Definitely now entering a "battle of the bands" contest

[Jimmy]

A battle of the bands contest is taking place not far from where I live, and my brother and I are eligible to enter. It's being advertised as "the big break your band has been looking for" and it looks like there's some good prizes available.

Here are the two tracks we've submitted. We've worked as hard as we possibly could on them and overall I think we actually did pretty well with the final vocal take. It's nothing absolutely stellar, though. Eager to hear all of your thoughts. Please take us to the cleaners with your criticism. Please.
http://soundcloud.com/james-paddock/rainbow-season-control
http://soundcloud.com/james-paddock/rainbow-season-the-island

Does anyone here have any experience with these events? It'll be our first.

[gnarbeard]

Battle of the Bands types of shows can be a lot of fun. I've participated in 2 or 3 a few years ago.

Anything specific you were looking to know about?

How it's run will really depend on the people running it. It was a "promotions" company that ran the few my band participated in. They were pretty sketchy. We had to sell our own tickets and the amount of tickets you sold determined your time slot in the show. The event was judged by applause...so it boiled down to whichever band sold the most tickets won the thing.

We went in not worrying about winning. We just were happy to get to play a show in front of new people in a decent venue (our typical venue was inner-city row home basements and other hole-in-the-wall type places). We did our best to put on a good show and have a good time. We were actually a runner-up one time and got called to fill a spot a later round after another band dropped out.

[Spark]

Good luck, dude. I'm having the same sort of dilemma in my side of the world. My buddy formed a band with me in it and entered it in a talent show. Thing is, we only have a week left to practice and school is giving me a lot of crap homework.

Also, I kinda wanted to do it solo. Oh well, there's still probably next year. Sigh.

I think what matters in this sort of shindig is the experience you'll get from performing live! So even if you guys screwed up (like what we did at the same talent show last year. It was also our first time, too ), at the very least you'll get to be like me and advise others about these sort of things. I THINK IT'S GONNA BE A FUN RIDE FOR YOU GUYS IF YOU CAN HANDLE A BIT OF SHAME. Seriously, the adrenaline, the anticipation of waiting for your turn. All good fun.

Ahem. COOL SONG. I really liked the start of that synth at 0:15. Reminded me of battle themes in video games.

MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR. Also, remember to check your equipment before the performance! That's VERY important!

[Cherax]

My somewhat-defunct pop-rock band won the band comp at our guitarist's university last year, which shocked us all, because we're really not very good. I asked our friends in the crowd what they thought could've been working for us, and the general consensus was: we looked like we were having a good time. Playing good music is always going to help, and you appear to have that under Control (pun intended), but if you're on stage concentrating too hard on your synths, you'll look bored/boring, and if you're trying too hard to look cool, you'll look like a douchebag. The other bands we were up against were alright, but their guitarist didn't move a single facial muscle the whole set, or their lead singer jumped about in a painful exaggeration of showmanship, or so on. We covered Trolololo, while I sang in a Pikachu suit. Have fun, and everyone else will - even the judges.

text

Amen, brother. Especially about checking your equipment. For the love of glob, check your equipment.

[Jimmy]

Thanks for the comments, guys. Here's a bit of an update, I guess...

I need a little reassurance over here, because as of recently I've been stressing out over this contest way more than necessary. The main reason for this is that my brother and I have never performed live before, but there are other factors contributing to my frustration, as well.

I'll be honest, I have multiple insecurities about the quality of my singing voice, despite comments that I've been improving. I feel the same way with my brother - both our voices are just... below average, shall we say. Our competitors are going to be within the age range of 12-18, mostly, but that's definitely old enough to have a friggin' good, mature voice (any of you heard Christina Grimmie? she's a beast), which my brother and I seem to lack. The fact is that we haven't actually been trying to sing for long, so we're bound to be outdone on that front.

Having recently noticed that all that we need to submit to this contest is a CD containing one original and one cover song (and not an entire album/EP, as we originally thought), we're going to submit "Control" to the contest, along with a "redone" version of this remix I did a couple of years ago, complete with new vocals.

However, my brother and I have been struggling with actually trying to sing our own song. It's not that we've made the vocal melody for "Control" too demanding - we just seem to fall flat whenever we approach the microphone. I'm beginning to suspect that I might actually be tone-deaf. (Meanwhile, my brother gets the notes right more often, but his range is slightly more limited than mine, so he struggles with large note jumps. These flaws are painfully apparent in our recordings.)

One of the biggest problems for me, though, is the fact that, on discovering what we actually needed to submit, I wanted to submit a completely different song - a much slower, guitar-and-synth-driven ballad which my brother and I finished a few months ago called "Sleep" (I will upload an instrumental version of the track as soon as I can - we need to redo the vocals). It's one of my favorites off the EP that we're working on, but when I presented this idea to my brother and parents, they all told me without any hesitation that we should submit "Control" instead. Because it's higher-energy. Because the lyrics we wrote for it are infinitely more aggressive (and not about sleep). Because it's "better". Being outvoted on my own material left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, but I caved in and started working on the vocals for "Control" instead. However, we had to redo a large proportion of it to account for (a) two or three curse words that were necessary to omit due to the rules of the contest, and (b) the vocal melodies I had in mind that were just not possible for us to sing with our current ability.

I simplified the melodies (multiple times) and rewrote some of the lyrics. And... it just doesn't feel like my song anymore. It hardly feels like it's worthy of submission at all, really. I haven't improved it, I've watered it down. It won't be fun to perform live because I'm so completely sick of it, having gone through it and changed it over and over again. The Island remix/cover has also been a pain to get right. I have not enjoyed working on these two songs one bit.

This contest is going to judge us on our musical ability - and that'll probably include vocal prowess as about 50% of the overall mark. If we can't even sing our own stuff, we won't be getting high marks. They won't even invite us to the actual battle that takes place in October. In fact, we'll probably be swept into the "NO" pile, along with all the other substandard acts that will submit their stuff to this contest, and my philosophy with songwriting is to stand out. I've spent several years writing music that resonates with me as being unusual yet enjoyable, but it's been mostly instrumentals. I would hate for my voice to completely ruin a track I've poured my heart and soul into just because I fall flat on a few of the notes.

So anyway, the deadline for the contest is tomorrow, and I've worked too hard on both of the songs we're going to submit to back away from them now. I think what I'm going to do is upload them as soon as they're submitted, and see what everyone thinks. I encourage you all to be as brutal as possible with your criticism, because I seem to be the only one who's aware that I'm a completely horrible vocalist, and my brother has similar problems with his voice, too. His words of "encouragement" are starting to annoy me greatly ("we're hardly going to win when you have that attitude"), and my parents and singing tutor have only offered "you're a bit flat in places" and "well, you're getting better" as any actual criticism, to my immediate recollection.

I'm sorry if this post has sounded entirely pathetic, but I guess I just need some reassurance. I've been feeling pretty low lately.

[Jimmy]

Okay, here are the two tracks we've submitted. We've worked as hard as we possibly could on them and overall I think we actually did pretty well with the final vocal take. It's nothing absolutely stellar, though. Eager to hear all of your thoughts. Please take us to the cleaners with your criticism. Please.

http://soundcloud.com/james-paddock/rainbow-season-control
http://soundcloud.com/james-paddock/rainbow-season-the-island

[Cherax]

I'm sorry to hear about all the troubles you've encountered along the way. There's a school of thought that says you should persevere in the face of adversity, but there's another school that says that you shouldn't do things that aren't fun. If trying to put yourself and your music out in the public sphere is proving to be too great a chore, then take your foot of the pedal for a while and enjoy the sweet life of the bedroom musician. Ain't nothin' wrong with that. It seems you've made it over a pretty major hurdle on the track, though, so congrats, and make sure to harness this momentum!

As for criticism of the vocals: they're definitely not as bad as you hyped them up to be. No, you're not the best singer, but so what? Mark Knopfler, Jeff Mangum et. al. will tell you that if you've got enough emotion, and you're close enough to the notes, no-one's gonna give a fuck. Bottom line is, you're bearable, man.

Also: Rainbow Season is a great name.

[Jimmy]

I'm sorry to hear about all the troubles you've encountered along the way. There's a school of thought that says you should persevere in the face of adversity, but there's another school that says that you shouldn't do things that aren't fun. If trying to put yourself and your music out in the public sphere is proving to be too great a chore, then take your foot of the pedal for a while and enjoy the sweet life of the bedroom musician. Ain't nothin' wrong with that. It seems you've made it over a pretty major hurdle on the track, though, so congrats, and make sure to harness this momentum!

I think the bedroom musician life is the life for me. I don't trust my ability to reproduce songs live because I'm more of a writer than a performer. The only way people are able to listen to my tracks at the moment is through a "play" button. I'd love to be able to earn a living just from writing songs that won't need to be reproduced live in order for people to appreciate them, like being a video game composer or something. Don't get me wrong, I think that being in a band or ensemble would be great and all, especially if I get to play my own stuff as part of it, but right now just taking my keyboard out into the real world feels like a major move outside of my comfort zone. Here's hoping things start off smoothly for me in that area, though.

As for criticism of the vocals: they're definitely not as bad as you hyped them up to be. No, you're not the best singer, but so what? Mark Knopfler, Jeff Mangum et. al. will tell you that if you've got enough emotion, and you're close enough to the notes, no-one's gonna give a fuck. Bottom line is, you're bearable, man.

Also: Rainbow Season is a great name.

Hehe, thanks, dude. I guess the problem I have with my voice is that it still feels painful for me to listen back to. My brother's got a much better grasp of his voice than I have - he doesn't always hit the notes, but at least his voice has "grit". He can really bellow if he wants to - in fact even when we sing at the same volume, his voice tends to shine through better than mine. I guess the next step for me is to try and "mature" my voice to the same state my brother's is at.

[Jimmy]

Holy crap, guys.

It's official. We've been selected.

We have until October 28th to get our live rig, our stage presence and our 25-minute set sorted out. This'll mean playing pretty much all the songs we have planned for our eventual EP, but we need to get them into a presentable state, not to mention rendering instrumental versions of the songs that we can use as backing tracks, and setting up my laptop so that my keyboard can play bits of the songs.

Looks like we're gonna be pretty busy for the next two months.

[Cherax]

CONGRULAAAAATIOOOOONSSSSS

Whatever you do, don't freak out, and following on from Kyoga, DON'T spend too much time writing the songs instead of practicing them. (This has killed me in the past.) At least you have plenty of time for rehearsing now!

[Jimmy]

Cheers, guys. The songs are written and our set is decided on. The rehearsals are the next big obstacle for us to overcome.

I'm going to print out a series of sheets that should guide me through the songs, because my laptop is going to be constantly changing what I'm playing while the backing track plays. It's my first ever time doing them live, though, so my brother and I probably need to get more in sync with our knowledge of not just the songs, but playing the instruments as well.

[Jimmy]

The contest is today. We'll be leaving in a while to pack our equipment into the venue.

We've recorded snippets of our rehearsals. Check us out here.

[Cherax]

Dang, man, you're a fiend on that keyboard! Best of luck to the both of you!

[Jimmy]

Hehehe, thanks, dude.

Welp, the contest is over now, and by some stroke of luck (good or bad, whichever), we got second prize!

In all honesty, though, the marking seemed arbitrary at best. There were a number of factors in the overall score, such as professionalism, originality, stage presence and entertainment value. One of the judges marked us 5 for originality (despite there only being original material - the other bands all did at least two covers), and praised us for using the word "constipation" in the lyrics... which we didn't and anyway why would we you strange person you.

And personally, I thought the band who got first were a bit crap. Mediocre, but I think the reason they won was that they were, I dunno, there's no other way to say it... "mainstream". Very modern punk-ish rock. The singer had a bad haircut. I knew they'd get high marks, though, mainly because they just sucked the least. The other two bands were all 13/14-year-olds who just couldn't really... do music.

I'm about ready to throw my laptop out of a fifth-storey window, though. It seized up just after we got on stage and set everything up - had to restart it and even then we ate into about ten more minutes of our allotted time. However, we were luckily still able to perform the whole set. Will be uploading it to YouTube shortly... if the 25-minute video doesn't take 12 hours to upload, heh.

[Jimmy]

[Cherax]

Congratulations~! Going by this footage, you guys definitely gave a good performance. Oh my goodness, your brother is so energetic.

And personally, I thought the band who got first were a bit crap. Mediocre, but I think the reason they won was that they were, I dunno, there's no other way to say it... "mainstream". Very modern punk-ish rock. The singer had a bad haircut.

Welcome to the institution, my friend. You've described my experience with just about every battle of the bands I've been to... Copy-paste criticisms of the music industry here.

[Jimmy]

Thank you, sir, you're a gentleman.