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Song a Week Challenge, Season 1, Week 2

3K views 36 replies 9 participants last post by  Iron1 
#1 ·
Week 2!

Still in contention:
The Kindred
Iron1
Jumpintoinfinity
astrocreep
T Gobbs
Rev Drucifier
Nick
7 Dying Trees
scole

Rules:
1) Submissions by end of play 18th of January
2) Even if noone can check, the spirit is writing a song a week
3) No rules on genre, you don't even need to do the same style next week
4) Must be a song, unless you have a very (and I mean the kind that is beyond the ability of mere mortals) good argument for playing the same riff for 3+ minutes it won't fly
5) Entries composed on a tascam or without drums, whatever, also welcome, this is about writing a song, not dressing it up in lipstick and a short skirt
6) If you don't submit, you're eliminated (but you can still keep on submitting anyway as practice, this way the competitives get to be competitive, and the less so inclined still get to join in).

We will not:
1) Make people feel bad about mixing skills by turning this into a mixtest competition, it's about getting a load of us writing to a deadline, this is about writing, not about how awesome your headless kiesel sounds through an axe fx with superior drummer
2) Make people feel bad about how well it's recorded
3) Spam thread with songs we've had lying around for ages or anything non relevant to this competition and it's rules
4) Discourage anyone from participating
5) Tell anyone they suck. Songwriting is a skill, you learn it, some people will be better, others worse, this isn't a pissing competition
6) Steal others work or ideas.

Eliminated people welcome to submit as well :)
 
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#5 ·
I'm in! That feeling when you wanted to write something thrashy but ended up with The Donnas/Poison/Pretty Boy Floyd. :lol:

This song was written as a song that would have lyrics and that type of structure but lyric writing isn't my bag.

 
#10 ·
^ nice work dude.

getting mine in early again cause I had some free time over the weekend after last week's ended. Went a little different but trying to keep a theme with it. Played with effects a bit more.

as always, feedback/critique and comments welcome!

Y'all are off to a quick start. Good stuff!

Every week prior I've had mine mostly ready by Wednesday. Now it's Thursday and all I have is a dumpster fire of uninspired crap. Hopefully something will click between now and tomorrow morning...
 
#6 ·
^ nice work dude.

getting mine in early again cause I had some free time over the weekend after last week's ended. Went a little different but trying to keep a theme with it. Played with effects a bit more.

as always, feedback/critique and comments welcome!

 
#9 ·
Hah. I got off to a great start on Saturday and had pretty much everything laid out by Monday which still gave me a little time to tweak a few things after some listens. I'm sure I won't be that lucky for long!

^ nice work dude.

getting mine in early again cause I had some free time over the weekend after last week's ended. Went a little different but trying to keep a theme with it. Played with effects a bit more.

as always, feedback/critique and comments welcome!

Thanks, brother! What's the backstory for your track? Lyrics or instrumental? The atmospherics from the synths give me a creepy video game vibe. I love that clean guitar part!
 
#11 ·
Ok, here it is. Started out inspired, which died quickly. Ha. Not sure if I'll keep fiddling with it or just junk it at this point...

 
#15 ·
I'm struggling this week, after much blankness I've been playing with ideas in guitar pro which may be going in the right direction, but they are way too fast for me to play at the moment....

I may have to pass this week and perhaps try to get up to speed over the next week.
 
#17 · (Edited)
Man, bummed so many of y'all are falling off - hope ya feel better soon, Jump.

I couldn't take how bad mine sounded and re-wrote/recorded a bunch of it in the last hour. This still needs some mixing love, but here's the new version:

 
#19 ·
Man, bummed so many of y'all are falling off - hope ya feel better soon, Jump.

I couldn't take how bad mine sounded and re-wrote/recorded a bunch of it in the last hour. This still needs some mixing love, but here's the new version:

I wouldn't be mad if people would just stop coming to work(at a major super market) and getting me sick. I've never had the flu this bad. Literally waking up at 3am and can't move until 2pm for 3 days straight.
 
#23 · (Edited)
I'm 35 minutes late so disqualify me if need be. Crazy, crazy week at wok this week. My boss quit and I had to take over until we have a new Chief Engineer. I didn't think I'd have time to get anything done this week but I had one day that I was "supervising" some vendors during an elevator installation where I locked myself in my office with headphones and my guitar and got most of this done. Finished the bass on my lunch break and "mixed" in the car on my iPhone earbuds and my shitty car stereo on the drive here to Ocala. I tried uploading it from the turnpike but cell service dropped in and out. I'm sitting in a hotel with shitty wifi trying to upload this right now....

Finally!



Guitars are Amplitube and sounded like ass. I'm going to try re-amping this shit when I get back home tomorrow night. Again, no vox or lead as I just didn't have time.

Edit- I'm waiting to get back home before I listen to all the contributions. My ears are tapped out from my earbuds and I hate listening to stuff I actually want to *listen* to on laptop speakers. I also wanted to add that this whole competition is really putting me in that zone where I can just sit down and go. Before it would take me a couple weeks between songs to build up drive to start another but I think it's because I was burning myself out recording everything then mixing....this process has been so quick I don't have the chance to get fatigued.
 
#29 ·
Ok, I'm just now taking the time to go through everyone's tunes from this week. I just spent the last hour tweaking my speakers. I haven't had the chance to really spend any time in the studio after I moved it around. It was quite the change in sound and it wasn't for the better with the settings I had on my speakers and took a while to get somewhere decent.

Scole- Drums are great sounding, lots of good energy in this one. I really dig the lead tone, there's some good sizzle in there. I definitely hear what you're sayin' with the style! Nice!

Kindred, damn man...this is killer. I really dig the synth stuff. This is like evil Floyd! The synths, man...especially in the outro, such cool sounds!

iron1- I love that dirty record sound...dude, you deliver impending doom with outstanding consistency. For every movie scene involving hell or Mordor, torture scenes, etc, they just need to license all your tunes for the soundtracks.


7DT- ahhhh fuck yeah....I love everything about this. That snare makes me tingly and those guitars are aggressive as fuck, this tune is fuckin' killer.

T Gobbs- This isn't repetitive at all and I love the lead, man. What are you using on this? I love all these sounds, man. After iron and 7DT's brutal assaults, this is a nice reset. Great bass sound, too.

This whole thing is bringing out some great stuff from everyone!
 
#30 ·
T Gobbs- This isn't repetitive at all and I love the lead, man. What are you using on this? I love all these sounds, man. After iron and 7DT's brutal assaults, this is a nice reset. Great bass sound, too.
Thanks dude!

Guitar is a peavey tracer with an l500xl in the bridge

For the pad type things I used TAL dub II (mix at 100) > TSE808 > Lepou Hybrit > Ola's Hesu IR > reacomp > eq > eventide stereo room (mix also at 100). There are three tracks, panned hard left, right, and center. Each track is a note of the chord being trem picked.

For the lead I rolled off the tone knob just a bit. The chain for that was TSE808 > Hybrit > Hesu IR > eq (hi pass at 300, low pass at 4k, slight bump at 1.5k) > TAL dub II.

Bass was just TSE BOD + eq and compression.
 
#35 ·
Hell- songs aren't really done until you say so. Lots of songs have been written and then received a drastic re-write after the fact. I have a bootleg of Dream Theater doing A Change of Seasons and its way different than the recorded version. I say, if you're not 100% happy, keep tweaking it because the hardest part (the initial songwriting) is over.
 
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