Sheryl - you wrote "I assume you know that if the song is to really get exposure, it will eventually have to be re-recorded as a video by an anorexic, half naked bleach blond caked in makeup and making love to her computer screen. lol Are you talented with video software too? :-D"
How about... webcam shots of people looking into their screens as they are "on the hunt"? An assortment of facial expressions from hopeful and bemused all the way to shocked and disgusted. Some video clips - rolling eyes, rubbing eyes, slumping over. Still shots of expressions. Repeated motifs - the same person in the morning with coffee, the afternoon with a can of soda, the evening doing shots of tequila. There's room for main talent, an actress lip-synching the song while playing the part of looking in the screen like everybody else. Alternative shots - a whiteboard with a list of names along the top and criteria down the side, with matrix entries being filled in - return to the whiteboard from time to time as it is being filled in - video of the woman's hand furiously scribbling or erasing, changing her mind and un-erasing, then erasing again.
It's a dangerously tedious plan as is, which is why I suggested non-sequitor shots to keep things interesting. The idea's going to need a lot of work to turn it into a decent video. Lots of subtle visual gags and motion on-screen to keep people's interest.
Also, I have a strange urge to make the lip sync segment look like the Wang Chung video, but that's probably overkill
In theory at least, the lyrics are supposed to be funny on their own. I would think a good video would complement the words, not compete with them.
>>10 D'oh! (sound of donut smacking into forehead) I can probably talk my wife into letting her hand and forearm go on-camera. Let's spend as much time brainstorming and storyboarding as it needs. Hmmmm... I guess I'd better buckle down on the audio, eh?
>>10
Moving again?! Didn't you just go through that hassle last year?
Two years ago. This situation was only supposed to be for about a year, but I overstayed my welcome.
I have to remember to look out for the "post too long" links. I didn't actually see this entire post initially.
Good luck with your new home!!!
BTW, my brother just told me that he would help me take video footage, so we just need to agree on what sort of footage I should be taking. I don't want so silly that we lose the lyrics though.
I was thinking maybe a shots going back and forth between their back side looking the computers as a profile with bizarre or goofy people on their screens to images from the front where they are reacting to things.
Talysman - you want to be the director on this? Then you should be "calling the shots".
Talysman, my brother and sister-in-law just gave me their old camera that takes video, so if you still want to do this shoot me a line at some point.
An attempt at revising talysman's lyrics for Washing Crystal Balls (Bowie style) - just putting it out there...
someone dropped my future in a creamy cheesy sauce
now my fortune's smudged!
"please wash that stain from my destiny"? I don't see the function of "but" so "please" seems more appropriate.
That came to my mind as well.
So where are the original lyrics again?
Not that I know how this song goes at all, but just throwing out an idea. It just occurred to me reading this that if one dropped their future in a creamy fudge, then you'd A) have alliteration with the word future, B) it rhymes with smudge and budge, and C)it would be more likely to produce a stain that won't budge than creamy cheese sauce. lol
But I don't know the music, so it might not work anyway.
FYI the thread at http://community.livejournal.com/interrocartel/60890.html continues to grow.
We can all write tunes with any of these ideas? I see you already started something with the one that intrigued me "UK Places with Z in the Name," Zed, but the idea is that we can all experiment with any of them, eh??? I'm thinking that is how it works?
I wonder if I am ripping off this tune from somewhere because it seemed to write itself, but that may just be the style of song:
Wow, speaking of the UK locations with Z in the name, I just looked on a UK county map and could only find 17 cities that fit that description. I just found another in an atlas, but there sure don't seem to be a lot of them. Did any of you guys find many?
Oh wait, I guess the songs are already written. Nevermind. lol
If you're the pee-on-a-hydrant type, mention what songs you're working on here.
Not bad - I can hear Bowie singing that. Mind if I change 'em?
I was thinking of working on my song idea about falling for dead authors, but I haven't been getting anything done lately. We'll see.
Although I did think up and intro for it the other night.
Go ahead, but you should probably label alternate lyrics as "Washing Crystal Balls (II)" or something like that.
I did deliberately pattern parts of the lyrics after a couple Bowie songs, just to force it to have a Bowie feel. I won't tell you which songs, or where, because I don't want to influence your choice of melody.
I would be more inclined to modify the lyrics a bit rather than replace them; but one never knows where that will end (ask Doctroid)...
>>47 I hear you. I feel much the same way about "Planting Geraniums"...
Although I have to disagree about your "Texas Ranger" lyrics: They're good!
>>49 There's also this: http://web.archive.org/web/20060206235406/http://interrobangcartel.com/
Hah! I Didn't think archive.org would have squirreled that away, because it was delivered by CGI. Good!
Hey! I just looked back at Casey's post from 2003 where he explained what the Tribute Album was all about, and he said it was RECORDED IN 2008!
By my count that's 7 songs left to do in 4.5 months. Yikes!
The Truth of Lies
Cellphones of Candlelight
The Difference between a Wright Bastard and Funny Liars
Sawdust of Central
The Alabaster at Fantasy Fest
I thought I might start a thread to keep track of sites that link to us. Here's one:
http://hipsterplease.blogspot.com/2007/02/radio-free-hipster-ep-16-robot-friends.html
I should go back through my archived gmails and find all the alerts that Google sent me. There were some odd ones. But I'd have to weed out the fake search portals.
An atheist podcast mentions "The George Hammond Conspiracy":
http://hellboundalleee.podomatic.com/entry/2007-01-10T19_52_21-08_00
The bottom of this page selling tickets to a concert has a link to the Interrobang Cartel website:
Hmmmm... along with "Suspected drug cartel accountant surrenders."
I don't know if any or all of these have been mentioned somewhere before:
http://ask.metafilter.com/9341/ : 'I'm making a cd of awful "romantic" songs. Please suggest titles in the vein of Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" and Patrick Swayze's "She's Like The Wind." posted by Mayor Curley to (72 comments total)' Response: 'Chalice of Fire by Matt McIrvin, recorded by the Interrobang Cartel. posted by kenko at 1:34 PM on August 11, 2004'
Yeah, I've been seeing the latter two, but forgot we were reverse stalking people. Have they really converted any songs to ringtones? I was going to look into how to do that, but didn't.
The second two look like damned 'bots.
As the Cartel moves into its prog rock era, I see them taking on a nerdly keyboards guy who, having joined the band, foists upon them a long, serious, intellectual, instrumental piece for the new album. Not to be outdone by the gods of 1970s prog rock like Emerson, Wakeman, and Waters, he ventures into the weirdness of microtonal 15-tone equal temperament. Needless to say, there is immediate talk of firing him from the band.
>>19: "It's like a collaboration between Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield!"
Well, then, guess I'll quit my day job.
And go back in time 30 years.
And do this on a PAiA Gnome? I don't think so.
Ah, back when loops were really loops and it took two hours to sequence four bars... iron men and wooden machines...
>>19 Hm, you're right, not a lot of difference. Are those actual samples, or synthesized? Sounds more like synthesized to me.
What would a 50/50 mix of one of those (say shenai #2) with the previously posted oboe sound like?
I'm not sure exactly how the plug-in works. I think it uses very short samples, with a lot of synth-type processing to get the different notes, ADSR, filtering, articulation, etc. I'll try a mix.
That sounds pretty good, I'd say. http://boxstr.com/files/3132338_uuynm/VSC_Oboe_Shanai2_mix.mp3
They classify the VSC as a wavetable synth "modeled after the ubiquitous Roland synth of the same name." Apparently it's available for Mac 9.x, too, but not OS X. http://www.roland.com/PRODUCTS/EN/VSC-MP1/index.html
Cool.
What's with this board's RSS? Goolge Reader doesn't see half the new posts. But I just tried using Safari's builtin RSS, and it does seem to get the new posts. Unfortunately I normally do not use Safari.
Is there something nonstandard about the RSS source?
The above post did turn up, though.
The main thing wrong is this (from the W3.org validator):
> RSS feeds should be served as application/rss+xml (RSS 1.0 is an RDF format, so it may be served as application/rdf+xml instead). Atom feeds should use application/atom+xml. Alternatively, for compatibility with widely-deployed web browsers, any of these feeds can use one of the more general XML types - preferably application/xml.
Well, other feeds without pubDate don't appear to have a problem, and refreshing causes it to get the new title (with the new post count), but the item shows up as already read with a date of last December. Safari on the other hand, when you refresh it, gets the new title and assigns today's date. It seems Google knows the latest RSS information but doesn't regard it as indicating the item is new.
The new forums and wiki (whenever those are finally available) has much more configurable RSS/Atom options, so I'll just concentrate on getting that ready. Then, you'll be able to try out RSS 1.0, RSS 3.0, Atom, and whatever else we concoct to see what Google Reader can use correctly. Otherwise, since it seems to be a Google Reader issue, you'll probably need to use Safari or something else to read just this feed. Dag's not around.
Thought it would be helpful to make this discussion more public.
In other words, why does it need to be changed if we did it right?
We had a no derivatives license, although it was non-commercial, although I still think that it would be better if any commercial projects required some deliberation and agreement of those who participated in creating the artwork.
Hi Zed,
Sounds like we want the same thing then.
Let me revise the wording on your original proposal as a counteroffer so that it deals with some of my concerns, and then if you guys are ok with my changes, we can march happily on! :-)
OK, I don't quite understand this CC contracting stuff, so I need some clarification.
I originally offered my lyrics on the non-commercial, no derivatives, but then we started develop a song to go with them from a melody idea of mine without actually specifying anything in particular about the music. Having never done this before, I thought it was all taken care of with my initial license offer.
If you click on the CC link at the announcement (http://community.livejournal.com/interrocartel/60032.html), that is to say, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/, you will see that this is also a "attribution - noncommercial - no derivatives" license. So your licensing of the lyrics, and our licensing of the recording, are done under the same basis. That's where we are starting from.
Sheryl asked me some questions about the side-wide licensing and how it relates to "Online Dating", and I thought I'd like to summarize some points I brought up.
Sheryl published her lyrics under another site and placed a CC AT/NC/ND license on them. She then made a recording of herself singing the lyrics and offered them to Major Zed, with no restrictions on the melody, but also no formal license. "Online Dating" was produced as a collaborative project, with Sheryl, Zed, and Charlie as copyright holders, and NO LICENSE. I know Zed mentioned a CC AT/NC/ND license in the announcement, but clearly this hasn't fully been worked out, so presumably this only applies to Zed's contribution.
Thanks for the clarifications, talysman. Two more cents from me. Anyone who saw the announcement (and Sheryl has been promoting that link) saw or could/should have seen the CC AT/NC/ND license notice and therefore has a right to act accordingly. I think the cat is out of the bag in that respect. I've also uploaded it to two music sites and included the same notice. We could change that for future visitors, I suppose, but how could we make it more restrictive without removing the track altogether? While IANAL, I think as a matter of custom, when you download a free MP3, AT/NC/ND is pretty much what you expect.
Thanks, guys!!! OK, so that explains why we actually require a license to do some of these things Zed was talking about.<p> I was thinking we already had one that allowed for a number of the things he wanted to do, such as post the on other websites (and he had posted on livejournal, so I was doubly confused), share the recording with bands and radio stations,and remixing (since he had already done initial mixing), etc. <p>Understanding that we didn't actually have a clear license puts a lot of this in perspective! You know, like, why thought we needed one. Hahahaha Thanks!!!
Oops, I get used to posting on OKC and start paragraphing with p tags. lol Sorry.
John (Don't know his last name) at OK Cupid said I could put lyrics up here in case someone wanted to try to come up with music to go with them.
I guess this is being offered as an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. I don't want my lyrics altered, unless I am consulted and agree to any changes.
I think I got the missing phonemes now. Listen to
http://boxstr.com/files/3011796_cmywu/OnlineDating_82.mp3
I also corrected a synch problem between the vocals and guitars that appeared in two places and had been bugging me and ?!Charlie for quite some time.
Thanks for working on it!!!! Awesome!
Would you be willing to upload it again though? I think something went off in the upload because there's something weird going on with the word "thinker" at the beginning, which I doubt you would have even been working on and also in the center bit (which I also doubt you would have touched.) Because they were both fine to start with.
Anyway, thanks a million!!! Awesome!
Yes, I tried to make the "th" in "thinker" more prominent. What's the "center bit"?
Hmmm...something with the "thinker" change didn't take right. It not sounds like a hissy "sinker." The center bit being the "so you compare them, torment and scare them" part.
Anyway, don't worry about it. I'll see if I can't splice it together with the 61 version. You've done more than enough work on this. A Million hugs!!! Thanks!!!
...splice it together with the 61 version... ?!
No, nooo, NO! Try this instead: http://boxstr.com/files/3049182_bh2sy/OnlineDating_92.mp3
Awesome mix!!! I like the way you got the K back in there on Derek! :-D Nice!!!
It's interesting comparing it to the 61 version. They are so close, but there are these subtle differences that I can't quite pin down.
Ah, but can you understand the lyrics better?
I do think it is clearer, but the changes are subtle.
It's interesting how changes that are barely perceptible when you do an A/B comparison do in fact make a difference in clarity nonetheless.
It sounded slightly different, but I would completely have to guess on what you did. What the hell, I'll guess what the differences were, and you can laugh when it turns out that it was something you didn't touch at all. :-D
No, on second thought. Forget everything I just wrote. They sound different, but the main difference are in the higher pitches, and I just can't tell if it made it clearer or not. But there were definitely some improvement on some consolnant endings.
I know we are still working on the "Online Dating" song, but I was going through my poetry today and was thinking that maybe my poem about domestic spying could make a funny song too. So I thought I would at least post it.
Anyway, I broke it up and added a short chorus. I guess this would be on the same Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license as before (as that seemed to work well.) I know it's kind of short for a song, although I initially made the poem short on purpose to keep to the basics. But it could be filled out with lots of segments of private phone calls being intercepted.
When I was in elementary (or maybe it was middle school) the popular buzz word was "onomatopoeia," although that would be hard to rhyme. But I am sure some child would want to be an onomatopoeia.
I'll try out the form you suggested. There'd have something overlapping where the parent is telling the child that (s)he can be anything (s)he wants if (s)he just sets his/her mind to it because that is why it's amusing; parents really do say that to their kids.
Here's a few minutes of brainstorming, without looking at >>28:
skyscraper - facade, monument, destroyed when earth moves, trap people in fire
bulldozer - willpower, destroyer of hopes/dreams, flatten things
meadow - graveyard of dreams, where cows go to crap, weeds, "out to pasture"
In response to >>28
Well, that's a good question. What kind of progression? From start to end, I thought the irony would be in the (sad) success from a metaphorical perspective. E.g., boy wants to be a skyscraper, grows up to be a respected, powerful man who is devastated after his wife leaves him.
OK, I was actually thinking initially of a "how to" progression. Like initially it's just an ambition to be a skyscraper because Mommy told him that he could be anything he wanted to be. Then the teenager starts eating his vegetables because you can't be a skyscraper without being big and tall. Besides, Popeye got iron from eating spinach.
But eventually, he goes to school, gets a science degree, and learns how to convert organic material to inorganic material (such as flesh to metal) and a devises a robot that will automatically assemble the parts once his flesh has been turned to steel and he can no longer assemble the skyscraper on his own. Or whatever. In other words, the functional side of the dream. With lots of encouragement from his folks along the way and reminders about setting goals and the importance of work and confidence and having an effective strategy. Maybe something about having a business plan and learning the right jargon to impress money lenders. Hahaha He should have to go business school. X-)
Is that spam? The links don't seem to work.
Yes, I think so. I put a post in IBC LJ asking for comments before I delete it.
Nice attempt to inject some HTML with Javascript. Good thing it doesn't work. It looks annoying beyond just being SPAM.
Maybe he was trying to give us inspiration for another song topic. lol