A-side/B-side Challenge
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@siebass Jan 2022
Did this as an exercise for the band when one member came up with a bassline that I heard as a dark, sad, ballady type song and he heard as an upbeat pop-punk. We fleshed out both versions with the same lyrics and progression, and it ended up being essentially like an A-side/B-side two totally different feel songs.
Challenge is to take essentially the same lyrics and progression, but fork them into two tonally, emotionally-different, tonally different songs. Tweak what you want, play around with tempo, rhythm, meter, delivery, all the other fun stuff. I'm not sure on whether it counts as 1 or 2 in the strict sense of FAWM, nor am I one to judge, I just think it is fun to do as a creative exercise.
Probably tag A-side/B-side, but I'll need to trawl the forums a bit longer to remember the right tag syntax.
Edit: per Canlde's suggestion, tag them #aside-bisde.
I'll update with my example as well, and I see other folks have added some good ones too.
Example A-side - Giving up (downtempo): https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZjgCGXZ8cRyTCWSE77wYvemw4qAa8lTxgek
Example B-side Giving Uptempo: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZuhxGXZkVrO0coJH65qwAXTzHmLYJLuYgyX -
@candle Jan 2022
I like it. Just might have to try this with one of my Buzz based Tracker tunes (easier to do than my imrpov guitar based tunes).
#aside-bside as a tag, maybe?
See You In The Shadows… -
@celineellis Jan 2022
I like the sound of this challenge! am book marking it to see how i get on!
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@pbtaylorjr Jan 2022
This reminds me of "The World At Large" and "Float On" by Modest Mouse. The tracks are back to back on the album and the latter has a guitar line and bass line that follow the same general flow of the former. I'm not sure they are as diverse as your challenge would be, but I've always thought it was pretty cool and keep meaning to replicate some form of it in 2 or more of my songs. Maybe this year and this challenge is the time to finally get off my proverbial ass on the matter.
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@frenchcricket Jan 2022
I mean you could argue that, in a sense, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane fulfil the criteria.
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@vomvorton Jan 2022
The Wannadies album 'Bagsy Me' does something like this. There are two songs called 'Silent People' and 'Bumble Bee Boy' that use the same basic structure / melody / chords but one is slow and sad and the other is bouncy and upbeat, it's really fun. Definitely an interesting songwriting idea.
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@cts Jan 2022
Hey this does sound pretty cool. I'm jotting this down as a reminder in my notebook.
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@gm7 Jan 2022
hummmm.. that is an interesting challenge...duly noted!
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@elainedimasi Jan 2022
Bookmarking
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@fonte Jan 2022
ooh love this idea. Not quite the same thing, but I have a musical collaborator who I jam with quite a bit (in person) and often after a while of improvising something we find that we both thought that the 'riff' started in at a different point! Once you get your start point stuck in your head it is initially hard to change, but I've occasionally tried to do this when writing on my own as it stops me from subconsciously starting riffs at the same place all the time, or using the same timings for chord changes etc. Easy to do in a DAW, just move the riff along a couple of beats!
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@elainedimasi Jan 2022
@vomvorton on Bruce Hornsby's Spirit Trail album he has two songs, "Preacher in the Ring Part 1" and "Preacher in the Ring Part 2". On my first hundred listens to a copied CD in the car (never having looked at any titles) I heard them as two different songs with a lot of lyrical resonance. Later I realized how much of their lyrical structure is exactly the same. (The analogy between their subjects being the point, of course.)
Part 1, solo performance with improvisations, live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiFe2ZJWXVc
Part 2, album version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZDWWf9S7ko
The two "sides" do such a wonderful job of putting my head in completely different places.
If I could do that with writing an #aside-bside, beyond the technical exercise of forking the lyric, I'd be so excited. -
@yam655 Jan 2022
I wonder if I could fulfill the requirements for this challenge, and then go on to do another variation, so an a-side, b-side, and a c-side...
So, for the three songs, any two of them should meet the criteria for this challenge. 3x the results with only 50% more work.
(This is because I've only released one single, and it had an a-side, a b-side, and a c-side.) -
@elainedimasi Jan 2022
@yam655 it's great when artists share the alternates. I'm sure there's metric tons of tapes of all these alternate songs. One of my favorites is Jethro Tull "Under Wraps." The rocked up version might be the one people know. But there's a down tempo, cleaner version of it that I fell in love with when I heard it, even though some of the cooler lyrical turns in the released version weren't on this shorter version. It sounds unfinished as though it wasn't the approach they decided to go with, yet they liked it enough to release it as well.
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@siebass Jan 2022
@yam655 I was considering an nth-side challenge; as always feel free to create and explore. I thought the duality of the aside-bside would help give focus, but as a challenge, I guess you could do 5, 10, 14, 26, or however many to meet the challenge. @candle I'll update the tag, thanks for the help.
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@siebass Feb 2022
Well, I finally did it; not a whole album, but I at least did one A-Side/B-Side pairing for Birds Aren't Real.
A -Side: https://fawm.org/songs/133256/
B-Side: https://fawm.org/songs/137508/ -
@dzdandcunfsd Mar 2022
I did one for this weeks ago, but forgot to post it not only here, but to the site in general LOL... I saved a few placeholders though.
https://fawm.org/songs/138258/
https://fawm.org/songs/125897/
