This is the combined Voting and Discussion thread.
Please use this thread to cast your votes for your favourite entries to Fretboard Composition Challenge
REMINDER OF THE THEME
The theme for this one is: A horror track. Thanks to
@Springywheel for suggesting the idea.
To encourage entries the theme isn't mandatory, but you might get more votes if you do something that's in some way linked to the theme. That depends on how individuals choose to vote.
Compose a tune, or recycle something you've composed previously.
Picture: In addition to the music, try to create your own picture that relates to your selected theme/title. This isn't mandatory.
VOTING AND DATES
Voting System - voters can pick their favourite entries.
First choice gets 5 points - Second choice gets 3 points - Third choice gets 1 point
The entry with the most points wins.
Simply post in this thread your top three choices for winner in order, 1st choice first etc etc.
(Note for Entrants of the competition: Self Voting is not allowed)
Voting ends midnight 28th February 2022, and the results will be announced shortly after.
No prizes, it's just for fun.
PLAYLIST
It's not a competition.
Comments
3 points - @CMW335 - Brutal, love it
1 points - @stratman3142 - Really good, great lick
Shout out to everyone else - great stuff all round.
One of the things I enjoy about these challenges is summarising my process with a few notes to show how it came about, hopefully this is the correct place to do it. It's as much for myself as anything else but may be interesting in parts.
Music
I didn't want to fully ape Chopin on the chorus so I removed the "duuuu Duuu du duuuu" bit and used the words as the first line instead and then did the rest based on my usual tactic of rhyming words then filling in the rest.
Verse was completely new to fit between the riff and the chorus. Based on what I believe is called "chromatic mediant" in classical theory, aka "Lord of the rings progression" - move your minor chord shape by a 3rd, they share a common note but the rest of the chord sounds jarring, and a bit spooky. Other times I've just shifted one note of the chord to fit back into key. My chords went Am-Cm-Bm-Bb then Am-D7-Fm-E. I am proud of that sequence. Themed the lyrics on contradiction, as ghosts are kind of living but not living, hence waking into a nightmare etc.
I liked the tempo mismatch between the riff and the verses so I kept that and recorded without a click track. I wanted a kind of Radiohead vibe to the vocals so I kept it in a key just below the top of my range, hence I'm getting a bit out of puff at times when doing the vibrato!
Guitar Tones
At various points I copied and pasted the guitar part into different tracks, then ran it through an amp model (cubase built in plugin) and separately through the Helix PolyPitch down an octave. Because I had recorded guitars with effects, the amp distortion added an interesting effect as it was still retaining the alternating trem speeds but was distorting the huge reverb as well so that was a cool thing to find.
The broken music box at the beginning was a sample from t'internet which sounded spooky, I liked the tune as well so I found a recording of the actual song on YouTube and thought that might give a bit of plot to my ghost story along with the backwards German (from a "teach your child German" YouTube video that I reversed - maybe the ghost was listening to that box, learning German when the fire broke out and locked them inside, so they'll Forever have to listen to "In der Berliner Luft, Luft, Luft", hence why it cuts in suddenly on the Grammophone later on.
I used a sort of reverse delay thing to double the vocals which I think you only really hear in the pauses of the tune but I thought it added a bit of spookiness to the vocals
Other spooky noises in the beginning bit are just me mangling free samples from MusicRadar (sorry for swearing!) and running it through the Izotope Vinyl Sim plugin on a "broken 78 from the 50s" setting
I think that's everything I noted, sorry it's a bit of an essay but I enjoy going over this stuff
3 pts - @poopot
1pt @thecolourbox
all three put me about a bit, which is the point!!
Not a single duffer in the list, well done everyone, enjoyed listening to them. Good luck all round
J
Really enjoyed all of these, as I can't give points to everybody I thought I'd leave a comment on each song from my listens:
Stratman - I think your intro is what I was trying to achieve with my spooky bit at the beginning, excellent textures. Love the guitar theme and the chromatic music box bits in the middle.
Poopot - definitely the most wide ranging production with the matching video as well, the most soundtrack-esque of them all really. Love that octavey guitar (I think?) sound towards the end, very tense and atmospheric, brilliant
Habanero - love the story on this one, internet killed the Chrimbo star! I like the pace and Rhythm that it gallops along at.
Snap - I like the piano use, a nice slow burn of a build up that feels like it's telling a story or a journey or something like that
Digital Dave - love that recurring rhythm riff, it's quite menacing. The sample use reminds mea bit of an Avalanches track but I prefer your backing.
Springywheel - love the spooky fairground Circus noises at the beginning. The kind of disjointed and deconstructed textures throughout really put me on edge which I guess was the point, really love it. Nice guitar tones as well
Cmw335 - love this, feels like a brutal workout! Proper tasty guitar tones, kind of sounds like some kind of chainsaw slasher theme.
My points will go to:
5 - @Springywheel
3 - @CMW335
1 - @stratman3142
Guitars - strat and Les Paul sent through a civil war muff + Laney head. Bass - squire precision bass direct via hudson sidecar. LP and bass are tuned down to C# standard.
I started my track with a caliope, overlaying this with some playground ambience from freesound.org. I did initially have some kids screaming over the part where it goes haywire but I thought it sounded OTT, even for a horror track lol.
The intro builds a little tension with the trusted diminished 5th before ramping things up in the next part. The rhythm is occasionally interrupted with a dissonant chord taken from a different key. The drums highlight the sudden switch in order to make it sound more jarring. The choir samples are admittedly quite corny but add some drama...
The intro is then revisited with a variation of that theme, only with a more driving drum beat.
The riff in the next part is based on the typical Celtic Frost 'Tom Warrior' sound with an odd choice of intervals. Slide guitar through chorus and flanger.
This riff continues underneath a playful 'clownish' funk lick to ease off the tension before the finale. The vocal is sent through a distortion pedal.
Playing out the track is an autowah'd guitar, scraped cymbals (kontakt), plus my daxophone, which is 'played' with a violin bow, and a curved block of wood to modulate the pitch. Two takes panned either side and sent through blackhole reverb. I built this myself last year and have been waiting for an opportunity to use it! I'll have to do a recording one day where it's a little more prominent. I have about 50 other shapes which can be clamped onto it - each one producing slight variances in sound.
Finally I uploaded the track to YouTube with a video loop of a clown peering through a tv set (no it's not BoJo's latest TV address)
5pts : @cmw335
3pts : @Snap
1pt : @stratman3142
5pts: @thecolourbox - haunting and radioheadesque great stuff
3pts: @poopot - It was the video that elevated this into my top 3
1pt: @Snap - Atmospheric and suspenseful build up
Well done to all though, lot of great talent on here
Process
This was an existing track my band did for a local wrestler called "The Butcher" and it was his entrance music till he turned from heel to babyface (if that means anything to anyone ) I noticed the Theme late in the day and thought yeah I have a track that fits that hence the late entry.
Not much to share on the making of, originally this was just an instrumental. We recorded the guitar and drums and handed over to a work colleague of mine at the time who was studying music production and he did the rest including adding those angry vocals.
5pts @stratman3142 - I liked the guitar tone on the lead line, plus the build up of tension.
3 pts @Springywheel - Cool production and interesting melding of genres
1 pt @thecolourbox ; - Nice minimal production and haunting atmosphere