The Avengers Song

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  Comments Off
May 092012
 

Well, technically the Avengers and JLA song, but since the Marvel team are flavour of the moment…

A couple of years ago I wrote a song for SpinTunes #1 about a superhero getting into a huff because neither the Avengers nor the JLA will have him. This is it…

Whilst I did post about it very briefly at the time, I completely neglected to mention anything about the song’s content, leaving the music to speak for itself. That is all very well, but completely fails to draw it to the attention of comic fans who might enjoy the song, but are not regular SpinTunes followers. Time to rectify that with a proper title and something to play with whilst you listen. Here are the lyrics as a force diagram – wiggle those superheroes around!

Choose an artist:

Pick a song:

Digging into SpinTunes

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  5 Responses »
Apr 282012
 

Choose an artist:

Pick a song:

I have been doing a bit of work recently with the stats package R and trying out the visualisation library d3, so it seemed reasonable to load them up with some musical data and see what I could come up with. Here is the first result. It’s a force-directed graph of the lyric linkage within every one of the SpinTunes songs, showing how common words appear in a song and how they flow. Common words like ‘the’ or ‘and’ appear in the middle with lots of links, whilst short, uncommon phrases float around outside. Some of the longer or more complex songs don’t fit very well into the space below, but you can grab the circles and play around with them.

Just select an artist and one of their songs and the network will automatically update. Don’t forget to listen to the song using the embedded player above!

[UPDATE]
I have changed a few things since I originally posted this. The thickness of the links represents how often the two joined words appear together. As a result, you’ll often see choruses or repeated verses standing out because of common lines. The circle size now also represents the number of times each word appears in the lyrics.

Finally, I have posted a version that adjusts to the size of your web browser. This version will let you get a better view of more complex songs and let the visualisation fill your whole screen. Have fun!

Judging the Spin

 Featured, Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  1 Response »
Mar 152012
 

As competitors in SpinTunes 4, we have the opportunity to cast a vote for the ultimate winner of the competition. In the spirit of the event, we felt it was only fair to provide some feedback to the artists in the form of reviews, as those we received as competitors were very welcome and gave us some pointers as we wrote each new song. Here are our thoughts in reverse order of preference:

David LeDuc – Fear
The tone of this song comes across as being much lighter than the lyrics would suggest. Vocals in the chorus are sad and sound good, but we struggled a bit with what David was trying to get across with this song. Of course, vague has its place, too, but for example, the second line seems to take away from the first. As for the verses, there’s a feeling of trying to squeeze prose into a rap form and it doesn’t really work – it was as though the sentences’ meaning were more important that their musical flow (which should raise rap above being just speaking over music). I did enjoy the line “I used to be afraid of singing you my songs, but now that’s overshadowed by how loud you sing along”. The backing sounds were not particularly interesting (just rhythm with no melody element) and the song would have benefited from some more variety in rhythm.
Edric Haleen – Exultation!
We’re not entirely sure whether a rain dance is a song, but at least it didn’t affect Austria. This sounds like Edric had a whole lot of fun putting it together, with a rhythm and feel that seem authentically African, despite Edric’s refusal to say which language this is (and Google translate’s inability to assist). So, is this a language or a code or something else? It’s not backwards masking – we checked. That is our problem with this track. Without a translation, no matter how well the song is performed, then it ceases to be a song with any form of meaning and is instead an instrumental performed with the voice. On that basis, we would have been very tempted to disqualify this song, but then, that’s probably the point, isn’t it Edric?
Jess Scherer – Threadbare
Why is the song sung from the point of view of a man? Surely women can have bad reputations too? We did enjoy the sentiment behind the lyrics, however. The backing music was a little lacklustre. Certainly, simplicity has its place, but here we just felt wanting a little more. The tempo makes the song feel defeated – a little faster would make it a bit more hopeful. Some nice harmony work on the backing vocals – very sweet sound.
Steve Durand – A Beautiful Voice
We love the idea behind this song, but Steve, really there’s nothing wrong with your voice – nobody could call Dylan’s voice beautiful, but he coped okay. This is a great song – I don’t think we can fault it. It skips along, has a wonderful variety of sounds and some very effective imagery. And I wish I could whistle like that.

You can listen to the tracks below or download the whole album in one go to listen to anytime:

Igor’s Jigsaw

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  1 Response »
Mar 132012
 

Our last song for this SpinTunes is a creepy little number inspired in part by the challenge and in part by the classic Universal Frankenstein movies, with a tongue-in-cheek nod towards Carry On Screaming. The challenge itself was to produce a song that was accompanied using only noises produced by the human body, though some form of processing was acceptable.

This time we started with the lyrics. For a song played on body parts, it seemed logical to write a song ABOUT body parts, and who knows more about body parts than Dr. Frankenstein’s sidekick, Igor? There are a couple of historic references stuck in the midst of the bad puns for those digging a little deeper.
Nodebeat HD
We recorded a whole range of body noises, sampled many of them and created a few common sounds to use. Various short slaps and pops became a rhythm section, clicking teeth formed a xylophone-type sound, a hum became the baseline and a few other recognisable sounds were used as spot effects. Katharina put the rhythm track together using NodebeatHD on the iPad to control the sampler, then I added some bass and vocals.

Here is the finished song, complete with lyrics, which can be downloaded from bandcamp:

Pink Vikings

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  Comments Off
Mar 042012
 

We already have another three Drei Viertel Drei songs in the can.

The second SpinTunes challenge was to write a love song in the form of a valentine’s day card some OTHER than your significant other. Katharina wrote the lyrics and melody to this one, so it seemed only right that she should sing it too. Since all our songs are shadows of the main challenge from this point on, we had no official placing in the rankings, however some of the judges still reviewed our songs. This time around Denise Hudson said of the lyrics:

there was some real poetry in them and they were sweepy and rainy feeling and cold and sad

Round three asked for a song with lyrics having to start with a choice of seven letters. After a little thought we settled on the letters C, A, R, N, I, V & L, having just returned from a visit to the carnival in Venice. Whilst there we saw a sight that could not help but be an inspiration – a gentleman dressed as a viking, but also entirely in pink. I think this was possibly our most successful SpinTunes song so far. Doctor Lindyke said:

Tell me truthfully… you guys get up in the morning and suck down a pint of Weird just to start your day, don’t you?

whilst Denise said of this one

This was perhaps the most creative and arbitrary song of the entire round. Go. Take your place next to Raptor Jesus in the Halls of Asgard. I raise a tankard in your honor

as well as

I have no idea how you even wrote this song so I have to admire it because I just listened to it with my mouth hanging open. The melody and way of being were completely alien to me.

However, the limit imposed by the challenge meant that we had more to say about our pink viking. For a start, we needed to poke some fun at our viking-monikered friend, Odin1Eye. So Katharina wrote another set of lyrics for Odin and we changed the structure and arrangement of the song to arrive at what is really a new song with a common ancestry. See which one you prefer…

You can find the first two of the songs above on the SpinTunes albums for each round, along with a selection of songs that fit the same challenges.

Autopsy of a Lollipop Lady

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  4 Responses »
Feb 052012
 

SpinTunes is back!

After sitting out the last couple, I’m back in the game with twist. As “Drei Viertel Drei”, Katharina and I entered our song “Lollipop Lady” into the first round. The challenge was to write a song about a childhood nightmare that featured rubato, so we worked up a song about a little boy and his fear of his local lollipop lady (or crossing guard for those of you outside the UK). Here it is:

Thirty-four entries were made into the first round, with some really strong competition. My personal favourite was Rebecca Angel’s song “Monster’s Lullaby”, but there were several really good songs and a healthy number of pretty good (if needing work) songs. Our song came in at position 28, which sounds worse than it is, because we suffered badly in the public vote by not really doing too much promotion of the song. It wouldn’t have made that much difference, but it could have been enough to see us into the second round. One of the great things about SpinTunes over Song Fu is that each judge (5 in total, plus ‘Spin’ himself as backup judge) provides a review as well as a score. This, from Denise Hudson, really made me laugh:

This is terribly weird and really interesting. Psychological and troubling. I don’t really like it, but it’s because it BOTHERS me. And it’s not because it’s not well done. It’s because you are creepy.

or this…

As I hate this more and more and swear never to listen to it again, I put it higher in the rankings.

The general consensus amongst the reviewers is that the chorus and pre-chorus are much better than the verses. They were certainly more fun to write the music for, letting loose the creepiness, but they actually didn’t come together like that until the mixing stage. When the song was still being recorded, the verses were actually the strongest part, but that may have been because of some fairly severe tempo changes in the choruses that made them quite tricky to record certain parts for.

We’re out of the official competition now, but can still produce “shadow” entries. We already have lyrics and a little music worked out for the next challenge: a slightly dark and sad love song. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed for more regular updates.

All 34 songs from round one are also available from Bandcamp. You can listen to the songs below or download the whole album – a great way to get hold of some creepy and fun songs without spending a cent/penny.

The Highland Coo Song

 Featured, Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  Comments Off
Jun 212011
 


Here is a new song, written for the SpinTunes challenge. It’s a happy little ditty about life in the food chain. A previous challenge from SpinTunes was ‘write a sad song about birth’, and this was the polar opposite: ‘write a happy tune about death’. Not an easy topic, by any means, but then that’s the point of a challenge. There have been some really good songs written for this round, though the tone is certainly a little darker than usual. Visit the SpinTunes Album page on bandcamp to listen to the tracks or to download the whole album for free.

I have started using Bandcamp for my own recordings, as I believe it offers the best experience for listeners. You can listen to the track right here and if you like it, download it straight away in whatever format you like – from high quality FLAC files to standard mp3s. Lyrics and artwork is all included, so when you view the song in a suitable player (e.g. an iPod touch or iPhone) you can view all those as the songs play. You can also choose to pay whatever you like, so you can download it for free, or pay something to encourage me to write more! All the music is also released under a Creative Commons licence, so you can download it and share it with your friends. If you liked it, then chances are good that they will too!

 Posted by at 7:28 am

Tryptophan Synthetase and other Songs

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  Comments Off
Mar 032011
 


There is an album’s worth of songs that I have written for various Song Fu and SpinTunes challenges over the last few years, just kicking around the internet. As time passed, the quality of the songs improved, but they are all really just demo-quality tracks, so I’ve never really wanted to put them out in any sort of official format.

However, they do form a thematic album of some sort, so I’ve pulled them all together and stuck them into an album on last.fm. All the tracks are free to download, though you can only play short clips on the website itself. It’s not ideal, but if you want them they are all there.

The songs are presented in reverse chronological order, meaning that they get older and rougher as the playlist progresses. Highlights for me are ‘What is wrong?’, the song that features one of the longest words in the English language (the official chemical name for ‘Tryptophan Synthetase’) in a sort of mock-opera style, the ridiculously so-happy-I-could-punch-you fun of ‘Happy People’ and the rather silly charity song ‘Big Red Nose’

What is wrong? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Happy People [ 3:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Big Red Nose [ 2:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Things to be done and things not

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May 082009
 

Viva La Fry

First of all, I’ve signed up to do a song for the ‘Viva la Fry‘ project. Click on the link for more details of what it is. I have no idea what to do for this, but my inclination is to keep it very simple, maybe just uke and vocal. No deadline has been set, other than ASAP, which is pretty non-specific. They’re still looking for participants, so if you’re interested in going head-to-head with Coldplay, take a look.

If you’d like a bigger challenge, there is still time (until Monday) to sign on for the next edition of ‘Masters of Song Fu‘. Having done a few now, I can recommend the experience as a way to develop your songwriting chops and getting some useful feedback about your songs. I’m sitting this one out to concentrate on other things, but will be following along as spectator.

Finally for now, I have submitted another short story to the Great Hites podcast. My first one seems to have been well-received, so the new one may appear within the next few days. More details if and when it does, but it is a more serious story which feeds into ‘Some Other Scotland‘. If you haven’t heard (or read) the first one – have a look at the site – you can subscribe to the whole podcast or just read the individual stories if you prefer.

Masters of Song Fu – Hanging up that hat

 Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes  Comments Off
May 012009
 

For the first time since it started, ‘Masters of Song Fu’ has been won by a challenger – well done Molly! They have already announced the date for sign-up for the next round, but I think I’m going to take a rest from the Fu for a while.

I need to devote more time to the Some Other Scotland podcast for a while, as Song Fu deadlines meant that podcast episodes have slipped back. I have a special non-story episode coming up soon (after episode 10 launches) that will deal with some questions I’ve had about the story. That has yet to be recorded, so please feel free to send questions and/or feedback to me at mickbordet {at} gmail {dot} com and I can reply on the podcast.

When the podcast started, I hoped to be able to expand the world with a few spin-off stories giving some background to certain characters or events – short tales that would stand on their own as well as giving more depth to the main story. I have come up with a rough plan for the first of these, though it has turned out to be a bit more ambitious than originally planned because it will be more of an audio drama than the main podcast. More news on that as I settle the thing down in a script.

I’ve also completed a short story for possible inclusion on another podcast, so details of that will follow if it comes into being. If it doesn’t I may just post it here instead.

All of this writing and podcasting activity does NOT mean that the music has been abandoned, though. There are a couple of possible guest appearances in the pipeline, a Lunacy Board session of some sort is long overdue and I have a few half-completed songs still kicking around from the FAWM challenge that need to be finished off. At some point soon I’ll also revisit the Song Fu material I have amassed and combine it into an album, though there are some parts to be re-recorded with the luxury of no deadline, as the originals make me cringe in several places. Finally, I have a top secret plan for a podcast-related musical piece that will surface at some point and, who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll get round to sorting out the pile of Dunoon songs.

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