Hi Everyone,
This is the combined Voting and Discussion thread.
Thanks to all that entered the competition.
Please use this thread to cast your votes for your favourite entries to Fretboard Challenge #17.
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Voting System - voters can pick their top 3 favourite entries.
First choice gets 5 points - Second choice gets 3 points - Third choice gets 1 point
Entry with the most points wins.
Simply post in this thread your top three choices for winner in order, 1st choice first etc etc.
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(Note for Entrants of the competition: Self Voting is NOT Allowed)
The winner will be announced just before midnight on the 31st May, voting will close at 11.30pm on that day.
(you can edit your vote up to the time voting closes)
A reminder of the competition Guidelines:
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This is Sealand!
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The Principality of Sealand needs your help! They need a better national anthem lets help them by writing a few ideas!
Unofficial lyrics here
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Oh Sealand, Sealand, home of the damp
Two concrete pillars topped by a lamp
That shines o'er the waves in storm and in calm
Protecting our glorious concrete from harm
We stand before God, independent and free
Our Nation alone sitting in the North Sea
Our people so proud, our armies so mighty
Seven point fives miles away from old Blighty
(chorus)
Sealand oh SEA-land, oh land on the sea
In Sealand we see land that sees us at sea
The seals and the sea and the Sealanders see
That Sealand, my Sealand will always be free.
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No Limits of any kind!
Please see all the entries uploaded on SoundCloud below.
https://soundcloud.com/thefretboard/sets/fretboard-challenge-17
Comments
@steamabacus ... like the words ... can't listen now as I'm in my office.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
"You don't know what you've got till the whole thing's gone. The days are dark and the road is long."
OK, here goes:
1 Steamabacus
2 Stratman3142
3 Fretwired
I quite enjoyed Fretwired's entry but it seemed to be the least closer to a national anthem.
"You don't know what you've got till the whole thing's gone. The days are dark and the road is long."
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
5 points @steamabacus This is very funny and made me laugh out loud at the end. Lots of fun. The best fit with the brief of the two choices I had, and the comic value tipped the balance. But there's a chance you might get in trouble with the Queen for plagiarism. Very imaginative, creative and Pythonesque.
3 points @Fretwired I liked this one the most musically and for its originality. Great composing and the string programming is outstanding. But (to me) not as anthem like as the other.
As you can probably tell, faced with lack of inspiration (and a disdain for national anthems going back to my schooldays) I ended up with the mutant offspring of God Save the Queen and La Marseillaise - Sealand being perched somewhere between territorial waters it seemed fitting. It took a bit of key shifting-and gene-splicing but ... it was ALIVE!
Lyrics inspired (if that's the right word) by the strange Slovakian tinned cod salad pictured, sung by about a dozen of me (many wearing musical funny noses and fake mustaches). Instrumentation is two tracks of vst mellotron (slightly out of tune for that authentic banana republic vibe), three kazoos and a bass guitar. And cannons!
Oh, and I recorded the sea myself (some years ago now). Sound fx from YouTube.
1st (5 points) @stratman3142 ;; 'Sealand Paradise'
Lovely tune, anthemic May-esque (Brian, not Theresa) guitar (I'd flirted with the idea myself but chickened out) and utterly indecipherable vocals! It may just be me - I've never been able to make out electronic voices since Metal Micky and Battlestar Galactica - but the tune was almost over before I realised it was the lyrics printed above.
2nd (3 points) @Fretwired ;; 'Holding the Fort'
Nice tune but, I agree, lacking in 'anthemic' qualities - I was imagining the Sealand national football team at the Euros standing proud to this and it didn't quite work for me. However, the Sealand national University Challenge team - now you're talking!
Last (nul points) @Norway
1st (5 points) @stratman3142 - 'Sealand Paradise'
Really liked this - it sounded like a Eurovision entry for Luxembourg and therefore fits the brief very well. Cool guitar solo and inspiring lyrics.
2nd (3 points) @steamabacus - 'Cod Save La Mayonnaise! '
This sounds like something the Bonzo's or Python's would do .. utterly bonkers. God knows where you get the ideas from, but your tracks are always memorable and entertaining. Loved the vocal, but mixing the British and French anthems probably won't go down well on the Essex coast (UKIP country) ... :-)
3rd (1 point) - @steamabacus for being bonkers .. :-)
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
2 - Fretwired
3 - Steamabacus
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
3 points @Fretwired for what I would actually described as a fucking awesome piece of music very folky and is actually something I would listen to normally
1 point @stratman3142 probably fits the brief the best but I found the imported vocal a bit off putting but it did remind me a bit of the them to Howards Way which brought a smile to my face :-)