether it even makes sense, but it's there, and it almost conforms to the rules. I tried what I mentioned earlier, assigning a note in the C minor scale to each word and getting my Mac to sing it, but it sounded ridiculous. So it stays as a mere poem, which is all I intended it to be.

    Probably the best thing about it is the illustration, a playing card showing how little you need to make a great hot chocolate (or poem?) I got it from Cadbury World, where Kerrin, Agent Lex, Gingerlink and I went as part of the road trip of doom the day after the Birmingham concert. I'm glad that concert was moved from Oxford to Birmingham, I don't know of any chocolate factories in Oxford. :D

    ETA: John Cage might complain that it was difficult to use so many words.
  • that's pretty cool Angelastic. It's got an ee cummings vibe to it.
  • It has ten and a half unique words (one of them is there in both singular and plural)
    So, it has eleven words in it then!?
    (Part and Parts = 2 words... (Especially as Part itself IS used as a homonym - Sorry, them's the rules!)
    ;' ) (I'm SUCH a HARD-ass!)

    (Quickening and quickening.... Well.. context wise it CAN mean the same thing all the way through so the added *context* is a bonus! No fail for 2 quickenings!))

    It would be interesting to hear the music you hear for it though !!!
    ;' )
  • edited February 2009
    @MaW: Thanks for the constructive criticism! (I take it well) I will start paying more attention to my diction (unintentional rhyme!) while singing. I also think I tend to not have a very consistent breath support. So many things to think about while singing: breathing correctly and consistently, pronouncing words, staying on pitch and on time, etc... and on top of it all, trying convey the mood and feel of the song.

    (ETA: You also mentioned doing something with numbers and time signatures. Coincidentally, I was thinking of doing something experimental with numbers and intervals (based off of our music theory discussion thread). Basically like solfege, except singing 1,2,3 instead of do,re,me. That would've given me 8 words, with the other two for flats and sharps. "One, five, three-flat!" Possibly working up to having multiple voices panned to different locations, singing random chords. I'm sure it would've sounded quite horrendous!)
  • ;' ) heres what I think about when I'm singing...

    "INTO the mic, INTO the mic..."
    "Who wrote this crap... Oh yeah.. me..."
    "BREATH!!!"
    "Not... gonna.... make it....!"
    "Re-record this one..."
  • that's pretty cool Angelastic. It's got an ee cummings vibe to it.
    Thanks.
    (Quickening and quickening.... Well.. context wise it CAN mean the same thing all the way through so the added *context* is a bonus! No fail for 2 quickenings!))
    He condones the two meanings of 'quickening' but doesn't say a word about the multiple meanings for 'part' and 'marks'. Do I get part-marks for those?
    It would be interesting to hear the music you hear for it though !!!
    I don't hear any music for it, but the notes which I pretty much randomly assigned to each word to see what would happen are:

    my Eb
    you C
    part Ab (one octave below, because I wanted a unique note for each word and also wanted to stay in C-minor since I know what it is now)
    parts B (also one octave below... this is the only note not in C-minor, it's supposed to sound like 'part', but wronger, because it's a cheat)
    heart G
    stretch F
    marks Ab
    feel D
    body C (one octave above)
    only Bb (one octave below)
    quickening Bb
    It sounds pretty weird when my computer sings it, but then, my computer usually does sound weird when it sings.

    Ah, what the heck, you may as well hear how silly it sounds. Here's the file, Mac users can get their Macs to sing it by choosing 'Start Speaking' in the 'Speech' submenu of the 'Edit' menu of their favourite text editor*. I tried it with the 'Vicki' voice, but you can try it with others by changing the voice in the System Preferences.

    * I do mean GUI text editor of course, if your favourite text editor is vi then you're probably not really a Mac user at heart.
  • I've decided what it is....
    I like my song... I like my idea.. I think it *works*...
    But I've been thinking... its missing 'something'...

    I've decided what it is...
    I need a drummer !
  • edited February 2009
    Might arrive in time for the deadline: http://www.daveudrums.com/
  • Cool! Jutze is gonna buy a drum track for me !!!

    (Thats what he meant, yeah??)
  • Hydrogen could work as well. It's open-scource drum software. Probably will have to rerecord your song, though, to match it.
  • Covenant: The easiest way is probably just to add a MIDI track to your mixcraft project, and manually add some MIDI drums (no keyboard needed). I think in Mixcraft, it's called a virtual instrument track. Set the virtual instrument to some sort of drum kit (I'm sure Mixcraft has several of those), and open the track with the piano roll editor. You may have to play around a bit to determine which piano note maps to which drum sound. It also may be easier to turn on the snap to grid feature, if you recorded against a metronome at a certain tempo. :-)
  • ;' )

    Remember my cries of help about midi recently....

    ;' )
  • I gave you about as much as I could remember about Mixcraft (the bit about adding a new "virtual instrument track" and setting the virtual instrument to drums), and was trusting the rest to your intuition. I think there's a pencil tool that allows you to "draw" notes into the piano roll editor. You can drag the note up or down to adjust it's pitch (in this case, which drum is playing the note), and right and left to adjust it's timing. You should also be able to drag the end of the note to adjust it's length.

    Play around a bit with it, you might be able to figure something out, and if not, you can always delete the track. I'd define one or two measures of drums, then copy and paste it over and over into the rest of the song. (Or Mixcraft might have a looping feature)

    Unfortunately, by the time I get home tonight it will probably be after 1:00 am or so in your time zone, which is probably to late to be of much help -- and I don't have Mixcraft installed at work! :-p
  • Hah !!!
    1 am !?!?!?
    Middle of the afternoon !!!
    ;' )
    Well, no quite, but bedtimes usually between 3 and 4
  • I know that feeling! But what timezone is the deadline in tonight?

    Anyway, if you wanna start looking at it, I'll see how I can help when I get home.
  • You know what....
    I'm too close to it now. I've been adding drum sounds for the last hour, and it just sounds wrong to me know *With* them.
    I have *one* more than, hopefully, that can be added.... Otherwise it's going in as is...

    (For a song that I thought I had sussed 6 hours into day one, this one is killing me!)
  • The deadline isn't tonight. It's 11:59pm EST on Thursday, February 26th, 2009.
  • (My bad. I thought I remembered reading Tuesday. Got the first letter right, at least!)
  • OKay...
    After last minute panics...
    It's done...
    And it's on its way in.
    My words used were. (In random order)

    Could I Wish Love Can't Know But You Do Tell

    This time - Huge shout out to our very own Colleenky!
    (Tagged in the info tags on the MP3!)

    Maybe later, she'll tell you what she did to make me think I was gonna die...

    ;' )
  • Do tell!
    I wish I could, but I can't, you know? But you could.

    (Wow, those are pretty useful words, I have to admit.)
  • Gee, I hope the third challenge includes, "Write a 5 to 10 page essay," so I can be the next JoCo Forum member immortalised in Covenant's MP3 metadata.
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