Lost Weekend results in, Fever Dream art too late.

In Song Fight, my submission for the "Lost Weekend" title got 18 votes, and I'm pretty happy about that.  Things are heading in the right direction:  Grim Reality got 3 votes (a 3-way tie for 10th place out of 16 entries), Three Stars got 7 votes (9th place out of 15 entries), and Lost Weekend got 18 votes (5th place out of 11 entries).  If I continue to improve at that rate, and if I keep submitting at least once per month, my December 2015 Song Fight entry should get over thirty thousand votes (which will still only be 812th place out of 1439 entries).  I might need to re-check my math on some of that.

The Song Fight after Lost Weekend was "Fever Dream", and I did not submit a song to that fight.  I was going to submit art, but in the couple of hours between the time I started the drawing and the time I sat down to email it in, they had already posted the Fever Dream songs and someone else's art.  I've learned my lesson about submitting early.  Here is what I was going to submit:

Another exercise in crosshatching, it is my freehand attempt at re-creating one of Henry Fuseli's Nightmare paintings.  Actually it's not completely freehand: I did the "FEVER DREAM" text in the upper left-hand corner white by printing it out on the drawing paper in very very light grey and then just not crosshatching over that section, and then I decided that technique was too much hassle to repeat for the "SONG FIGHT" text at the bottom so I just added that text in MS Paint after the fact.

If I'm keeping to my goal of submitting to Song Fight at least monthly, then I should really turn something in for the next Fight, entitled "So Much Universe".  I will post information about that here if I get it completed in time.

In addition to (or maybe 'instead of', if I run out of time) the "So Much Universe" Song Fight, I have committed myself to submitting to a Depeche Mode sidefight/coverfight.  I will keep you posted on that too.

"Lost Weekend" Song Fight Entry Posted at Songfight.org

Long time no post.  No real excuse this time, except that I saw no reason to post before I had anything new to report.

As noted earlier, the Long-Form Commuter Challenge ended up being a bit of a bust except that it got me making music, and it taught me a lot about my own abilities and limitations.  It was also the kick I needed to get me submitting to Songfight.org.  My goal is to submit entries for at least one Song Fight song per month.

The title for the Feb 10-20 Song Fight was "Lost Weekend", and I went ahead and submitted a song for it.  They just posted the songs tonight, and you can check them out at http://www.songfight.org .  If you listen to my song (band name Jerkatorium) and like it, please vote for it - again, you don't need to register or anything, just click the boxes next to any/all of the songs you enjoyed and then click the vote button.

After composing the instrumental parts of "Lost Weekend" I was extremely happy with the sound of it, but then I had to add my own sub-par vocals.  Still, I think it's my best effort to date.  Breadbox provided the main ideas for the Lost Weekend lyrics (he suggested the '99 bottles of beer' reference, the 'bottle top/glottal stop' rhyme, and the weekend/weakened wordplay), and I wouldn't have been able to complete the song without his inspiration.  He is, of course, in no way to blame for my vocals.  I just need to find a regular collaborator to sing for me.  Given my compose-as-you-go Song Fight songwriting modus operandi, any such collaboration might be nearly impossible.  It's certainly something for me to think about some more.

Also, last week the folks at SongFight.org sent out a general call for art for the Lost Weekend fight (anyone can submit art for the individual upcoming Song Fights within their guidelines), because I guess no one had supplied any yet.  I rushed out this drawing (with some color and headers added), but they didn't use it:

It is essentially an exercise in crosshatching.  It's my freehand stab at Peter Weller's pose after injecting bug powder into is foot in the movie Naked Lunch:

It could be that they didn't choose my drawing because with the size reduction plus the added color and headers it ended up looking like this:

The final image has to be 150x150 pixels, so a lot of the crosshatching gets lost in the lower-res mush.  Also I probably shouldn't have bothered with the color.

One more item of note:  The March 2015 Commuter Challenge will be to compose and perform an original song in the style of blues, gospel, or field holler.  I will probably try for a twofer, something that will fit both the Song Fight title (maybe the just-announced "Fever Dream" Song Fight, due March 13) and the Commuter Challenge requirement.  But we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I'll continue to update this blog whenever I have something new, so you can expect around one entry per month to announce each Song Fight entry, and maybe some other entries if I ever get those EP songs improved enough to share.