A D&D Song Competition

And, uh. . .

Unlife flows on in endless song
Above earth's lamentation
And from afar your eyes seek mine
In morbid fascination.

Through window shut and portal barred
Of your pale throat I'm thinking.
It warms the darkness in my soul.
Thou canst keep me from drinking.

And lo, the tempest 'neath me roars,
Through moonlight high I'm sinking.
Beneath the cracks below your doors--
Thou canst keep me from drinking.


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWVmJdZVvKE]How Can I Keep From Singing (John McCutcheon) - YouTube[/ame]

Good Luck to the Party Bold!

If you don't already know "Good luck to the Barley Mow," you may as well listen to a bit of the structure before trying to parse this one. It's one of those songs where each verse gets longer and longer. For the sake of brevity, I'm only going to post my longest verse. Take into account that it's in more-or-less descending order, because the first verses would only include the last couple of things in the list, and each verse thereafter, you would add a new item at the front of the list and wind up with the nasty big list at the end of the song when it's all assembled. It supposed to be a bloody long song, because it's either meant for travelling (are we there yet?) or drinking (we'll be here all night). Actually for the sake of not getting banned from future posting here, I've removed ten critters from my usual list--but you get the idea. You can fill out your list with your favorites.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtMeDirI4I]Good Luck To The Barleymow - YouTube[/ame]

(Also, if this is the first time you've heard this song, you should log off and get over to your nearest RennFaire before the season is completely gone, because, seriously, you're missing out.)



Good Luck to the Party Bold!

Here's good luck to the party, good luck to the party bold!
Jolly good luck to the party, good luck to the party bold! ("They'll need it!")
It's the dragon,
the dracolich,
archlich,
demilich,
baatezu,
basilisk,
marilith
aboleth,
umber hulk
otyugh
owlbear,
bugbear,
lycanthrope,
lizardman,
gray ooze,
green slime
and the brown mold . . .

Here's good luck, good luck, good luck to the party bold!




(Seriously, just to walk through the halls of a con and hear a crowd filking this out loud would be prize enough . . . that's the beauty of folk songs.)

Hopefully folks can actually see the discussion amongst all the song lyrics!

So, here are our initial thoughts:

• Audio only, MP3 format
• Two categories: parody (to an existing tune) and original
• Public vote
• Winner of each gets a video made (including singing if you want); likely animated rather than live-action
• The two winning videos appear on EN World's YouTube channel and hopefulyl get shared by millions worldwide (but more likely only by seven people at 3am one Friday morning)
• Need 5 entries per category to proceed or we fold the two together
• One month to submit entries, one month of voting

Things we haven't settled on:

• Rights (thinking entrant keeps copyright of their work but grants ENW perpetual worldwide license for use; doesn't affect entrant's own use of it)
• Is that a decent prize?
• Perhaps we could play them at the ENnies next year?
• Voting mechanism

Any thoughts?

Those doing parody have essentially provided an entry by presenting new lyrics to an existing melody- do they really need to resubmit an actual recording?

Dannyalcatraz said:

Those doing parody have essentially provided an entry by presenting new lyrics to an existing melody- do they really need to resubmit an actual recording?

Click to expand...

Yep. I'm not gonna sing it for them! The idea is to provide some entertaining stuff for people to listen to, not stuff for people to read. We can re-record the song with a decent singer for the winner's video (if the winner doesn't want to/isn't very good at singing) but not for the entry stage.

A pure song-writing competition with no performance at all isn't a terrible idea, but it isn't this idea.

I suppose it could be a third category with some smaller prize. Not sure what, though!

Rats.

Anyway, if you DO do this, might I suggest you con [MENTION=9470]weem[/MENTION] into doing "cover art" for the project? Perhaps a riff on the AD&D PHB, with the Idol being robbed of it's headphones?

I concur. a submission should be an audio recording. It's a music contest.

I think the difficulty bar is lower on a parody, if you use a song that has an existing backing track from karaoke or a rock-band like game. You basically have the instruments solved right there, just sing along.

Now singing is the real challenge. My vocal range is limited to the key of R Flat.

Janx said:

I concur. a submission should be an audio recording. It's a music contest.

I think the difficulty bar is lower on a parody, if you use a song that has an existing backing track from karaoke or a rock-band like game. You basically have the instruments solved right there, just sing along.

Now singing is the real challenge. My vocal range is limited to the key of R Flat.

Click to expand...

I expect most peoples' is. It doesn't matter, I don't think.

I agree on the difficulty bar, which is why I suggested two categories. I don't think it's fair having a parody compete against a full original piece.

Me? I can sing- 4 1/2 octave range & all that.

My problem is twofold:

1) learning how to use my recording gear and

2) either a) singing a Capella (which I hate) or b) learning the songs I parodied (takes time) and accompaniying myself (which, despite years of playing guitar, I've never gotten down. Option c) would be multitrack recording so I could lay the track down and record my singing over it.

Ah well. Seems I actually AM out!

That said, if anyone wants to use my parodies for themselves in this competition, I'm cool with that.

Dannyalcatraz said:

That said, if anyone wants to use my parodies for themselves in this competition, I'm cool with that.

Click to expand...

Since it is unlikely anyone will sing and play all of their own instruments, and some will use "an existing backing track from karaoke or a rock-band like game," then certainly collaborations will not be out of order for this contest. Perhaps some entries will be written by one person and performed by others?

And perhaps some additional contestants from these old threads can be alerted to this contest using mention tags.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/82200-favorite-bard-songs.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/307864-filk-you-en-world.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/192840-pimp-my-filk.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/media-lounge-miscellaneous-geek-topics/315484-castle-filkenstein.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/209642-still-d-d-me.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/155644-songs-bard-sing.html

And since these were part of a contest but never "recorded" perhaps they would also be valid -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/148414-vote-song-entry-winner.html