The challenge for the second round of SpinTunes 4 was pretty straight-foward: write a Valentines' Day card for someone other than your significant other. That suited me just fine: I actually find it hard to write about my wife (though I have done so on a few occasions), and this challenge allowed me some welcome creative freedom with just the right amount of boundaries to get the juices flowing. I read the challenge first thing last Monday morning with a big cup of coffee in my hand and it was a "Eureka!" moment. (Well, in my early morning, pre-coffee haze more like: "Hmmmm... *look at coffee cup* Yup.")
Two things off the bat:
Please listen to the whole album. There is some fantastic stuff here. Brand new, and totally free. (I'm number 8 in the queue).
Please go vote for your favorites (and mine, too!) over on the SpinTunes blog. The popular vote counts like a judge, so your voice is important.
Right, on with the show. For lyrics, beyond the condition of writing an ode (of sorts) that was not for my wife, I set myself the additional condition of not writing about a tryst, because that seemed facile. Coffee is something that I could pour myself into, so I set a third condition: don't mention the word "coffee." I like things that are discrete about their subject matter; and it's a good exercise in craft to make a clear description without naming a thing overtly.
It's often part of my creative process to have a touchstone for inspiration and reference. This tune has several. My primary reference for lyrics was an essay called "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee," by the 19th-century realist Honoré de Balzac. This dude knew his stuff. (Side note as a French professor: the English translation is annoyingly edited, cobbled together from a much longer piece that's just as interesting, called the Traité des excitants modernes.) But I digress. Yes, I stole the "coffee roasts my insides" from Balzac.
wake [D] up, get out of bed
[Am] have a cup and [C] tilt your head
[G] [F]
take a [Am] sip, another one
[C] sugar, cream: your [D] motor runs
hey [D] joe, i am [Am] awake now
you have [C] my vow, [G] thank you friend
hey joe, what is this feeling
my fingers tingling
i think i love you
after lunch, another cup
caffeine always help me sup
take it black with a smoke
gotta to keep my fires stoked
hey joe, you are my bright star
you warm my heart every day
hey joe, you roast my insides
you make my eyes bright
i think i love you
[G] i feel i am floating
[F#] i feel i am flying
[Em] i feel i am letting go
in the air soaring
upon the waves crashing
oh will you help me joe
hey joe, don't want no mocha
no chai latte, just grind it fine
hey joe, this fine aroma
it transports me,
you're all mine
Musically, I had the second half of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" in my head for some reason. I purposefully didn't listen to the song before writing and recording, relying upon the haze of my memory to give me enough distance. I'm no John Lennon, to be sure, but I'm quite happy with the way things turned out.
I have to admit, dealing with the piano part was a pain. Firstly, I don't have a keyboard; that's all programmed with the REAPER MIDI interface. Secondly, for a long time, I had the parts reversed: the chorus was the verse. While that matched my memory of the verse from "A Day in the Life" a little better, it didn't work with the melody I had crafted. Once I swapped the parts, things went better, and when I changed the verse piano to a combo organ and synthesizer, it went much better. I'm really proud of the change in chord progression in the verse; I'm packing a lot of variation into not much space (well, for me) and that keeps it interesting.
I took a note from the Beatles as well for mixing, making the unconventional George Martin choice of hard-panning the drums and bass to one side and the guitars to the other (left and write, respectively.) I fiddled a little with the organ and piano parts, because that's where they sounded best, and chucked everything out for the bridge, using dynamic panning to introduction a sense of auditory delirium. It's a non-standard mixing choice, and so that can throw people off, but I think it works well for this tune, giving the whole thing space to breath. You really can pick out each part, which is something that I love about much of the Beatles' stuff.
Let's talk structure. I took a bit of inspiration from the previous round and went for a series of tempo changes: 132 bpm for the verse, 144 for the chorus, and 80 for the bridge. Still, there's the illusion of more variation with the constant breaks in the verse. I really wanted that part to have the Beatlesque vocal "Aaaaaah - aaaaaah," but I cannot sing like that, much less craft a similar harmony. So, I let the guitars do it for me. (Post-submission, I had the idea that the break leading into the chorus should go up from G to A instead of down to F. Ah well, noted for the remix.)
The bridge comes from an early version of the song that was inspired by French comic songwriters Oldelaf and Monsieur D., "Un p'tit café?"
I originally had the narrator going crazy, coming home and murdering his family as a proof of his devotion to Joe. It was a too dark for a light-hearted love song. And having a constant tempo increase would have been too much a direct rip of Oldelaf's and Monsieur D's genius.
One thing that I was not referencing - for some reason - was the 50's / 60's rock standard "Hey Joe," perhaps most famously covered by Jimi Hendrix. I only ran across this when Googling album art for my Bandcamp page. [/shameless plug]
On top of Song Fight! and SpinTunes, I enjoy participating in February Album Writing Month. Each of these organizations / challenges has its own distinct atmosphere. Song Fight! is heavy on the criticism, but frequently in a very constructive way, and there's a lot of buy-in from the entire community to keep things going and continually improve things. SpinTunes, despite being a more focused songwriting competition, has a much more laid-back and convivial feel to the interactions. It's held rather infrequently, but there's a pretty solid core of people who regularly participate as either judges or contestants.
FAWM is something else entirely. If Song Fight! is a perpetual songwriting workshop, and SpinTunes is a Battle of the Bands, FAWM is a giant block party. It reminds me of la Fête de la musique, with everybody playing every which way, what, where and how. The point isn't to craft great songs and hone your skills. It's just to get 14 songs written during the shortest month of the year.
You heard me right: 14 songs in 28 days. It's no small feat. In fact, I've never done it. Last year I think I hit ten, but only had nine recordings. 2010 only got three or four. Nonetheless, it's a great exercise in just getting it done and out there.
So, this the attitude I'm taking this year: write the damn tune, slap it down in demo form and move on to the next. Focus on the bigger pictures - melody, lyric, structure, narrative - instead of the minutiae of a killer drum track or building a third guitar part for the chorus. Attention to the immediate and the particular; I'll come back to the gems and refine them for an album over the some - probably Mayish.
You can visit my FAWM page here. I'll also be posting my demos on Bandcamp, just I can use the handy embedded playlist and you can listen to them right here:
It's the evening of February 2 as I write this, and that means I've completed two brand new songs in as many days. That's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. (Mind you, I'm going to be busy over the long weekend, so that ratio's going to drop off mighty quick.) But let's savor the moment and talk a little about these tunes.
All Swear About Murder
"All swear about murder" was a typo on a Google+ post many months ago. It was just too good of a phrase to let go, so I plunked it down in Evernote and since then it's been steadily accruing companions from various places, though I must admit that Denise Hudson consistently turns a pretty phrase and I pilfer her disjecta with gusto. I started this with the clear intention never to mention the word murder, and I enjoy the ambiguity of what being "all swear" means. It's a flashback episode, too, starting at the end of the story, with a little plot twist at the end of Act One. When writing the prechorus, I decided the first line was just too good. Rather than jam it into a chorus, I just ditched the idea altogether. Chorus no; bridge, yes. The first line and the entire general grove of the bridge is actually ripped from a cover of a song by The Books that I did for Gift of Music this year, "A Cold Freezin' Night." I liked being able to the turn the original lyric on its head.
Panacea
For some reason, it's really, really hard for me to write happy songs. I take myself too seriously, and I appreciate how much craft it takes to be funny. Being tragic is easier. So, I was delighted when a rather happy little ditty popped into my head on the way home this afternoon. Maybe it was the sunshine after days of rain. Maybe it was the car exhaust as I putted about on my scooter. Maybe Euterpe just had a caprice. Whatever, I took the idea and ran with it, keeping things as simple as possible: straight I - V - IV verse and few 7ths and 9ths for chorus. The doubled vocal track was a last-minute addition; i rather like it, but it'll take some serious honing in revisions. I waffled a lot about having a bridge. The 3rd verse was originally a bridge, but I didn't have anything more to say, and the melody wasn't all that different anyway. (Actually, the verse chord progression was going to be only for the bridge, but it was too good.)
The topic for Round 1 of SpinTunes 4 was to write a song about a childhood nightmare and include significant use of rubato. My offering is called "Always Someone's Monster," number 7 on the playlist below. Please download the entire album on Bandcamp for a really impressive display of creativity that runs the musical gambit of genres and styles.
Song Bio
My parents divorced when I was three. I was too young to remember clearly, but family lore is that I woke up crying for several nights after my father left us. There's a shadow from that episode that I still struggle with. I took some dramatic licence for this tune. My real mother is made of anything but steel: she's the nicest, most disorganized person I know. All in all, I still have this lingering fear of abandonment, I suppose.
Initial drafts of the second verse were more compact; the lines left too much space in the phrase and the melody didn't match up well with what I had established in the first verse. The "you" of this song isn't really any one in particular, more like an amalgamation of people in my life; I like the slight variation in the second prechorus.
[Fmaj7] my mother was [C] adamant [Gmaj7] that woman was made of [Am] steel
so one night she stole away
said she couldn't feel
my father wasn't there
his jaw slack, his eyes a-glaze
he awoke hard one day
left the porch, the house ablaze
[Em] and i tell you [Cmaj7] all of this [Am] so you can under-[Dadd9] stand
[Fmaj7] my [C] mother always [Gmaj7] said
there are no monsters under your bed
in the closet they abide
keep them [Fmaj7] there [C]
i am working my way on through
my family tree of twisted branches
climb on down to the tangled roots
find out where my shadow dances
i am looking for the answer
to the question you asked me
if you are always someone's monster
are you ever really free
and i tell you all of this
so you will take my hand
my mother always said
there are no monsters under your bed
in the closet they abide
keep them there
Coda : Fmaj7/add9 - Cadd9/C/Cmaj7 - Gmaj7 - Em
(Yup, I slightly flubbed the second verse: I should have sung "tangled roots" instead of "twisted." Le sigh. Deadlines.)
I'm proud of the structural work on this song, especially the coda. I had eight bars of this neat little melody hanging around for weeks without a home. I think it lends a hopeful tone to an otherwise really dark piece. I love time changes; this one shifts from 4/4 at about 80 bpm to 6/8 at 126 bpm. It was originally 16 bars longer; the fade continued in reverse order of the instrumentation as they are introduced: the guitar took back over from the piano, the organs faded, then the percussion, and finally the cello, to leave the guitar slowly winding down. But I felt like the point had been made, musically, and opted for concision.
The rubato is significant, creating an ebb and flow within the song that matches a dream-like state, and it is paralleled by crescendos. Basically, faster and louder means more urgent and more important. The rubato challenge was particularly sticky for me, since I played or programmed each part myself and thus had to multitrack the whole thing instead of a live performance where I would have had more liberty with tempo. Instead, the entire piece slowly builds with a few hanging moments, starting at 80 bpm, stepping up to 82 for the second half of each verse, a momentary hang, then to 84 for the prechorus,and then jumping to 86 bpm for the chorus. (It was originally 88 bpm; that was just a smidge too fast.)
I love the MIDI organ tone I found, but it was difficulty to include all of the sonic ideas in the chorus without clipping. When I revisit this for an album, I think I'll move the organ arpeggio to the second portion of each phrase to make more room for the vocals and explosive guitars.
A word about the chord progressions. As I said, the coda existed as a sketch long before this challenge, and I first started using the Fmaj7 - C - Gmaj7 - Em, but both the progression and 6/8 time it didn't work with the melody I had in my head. But, switching it up to a slow-tempo 4/4 and ending the phrase on Am worked wonderfully. (It also made is sound very close to a song I wrote last year, Looking at the Sea.)
I wanted to push myself to craft something more complicated than the usual Verse-Chorus-Verse arrangement, and changing the end of the phrase from Em to Am let me then transition to a prechorus that starts with Em and ascends. You'll notice that there are lots of major 7ths; to create tension through the song, I let the high-E string ring as much as possible. For the prechorus, I went all out with open, jangling chords and a steady up-tempo rhythm to segue from the laconic, meditative verse to the more energetic chorus. With all these complicated chords, I wanted the chorus to be much more straightforward: just a IV - I - V - V rock-out.
During the listening party, it turned out that reverb was a sonic effect of choice for many compositions, and I'm as guilty as anyone. It's the go-to sound for making things sound dreamlike and bigger than life. Part of me wishes I would have thought ahead about that and looked for something more distinct. Nonetheless, I'm confident in my choice for this specific song: it works for what I want to do and the feelings I want to convey.
A new Song Fight! went live this week. Time to review the latest batch from my favorite songwriting community. This fight is a pretty big one: 22 entries; and there are a lot of strong songs.
Andy Sucks vs Darrell and Company
--- snnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrxxxx ---
I'm sorry, were you trying to do something interesting or just a bunch of insular noise? Going meta doesn't save this. Maybe you should go back to the definition of the term "conversation," because this is nothing like that.
Berkeley Social Scene | lyrics
+++ hard-panned guitars; I especially like the acoustic tones +++
+++ melody; especially the chorus +++
--- lyrics are really on the nose ---
Billy and The Psychotics | lyrics | Vote
+++ melody; love the enjambment +++
+++ dynamics +++
+++ RAWK in the chorus +++
Blue Movies | Vote
+++ groove +++
/// putting such an overt effect on the vocals is a risky gamble ... ///
+++ that I think really pays off for this tune +++
/// bring that solo UP ///
Caravan Ray | lyrics | Vote
+++ vocals harmonies +++
+++ nice hymnal reference there +++
+++ great layering +++
This could do with some more melodic variation. The harmonies and instrumental layers are fantastic, but the whole thing seems to drag. I love the snark of the coda, but it seems tacked on.
Dwald
This song sounds as if you just keep finding interesting tones and effects to pile on without rhyme or reason.; very little coheres.
The Elephant Choir
+++ call and response vocals +++
I have a soft spot for murder ballads and the minimalist instrumentation makes room for the vocal harmonies. Yet, this still doesn't really engage me. Maybe it needs more passion, energy, or... I'm not sure.
FauX | lyrics
--- instrumentation, especially that high-end, 70/80's synth arpeggio ---
--- prosody is either forced or sing-songy ---
--- boring story is boring ---
hillbilly
--- lyrics ---
--- the story is banal, which has possibilities, but never really goes anywhere ---
This has a lot of neat elements. I love the hard-panned guitars flanking the main acoustic tone. But, their use is inconsistent and don't seem to have a purpose.
Infinity Point Buck | lyrics
--- awkward prosody ---
--- unfinished; though that may be part of the point ---
Jan Krueger | lyrics | Vote
+++ groove and tone +++
+++ vocal harmonies +++
Jim of Seattle
This is a very interesting artistic experiment: a soundtrack to a short-short story, posted here. Separately, these works are brilliant. The "story," more of a prose poem about loss and leaving and identity, is emotionally engaging without being overwrought. The music is equally so: wonderfully performed and produced.
However, they don't gel well together. Jon Eric hit upon the right idea before I did:
[R]eading words on a page and listening to an audio recording aren't analogous because the listening is temporal, but the reading is not. People read at different paces, and you'd then have the benefit of being able to tailor the music to the point in the essay it's meant to accompany.
In literary and academic circles, the name for your problem is the "chronotope." While some scholars refer to this strictly as the way a give work represents time, a more post-modern take includes the reader in this representation. Reading has a highly-variable temporal experience; music (and cinema and theatrical performances) have a much more rigid chronotope. The present dissonance detracts from this possibly wonderful work.
Long story short (too late!): I'd love to hear these performed together.
Jon Eric | lyrics
+++ drums +++
+++ great line: But being born in this town is walking in on a conversation / The moment it turns awkward. +++
I'd like to see this story more developed, though I'm not sure where you might go. That line is fantastic and good place to stop.
Longfellow Street | Vote
+++ RAWK; love the rough edges +++
+++ pleasantly unexpected female vox +++
--- oi oi oi ---
Paco del Stinko | lyrics
+++ vocal effect +++
+++ ending +++
/// This is short and punchy, but I'd still like to see a bit more dynamism ///
Ross Durand | Vote
+++ as usual, a fantastic Guy n' Guitar tune +++
+++ lyric narrative +++
This is a perfect coffee shop, or more appropriately, campfire tune. I want sit down next to Ross and pass around a bottle of whiskey and talk about lost love.
I have a soft spot for "anti-choruses," or choruses with no words but memorable melodies.
Seismic Toss
+++ good groove +++
/// lacks dynamism ///
Smashy Claw
/// opening reminds me of Sublime ///
--- the tinny EQ on the guitars should be used much more sparingly; when the full band comes in it's a very welcome change, but it's long overdue ///
+++ when this finally takes off, it's great : lyrics, melody, performance and production are all spot on +++
/// end seems abrupt ///
Steve Durand | lyrics | Vote
+++ great gel of lyrics and musical genre +++
+++ excellent mix +++
Suckweasel | lyrics
+++ good rock vibe +++
/// familiar guitar tones and riffs ///
I would bop along with this in the background at a bar, but there's not much here to make it stand out.
Tuners Union
/// mix is rather quiet ///
+++ once I turn it up, it's beautiful: lovely harmonies, (mostly) nice instrument tones, good melody +++
/// the snare and guitar strum on beats 2 and 4 are really hot and nearly the same tone; it slices right through the mix and becomes distracting///
/// the acoustic guitar part in general is a little hot and lacks satisfying low end. ///
As I was saying on Monday, one of my goals for 2012 is to take things less seriously, especially in the classroom. The thing is, disposition is a tough nut to crack, and requires a lot of introspection that sometimes I'm not really good at. I mean, I've been trained as a critical thinker by some of the best - that's what a Ph.D. from a leading program at an R1 university should get you. So, I can train an analytical eye on movies, on political discourse, on pedagogical practices and take them apart six ways to Sunday. But, my own actions and their underlying motivations, especially their emotional impulses - that's a much more slippery target.
And yet, it's an area that needs focus and improvement. I'm a good teacher for a number of reasons: I'm organized, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and rigorous. I ask a lot of my students, but nothing that I don't believe that they can't achieve and nothing for which I don't provide structure and support. But a side effect of this seems to be that I can come off as abrasive, even aggressive. One of my student evaluations from last semester nails it:
The only thing I would change about Dr. McLaughlin's course is that he could have a little more relaxed environment in his classroom. It can be very stressful to have a professor with such high expectations sometimes and I have discussed with other students of his that it causes some people to not speak up for fear that they will answer incorrectly.
There's a fine line between apprehension and effective learning. I do want my students to think about what they say, but I don't want them gagged by fear. This is counter-productive: it limits what students are putting in to the course and what they can, as a group, get out of it.
So, how can I go about creating a "more relaxed environment" in the classroom? Honestly, this runs counter to nearly every instinct I have as an instructor. Class-time doesn't have to be all work and all seriousness all the time, but it should be focused, structured, productive and include attention to the task at hand with appropriate feedback.
Ah... there's the kicker, isn't it? Sometimes, a light touch is the best way to go. So, here are some things that I'm going to try out and focus on this semester:
Empathy
This past Monday morning, on the very first day of class, before the session had even begun, I had a student shyly approach me with an old edition of the textbook.
She started: "Is this -"
"Nope," I cut her off.
Whoa. Teacher fail. Imagine that being the very thing you hear from your professor? Ouf. I tried to back-pedal quickly, highlighting the improvements of the new edition, but the damage was done. I need to avoid doing these kinds of abrupt, insensitive interactions. It's not that these happen often, but acutely negative moments like this stick in a person's mind much more than a hundred gentle smiles.
So, the moral of this story is: take a moment; smile; consider where the student is coming from, not just what I want them to accomplish or how I want them to go about doing it.
Humor
To make up for that gaffe, alas not with the same class, but karma-wise, at least, I had an effective humorous moment on Monday, too. I was presenting the textbook; pointing out how well it's organized and how it presents its information (that is, grammar, vocabulary, etc.; some pretty dry stuff on its own) in an engaging and often visually-stimulating way. "It reminds me of a kid's book," I said, off the cuff, and then proceeded to read to the class in my best Kindergarten Teacher Voice:
Make sure to learn the correct article with each faire expression that calls for one. For faire expressions requiring a partitive article or indefinite article, the article is replaced with de when the expression is negated.
Silly, but effective. The students learned how to best do their homework, prepare for class and interact with their textbook and I earned some kudos for poking fun at my own textbook.
Games Without Consequence
I often play games, including Jeopardy! for unit reviews, Pictionary for vocabulary lessons, and even Taboo! But I attach some sort of consequence; usually, this is extra credit for an upcoming assessment or assignment. My thinking behind this is that the score is a motivator; their performance is more pertinent to their course experience.
However, an unintended - but no less important - consequence is that even fun things become stressful. It's time to play just for the sake of playing. It's okay to let your hair down and kick about every now and then. Why not? It's just a French class. (Nevermind that just participating in the game helps them learn, and having fun improves their disposition towards the course...)
Don't Take it Personally
This is perhaps the thing at the heart of my problem. I internalize a lot of my coursework; it's really an extension of myself. I put my ego out there every day. So, when students fail to reach my expectations, when they are unprepared or just having a blank moment - I feel like I've failed. Yup, I have failed. This is frustrating, and sometimes I take this frustration out on them. This is doubly bad, because not only are they embarrassed for not knowing the answer in front of God and everybody, but here I am chastising them for it in front of God and everybody.
It's okay to fail. I want my students to fail every now and then; failures and problems are the beginning of learning. But I have to let them know that during class-time, I'll be there to catch them, to laugh it off with a joke and to help them find a way to succeed.
So, here's to a semester of having more fun and letting the serious business of second language acquisition in a university environment become a little less so. Let's start with this:
One of the best things about working at Kennesaw State University is that all full-time faculty need to perform an annual self-review, along with a plan for what we want to accomplish in the coming year. It's a great moment to step back, look at what you've accomplished and what passed you by, then reassess and re-gear for the coming year. I'm not one for resolutions, but I think this would be a good time to perform something of a personal ARD / FPA. That's check out the past year in review and make some specific and general plans for 2012.
Mark Kostabi, "Two Cats Make Plans"
I feel like last year was kind of a mixed bag. Let's focus on the positive, first, though:
Wrote a bunch of songs for FAWM (February Album Writing Month)
Went to the New York Song Fight! Live. Had great time, met a whole bunch of folks for the first time. Learned a lot about performing live.
Joined Google+ and learned how cool Hangouts can be.
Met a metric tonne of really great stars at Dragon*Con, including chatting with Edward James Olmos and Tricia Helfer.
Started this blog up again in earnest and gave it a good run of content for a few weeks.
Raised funds for, arranged and coordinated the 2011 Francophone Film Festival at KSU, pretty much all by myself.
Celebrated 10 years of marriage by a long and luxurious weekend at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Taught FREN 2003, and accelerated and intensive Intermediate French course for the first time. Used it to test successful the use of Integrated Performance Assessment.
Continued to score well on Student Evaluations of Teaching effectiveness and by many measures, had many student successes.
So, all in all, a pretty damn good list, especially musically and socially. Yet, there are some things that I didn't manage to accomplish, outright flubbed, or just had a rough time with:
Presented no research at any professional conferences. Didn't even attend a conference, despite that things like ACTFL should probably be becoming a priority for me.
Published nothing, at least professionally.
Publicly performed my music only once.
Continuously had mechanical problems with my Genuine Black Jack Scooter.
My grandmother has recently contracted - and is presently still recovering from - a bad case of bronchitis.
My presence as an Admin at [iO] Gaming has been erratic.
I got a guitar method book and did about two pages of exercises.
See, this is one of the great things about making lists like this. When I started this post, I was really feeling rather negative about how 2011 went. But 'lo and behold, there was a lot more good stuff than bad, n'est-ce pas?
So, let's build upon the successes and rectify some of the failings.
Musically
Attend the 2012 Song Fight! Live.
Participate in the next SpinTunes (yup, I've already signed up).
Participate in the next FAWM.
This are are easy; they're what I really want to do to anyway. More difficult goals are these:
Find a local open mic and attend regularly. Use that work on my vocal strength.
Work more on my guitar technique. I need to set up a feasible goal to shoot for: so many exercises to master a week, or something.
Explore some different musical sounds. I feel like I've found a limited range of things that I'm good at, but it's getting stale.
Socially
Keep going to Dragon*Con and meeting awesome people.
Get back into being an active [iO] Admin, more than just showing up on the servers.
Keep in touch with all my new friends. This doesn't have to be full-bore, all-the-time, but a "how are you?" email every now and then is always a good idea.
Professionally
Maintain this blog more regularly. This is a tough one. With the last burst of activity, I ran out of both topics and energy as the semester began to draw to a close. I've got a few things hanging around to write about, but I think the key is just to get in here and write something, to keep up the practice and focus on some concision. (This post is not a good start to the latter goal, I know.)
Present research about the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose at the Film and History League conference in Milwaukee in September.
Get two of my four current research manuscripts published.
Coordinate the 2012 Francophone Film Festival.
Have more fun in class. This is the really big thing, I think. Honestly, I take myself a wee bit too seriously a lot of the time. (I know, shocker.) I'm going to expand this goal into a blog post of its own in a short while, when I wrap my brain around just how to go about this. Any suggestions are welcome.
It's well past time to sum things up. All in all, 2011 wasn't bad. In fact, it was pretty good if I take the time to focus on all the neat things I did. Sure, there are plenty of things to do, and frankly none of these are critical. But I like to dream big, and I hate to sit on my laurels. So, here's to this year being even better than the last.
Side fights are a fantastic niche of the Song Fight! community, little (and sometimes big) informal competitions that happen in the margins of the usual fights. My favorites are cover fights, and in the latest, a bunch of us got the hare-brained ideas to tackle The Carpenters.
I have to admit that when I started this fight, I was only passingly-familiar with The Carpenters' œuvre, mostly their big hits like "We've Only Just Begun." And at first it was a certain challenge to weed out the tunes that Karen and Rich had written themselves from their panoply of covers. (You'll note that some participants below went for The Carpenters' covers of a few tunes; this is cool.) This led me to an interesting idea of a comparative set of reviews, placing our covers alongside the originals. However, to avoid the usual trap of seeing a cover as an inferior copy, I'll look at the covers first, then Carpenters' original.
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by Bad Boys at Bat Mitzvahs
+++ i know lot of more trained singers diss it, but i like your nasal vox +++
+++ alt-county vibe +++
--- drums seem a little uncertain at time ---
by The Carpenters
I really don't know how to process this tune. It crosses so many rhetorical, musical and narrative genres that I'm kind of at a loss. The individual parts, of course, all hold up very well. But... as a whole, it just seems to meander here and there and everywhere. I'll take "Space Oddity" or "A Day in the Life" for my prefered flavors spice of science-fiction / multipart songs.
The End of the World by Karenvan Ray
+++ ominous +++
/// i was really hoping that echoing distorted guitar was going to herald a smashing hard-rock change ///
+++ it just got darker +++
--- just kind of ends ---
/// though i wouldn't have known where to go with that, either ///
by The Carpenters
There's something creepily (and somewhat pleasantly) disjointed about the depressing lyrics and the sonic beauty of this song. And that upbeat hi-hat, who let that in? Especially with those gentle steel guitars, I can see Patsy Cline ripping this up with more pathos and raggedy edges.
Happy by Sportswriters
+++ dynamics; great swelling energy +++
+++ happy-sounding guitars and vocal harmonies +++
+++ solo +++
by The Carpenters
That guitar riff works wonders and I'm very happy that Sportwriters has kept in his version. What doesn't strike true to me is that electric-sounding "boop" in the second part of the verse. The dynamics are here, and again I'm happy to Sportswriters reproducing it in his own way. This is first tune on this list that has a brilliant matching of tone and lyric. The melody and vocal harmonies are joyfully evocative.
Bias: I'm actually familiar with this one. This song really benefits from following Sportswriters, because while the Sports updates a lot of tones and instrumentation (for the better, in my opinion), he carefully reproduces the core of what works in The Carpenters' original recording, deferring to it. Jack Shite takes a nearly opposite approach, or rather, a sideways one. Instead of ditching all of the dated 70's era instruments and tones, he revels in them, matching them as closely as possible. His innovation is a wonderful deconstruction of Karen's spot-on-pitch-perfect-way-too-sappy vocals.
The downside of this take on a cover is two fold. 1) To get the joke, you have to know the original. Otherwise, there's really not much here to talk about, and the vocal take would be off-putting. 2) It's a bit of a one-trick pony. After the first verse, there were no surprises and Jack Shite's cover just paints by the numbers.
by The Carpenters
By the above paragraphs, you can probably discern that I don't like this song. The lyrics are middle-school-crush sappy, and the vocal melody often nearly trips over itself. This is a song full of, to me, odd stops and starts.
Top of the World by Johnny Cashpoint
+++ carnalesque cacophony +++
--- sudden starts and stops ---
by The Carpenters
I'm generally a fan of J$, and he doesn't disappoint here. Like Shite, he skewers one just-too-perfect aspect of the original, in this case, the disco-country vibe of the instruments is replaced with a Wurlizter of cacophonous electronica and distorted guitars.
I have to say this about the original: damn if it never fails to get my head bopping! Its melody and rhythm are infectious!
We’ve Only Just Begun by Paco del Stinko
+++ love the reverby guitar lick +++
+++ actually, every guitar bit is just perfect +++
--- you force your voice too much; it clashes with the up-beat lyrics and effortless joy of the music ---
+++ solo +++
by The Carpenters
The vocal harmonies on the original track are gorgeous, and the dynamics are wonderful, something that Paco makes the good decision to maintain. This is rightfully one of The Carpenters' most well-known songs. I love Karen's drum fills.
(I’m Caught Between) Goodbye and I Love You by Noah McLaughlin
--- ... and I kind of hate my own drum fills ---
+++ dual lead guitar parts as musical metaphor +++
+++ dynamics, even if some of the transitions are abrupt ///
/// i wonder if the bass part is too busy during the second part of the verse ///
+++ ending +++
by The Carpenters
When I first started studying this song, I was really engaged by its structural complexity. It has two choruses, or, a chorus with two parts. There's a lot going on, melodically, and all of it is interesting. I wanted to highlight that with my version. Karen's soulful crooning here is very emotive; and I knew I couldn't (and really shouldn't) replicate it. I don't like the syrupy backing backing vox for the first part of the chorus; it's too pretty for such a dire sentiment.
Goodbye to Love by DJ Ranger Den
+++ finds the Leonard Cohen in the lyric +++
+++ crash swells +++
/// not sure about the theremin ///
+++ cascading vocal harmonies in the coda +++
by The Carpenters
There's a rather zen-like sentiment of letting go of attachment that I associate with these lyrics, and it rubs me the wrong way how the original track just barrels through it and coats it in syrupy pop-music. That electric guitar lead is a great counterpoint; wish the track had more of that.
Superstar by The Heartbreak of Invention
+++ best Karen Carpenter sound-alike +++
+++ instrumentation and arrangement +++
+++ dynamics +++
by The Carpenters
Musically, there's not much going on with this track that interests me. It's very similar to the more successful "Goodbye to Love" above, though I believe it precedes it chronologically in The Carpenters' catalog. The lyrics are a mixed bag: part narrative, part painfully on-the-nose commentary with the "I love you, I really do," line.
Solitaire by bgm
+++ reminds me of David Bowie in all the good ways +++
+++ swell! +++
+++ instrumentation and arrangement +++
+++ great, effortless vox +++
by The Carpenters
With its sparse instrumentation, this tune is clearly a showcase for Karen's lovely voice. As such, it works well. The sound, alas, is dated: slick and lush, but snnnnnrrrxxx - oh, excuse me, I kind of nodded off there. The lyrics are again, a mixed bag, especially as their mediation on solitude and (again) a zen-like kind of shedding attachment clashes with the triumphant orchestration.
Ticket to Ride by Octothorpe
/// wish I could hear the vox more; they're buried by that synth lead to the right ///
+++ drums +++
by The Carpenters
Octothorpe is a kind of legend in Song Fight circles. Like Johnny Cashpoint, there's some jazz-like sophistication in their seeming simplicity and counter-culture takes on musical conventions. Like Jack Shite's offering, I feel as if I need to have The Carpenters' version on hand to understand what they're doing. What we've got here, of course, is The Carpenters' covering a Beatles' tune, and as such, it's fantastic! It turns the upbeat, rockabilly of the the original on its head ans sideways and The Carpenters make it their own in interesting ways. Alas, I think this doesn't leave Octothorpe much to work with.
Conclusion
If there's one thing that this fight has taught me is the deceptive simplicity of The Carpenters. Sure, it's pretty and the instrumentation doesn't seem all that complex and the lyrical themes usually seem to be straightforward romantic conventions. But don't let the slick '70's pop production fool you: The Carpenters have some fantastically complex songs, rich in time- and key-changes along with swathes of gorgeous sound that once you start deconstructing can get you lost in a hall of musical fun-house mirrors.
I'm really happy to say that all the participants really rose to the various challenges of their selected tunes. It's a fabulous illustration that regardless of genre, performance or production abilities, the heart of a great song will almost invariably produce a great song.
