INTRO
Time for round #39 of the Fretboard Composition Challenge.
Every few months there'll be a composition challenge. It revolves around individuals or groups of forum members composing and recording music.
No prizes for this challenge. It's just for fun, a spur to creating, sharing, discussing music/recording and learning. Plus a way of testing the water with your creations and getting some feedback.
GUIDELINES - THEME
In an attempt to encourage more entries, there's no theme for this one - so it's freestyle
You can specify your own theme or the genre you're aimimg for.
Compose a tune, or recycle something you've composed previously. So you can treat it as a creative exercise or just vehicle to get you music heard and commented on.
Picture: In addition to the music, try to create your own picture that relates to your selected theme/title. This isn't mandatory.
DATES AND VOTING
The submission deadline is midnight 31st December 2023
Voting will start soon after the submission deadline and run for about two weeks, with each voter selecting their 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice.
First choice gets 5 points - Second choice gets 3 points - Third choice gets 1 point
The entry with the most points wins.
The order and scores of the three people with the most votes will be announced soon after the voting ends.
SUBMISSION DETAILS
All recordings and pictures need to be sent via email to Compositions@theFB.co.uk
Songs to be submitted in mp3 format.
Pictures to be in jpg or png format.
ENTRY PLAYLIST
It's not a competition.
Comments
Are there any other composers out there?
I had what i thought was a perfectly serviceable melody until I realised it was the tune to Black Sabbath (the self titled song) mixed with a bit of Billie Eilish's Bury a Friend.
I'll hopefully get something in if not that one, either another one from the project my last challenge entries, or something new in my normal style of things. I'm just waiting for tonsillitis to clear (or is it essential to call it tinsellitis this time of year)
Background to my entry ...
A long time ago (and in a galaxy far away), I knew a girl called Sally. We never knew each other *that* well, but I do remember her well. She wrote and gave me some lyrics which I put in a safe place and kept for 40-odd years.
Through school and Uni bands, I put one set of her lyrics to music and played that song a fair few times, but forgot about the others until clearing out some long-untouched files and folders a couple of years ago, when I found the other lyrics.
My entry is one of those re-found Sally songs; her lyrics, my music. Listen to the words, and consider that they were written by a teenage girl, 40 years ago.
The arrangement is pretty simple - me singing and playing a couple of acoustic guitar tracks, a bass line, simple keep-time drum and a bit of synth-strings. But those words ...
If you knew a Sally, who lived in Sandbach (Cheshire) in the seventies, who was good with words, tell her "hi".
I’ve been writing music on and off since I was a teenager 40 plus years ago.
always dabbled in guitar and keyboards and programming back to the alesis mmt8 (who remembers those) and Cubase v1 on tha Atari st.
Thought I was involved in a good band in the late eighties which had 3 good song contributors but looking back the vocal was not good enough.
Covid years finally gave me more time to get back into being more creative and Vst technology and Cubase 9 puts a lot of power back into your world for not a lot of outlay.
I created 8 instrumentals of which this was number 4.
Hope folks like it.
Similar to you, I've been strumming guitars for many years and writing the odd tune, and also building/using PCs intensively for a lot of that time, but never really put the two together to record stuff. It was Covid, and a particular open mic going on-line, that finally pushed me into recording.
It's been a learning curve and a half, and the further I get up it, the further I can see the curve stretches ...
Do the Soundcloud analytics tell you anything useful about who's listening to the tracks we upload? I assume that they're all freely available to the public rather than being restricted in anyway.
Just surprised at the number of plays my track appears to have attracted in very short period of time.
Looking forward to listening to these new ones. I've had an idea to repurpose the chorus from my unfinishable heavy rock song in a different song entirely so I should be able to bang that out easier
Are there any others incoming, before the deadline of midnight the 31st December?
I was going for a Steely Dan and Larry Carlton type vibe. But I fear it might have turned out like the sort of music that's played in lifts in department stores . Hence the title.
Nice @stratman3142
If you need a bit more time I could extend the deadline a bit, provided that's also OK with the other entrants, @midiman1962 and @TTony