2024-MAR-01 Info: Check out Songwriting Competition 079 if you're into "Synthwave" music making.

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Winners announced

Thematic Songwriting Competition - recurrence: monthly
OctopusOnFire

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#21

Post by OctopusOnFire »

I won't be able to participate on this one, I had personal stuff to attend to these 2 days, and my brain needed the spare time for itself. I'm about 85% there, like on the 1st SWC, and I don't want to post a half-baked song.

I'm considering the pros and cons of extending the SCW period up to 2 months instead of 1. I was thinking on suggesting it so people would have more time to polish their production, since the quality bar is considerably high and many people could feel intimidated to do a full song in 1 month. Then again, competitions with an excessive time window can suffer from it.

Anyway, I remember something said by Jon Tidey from The Reaper Blog (or was it Kenny Gioia?), that he doesn't really make songs, he just puts sounds together. And maybe most of us here are mostly like that, we like to put sounds together. Making a song, at least to me, it's on another level. You have to put more... say, "artistical intention" on it. It's an extra switch you have to turn on, and it's not easy unless you're used to do it. If you're used to mixing (which I think it's the case for most people here), you are using that artistry in order to properly enhance other people's original work, which IMO is a very different matter.

I'm just trying to figure out why the SWC doesn't fly and people don't join. In my experience, it is demmanding, especially if it's a one man operation. I understand why people wouldn't even consider trying.

In my case, I'll try to keep it simple for further challenges, focus on what I can do in the most efficient way. But, I don't know how to make the challenge more appealing for the people leaning to the engineering side of music, which I would think they're the majority here.
erictracks
Posts: 43
Joined: Sun May 14, 2017 03:52 CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#22

Post by erictracks »

Here's my entry "World is Hell". It's about how modern real life is so complicated and ugly, and people retreat into their comforting cyber world/bubble.

MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ciq3wzrg09pt ... l.mp3?dl=0

WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tk5e4cipb24e8 ... l.wav?dl=0

The mix is a rough one, but here we are it's already Friday.

For drums I used the free sample set from Samples from Mars, and some of the Studio One sounds in the Impact instrument.

Guitars are through S-Gear and various choruses.

I used Arturia SEM-V for the sequenced sound, Mini for the melody, Prophet and Matrix-12 for the pads, and the TAL noisemaker for the beep boops near the end.
FixInTheMix
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat May 20, 2017 20:13 CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#23

Post by FixInTheMix »

Okay, I wasn´t able to finish the track, the idea was to make an intro similar to the bridge section but instead of singing I would read a fragment of the novel "Neuromancer" by William Gibson as it is the holy grail of cyberpunk literature, pretty much the same way Gunship did on "Tech Noir" with a recording of John Carpenter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nC5TBv3sfU
Also I wanted to add lyrics to the song (besides the ones in the bridge) but I never got to, I suck at writing lyrics so bad :bang:
And I think my main issue is that I don´t know how to arrange and make the songs longer, I kinda got stucked after adding the main melody and couldn´t figure out how to repeat sections, my plan was to add another repetition of the prechous and chorus but It felt off :shrug:
Anyways I´m posting what I have, please if anyone has any suggestions for this arrangement issue I would like to hear it, I want to make a solid track out of this.

The song is called "Burning Chrome"

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbt5mtljk20zi ... e.wav?dl=1
MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8lcau2dro750z ... e.mp3?dl=1

EDIT: I just realized that the ending cuts abruptly and doesn´t let the delay and reverb to decay, I´ll change the files on sunday.
kc23

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#24

Post by kc23 »

Hi there

Talking about just putting sounds toguether and half baked songs, here's my submission.

Did this in a few hours,, bet you can tell!

threw some loops,improvised some guitars and keybs, edited the thing and mixed it on the fly. it's still full of things to fix... but needed to blow some steam of from things at work.

Anyway,I was imagining some sort of persecution themed show... something like Logan's Run meets Macross Plus while listening to King Crimson's Projects.

So, there.

bye!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6veeihu1lopbj ... a.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9rnhsl7w226ez ... a.mp3?dl=0
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Mister Fox
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#25

Post by Mister Fox »

OctopusOnFire wrote:
Fri Nov 24, 2017 13:26 CET
I'm just trying to figure out why the SWC doesn't fly and people don't join. In my experience, it is demmanding, especially if it's a one man operation. I understand why people wouldn't even consider trying.
Can we please discuss this in the Gossip Thread?
Because I'm wondering as well and I'd love to collect some feedback for future competitions. Thank you.
Tbase2000

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#26

Post by Tbase2000 »

Nice work you guys. @FixInDaMix The most important part about collaborating with another singer or songwriter in my opinion is to provide them with a "La De Da" vocal melody. La de da de da de dah....Dah dah dah da De da daha....Shower singing with no words. It's the delivery that is always in question. Hum it...play it on piano or guitar...doesn't matter but most of the times I have worked on other peoples stuff...they don't provide a delivery yet they have a preconceived idea. It takes way more work to redo an original vocal than it does to match an idea already laid out. Sometimes if the singer writes the vocal melody and lyrics for another project and it doesn't work... they can't just change because they are now personally invested. That song is now in their head. Anyway... You have some Linkin Park going there. Dig it! Go back to that. If it's lyrics your after...still do the La de da's. Give the person a theme and a couple scene scenarios and they will put the words to the La de da's...then you sing them.

My approach to writing and singing.

Once again...nice work.
FixInTheMix
Posts: 78
Joined: Sat May 20, 2017 20:13 CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#27

Post by FixInTheMix »

Thanks for the feedback Tbase, I totally get what you said, I don´t have much problems with making the melody itself, as you said just humming while playing on a instrument usually does it but my main problem goes with the structure of the song, like in this song I don´t really know where is the chorus or if it even exists.
It´s really strange that you though this sounds like Linkin Park (could be for the vocal part?) as I think it´s pretty much straigh forward synthwave, I based the song on Lazerhawk´s "Overdrive" specially for the lead solo sound.
Tbase2000

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Submissions until 24-11-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#28

Post by Tbase2000 »

Only your vocal sounds like Linkin Park ish.... Sorry for the confusion. If you let it go it would rock. Go for it. The music around that vocal part does some morphing eqs and stuff which is cool too. Not the same as the "verses" but your voice would work on all of it.
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Mister Fox
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Preparation Period

#29

Post by Mister Fox »

It is the 25th November 2017, 4:50pm GMT+1/CET - this month's Songwriting Competition has official ended

Thank you so much for your participation. We had 4 participants, 1 entry less compared to last month (5 entries). Since we have four entries, the add-on rule (Staff adding "balancing vote") doesn't apply, unless there is a tie-situation.



:arrow: How do we go from there?

Over the course of the next (hopefully) 24-48 hours, I'll gather all links into one post and hot-link to that from the first post of the thread. So please, check your links again. Mistakes and hiccups do happen on the internet. We then perform with the "public vote" system.


We have 5 participants, those being: Tbase2000, erictracks, FixInTheMix and kc23
That means that each participant can vote for 3 tracks.

The Top 10 list (or Top 3 per participant rather) can look something like this:
01 (10pts) - Mr Moon
02 (9pts) - Mr Sun
03 (8pts) - Mrs Venus

Feedback during/after the "scoring list" is highly encouraged.
Musicians and Engineers are always after constructive criticism. This is what this forum is about.



If you have an idea for an upcoming Competition (like a theme or music genre), please voice it and/or your feedback/concerns here:
http://mix-challenge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=97

I'd especially like to talk about the decrease of the participation. So please join the discussion and maybe offer some constructive criticism how to improve things and keep this game alive and running. Thank you in advance.




Please have an eye on this thread! :tu:
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Mister Fox
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Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC03 November 2017 - Voting until 01-12-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET

#30

Post by Mister Fox »

Let us kick off the VOTING PROCESS, which will end on Friday, 01-DEC-2017 11:59pm GMT+1/CET latest


There is a GLOBAL COUNTDOWN to check for deadlines.
Just follow this link: Global Countdown (on homepage)



Here is the collection of productions from all participants:


FixInTheMix wrote:
Fri Nov 24, 2017 21:50 CET
The song is called "Burning Chrome"

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbt5mtljk20zi ... e.wav?dl=1
MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8lcau2dro750z ... e.mp3?dl=1



Please consult this post of how your vote could look like.

Good luck to all participants! :tu:
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