Voting For Composition Challenge 34

stratman3142

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

Below is the playlist of entries:

https://soundcloud.com/thefretboard/sets/composition-challenge-34?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing


@poopot did a video with his, below

Springywheel

5 points - @thecolourbox - Beautiful, haunting... great lyrics and vocal delivery.
3 points - @CMW335 - Brutal, love it 
1 points - @stratman3142 - Really good, great lick 

Shout out to everyone else - great stuff all round.

thecolourbox

Very flattered to get some points on the board early, though I may have peaked! Thank you.

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

During first lockdown i wrote a lot of little snippets of songs and draft ideas based on reflections from the time, I called the project Introversion. Most came to nothing but I still have them. Also during lockdown with me and the Mrs working at home, she said I was like "the ghost who lives upstairs" because I'd be dead silent for ages then suddenly creak the floorboards or scream (I hated my job). So i started singing, to the tune of Chopin's Funeral March, "Duuu Duuu du duuuu, I'm the ghost who lives upstairs". I thought it sounded a cool phrase to that tune so wrote it down in my book, at a separate time I'd also written the riff used in this (trying to make a folky rocky guitar riff on electric). There they remained until I realised "horror" could include ghosts and I thought I could make it work.

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

So it's the first thing I've really done using my new TC Plethora. It's my Colourbox Signature Mustang on neck pickup, into the Plethora, with the Shaker Vibrato model running into the Tremolo on a toneprint that alternates the speed between fast and slow, hence my guitar sound is very wobbly. Into a clean amp on my Digitech gsp1101 and a huge stereo reverb. The backwards bit at the beginning is just the first verse in reverse (and sped up) so it merged nicely into the actual intro.

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.

Other Production Stuff

Vocals recorded in my spare room on a £30 Marantz branded condenser with pop filter shoved on top.

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

Springywheel

Interesting, thanks for sharing CB - would be great for everyone else to explain their creative process. I'll do the same once I get a chance. 

Snap

5pts - @stratman3142 ;
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

Habanero

5pts : @thecolourbox

3pts : @Springywheel ;

1pt  : @Snap ;

I enjoyed listening to all the entries, but I reckon the one by thecolourbox is one of the best I've heard in any of these challenges.

thecolourbox

Thank you so much for the kind comments so far on my effort! Very unexpected.

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 ;

Springywheel

Ok following on from colourbox's great explanation of how he approached things...

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)   

stratman3142

@poopot did a video for his as well. I've added it to the original post.

stratman3142

Below are votes from @poopot, which he emailed to me.

5pts : @cmw335

3pts : @Snap ;

1pt : @stratman3142 ;

CMW335

I have chopped and changed so much with these, all great work but will go with..

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.

 

Weaver85

am i allowed to vote even though i didn't take part? 

stratman3142

Weaver85 said:

am i allowed to vote even though i didn't take part? 

Yes anyone can vote.

Weaver85

These are my faves. 

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

stratman3142

Loads of great entries. It's difficult to make choices when there's so much variety. My selections would be heavily dependent on the criteria I choose to set. Usually I go through the tracks and make a shortlist, then whittle it down over repeated playthroughs. The trouble is that pretty much everything stays on my shortlist.

In this case, the criteria I had in mind was a mixture of the audio and how it would fit with horror movie cinematography. The trouble is that would probably rule out my favourite song/composition.

After much deliberation (and chopping and changing my mind), my selections finally ended up as:

5 points : @thecolourbox: Probably not a perfect fit to my criteria, but I just like the song with it's haunting mood and unconventional melody.

3 points : @Snap : Our resident Hans Zimmer Has all of the right elements. I can imagine it as a horror movie sound track and recurring elements of it being selected for sections of a horror film.

1 points : @Springywheel : Bit of a nod to 'Black Sabbath' by Black Sabbath in this one. Dark heavy and great scary film music.

stratman3142

Voting closes tonight at midnight.

stratman3142

Voting closed.

Snap

stratman3142 said:

3 points : @Snap : Our resident Hans Zimmer Has all of the right elements. I can imagine it as a horror movie sound track and recurring elements of it being selected for sections of a horror film.

that's a rather kind comment sir. If I could make something that has even a vague whiff of Hans Zimmer, I'd be delighted!I did stop short of buying the (expensive) Kontakt instrument that he did - Hans Zimmer strings I think. I bet it is a bit nifty