Jerkatorium

Jerkatorium

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Jerkatorium Wins SpinTunes 13! And Three New Songs!

Jerkatorium beat out 27 other bands to win SpinTunes 13!  SpinTunes was a four-round songwriting elimination contest and we crushed it. 



We won with our song "Oh No / Sunblock", which you can hear and download for free at:

https://jerkatorium.bandcamp.com/track/oh-no-sunblock

As with our other songs on Bandcamp you can download this one for free by clicking "Buy Now name your price", entering $0, and clicking through to the download prompt.

The challenge for the final round was to write two songs that can stand on their own, play them separately, then play them simultaneously as a single harmonious piece.  We also had to include some mention of or allusion to an eclipse.

We took pains to make the separate songs sound as different as possible while ensuring that they would meld together well for the combination piece.  I had an idea that if you used any given major chord in song #1, but in song #2 you didn't play the root note and instead stressed the third and fifth, then the major chord could sound like a minor chord with the third as the root in song #2.  For example, if song #1 starts on a C major chord (C/E/G) then you could start song #2 on a chord that sounds like an E minor (E/G) while remaining harmonious when the two songs are played simultaneously.  It worked better on paper than in practice, and the illusion is shattered after the first listening, but I like to think that the general gist had some effect.

Special thanks to our guest vocalist Sheri Hinshaw, who is singing the lead in the "Oh No" half of the song, and who had previously helped us out on our "Regime Change" song for Nur Ein.

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I'm a little late in updating this blog, and as a result I have two other songs to announce.  First off, our third song for SpinTunes (the one that squeaked us into the final) was "Center Square Redux", which you can hear and download for free at:

https://jerkatorium.bandcamp.com/track/center-square-redux

The challenge for that one was to take our Round 1 or Round 2 entry and re-write the song using the exact same lyrics, with a completely new tune and style.  We ended up re-doing our original Center Square song, but with a very different sound and feel.

We also entered into an agreement where at the beginning of every month we give Brian Raiter a topic, and by the end of the month he gives us a set of lyrics related to that assigned topic.  Then Jerkatorium spends the following month writing a song based on those lyrics, and in the meantime Brian is writing a new set of lyrics based on a different topic we'd assigned to him, and the cycle can continue like that indefinitely.  Anyway the first topic assigned to Brian for June 2017 was "Derp Crew" (a specific in-reference that I don't know whether or not I'm allowed to explain), and the lyrics he submitted to us were turned into this song:

https://soundcloud.com/jerkatorium/derp-crew

So that's the three songs.  Since we're obliged to have a new song finished by the end of every month, we'll have another one out in less than a week - I'll try to update the Jerkatorium blog sooner after that one is finished.