Category Archives: Songaweek

New song: “The Sirens of Treasure Island”

We took a trip to Vegas! Generally, we had a great time! And for this month’s Song Fu challenge, we had to write a song about a “Battle.” Naturally, the “Sirens of TI” show came to mind… so here it is! It’s a free download on Bandcamp.

We have new songs! “The Mystery’s Gone,” “The Final Countdown,” “The Internet National Anthem”

I’ve been doing a bad job of keeping this blog up-to-date on our songwriting: but it is happening! We are writing new songs at least monthly for Song Fu. And here they are:

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Song Fu 1: “The Way I Glow”

This month, we had to write and record a song “about bioluminescence,” because John Hodgman told us to, and we’re doing a thing called Song Fu, which, among other things, requires that we occasionally do what John Hodgman tells us to do. (This is a blog post I wrote explaining Song Fu.)

We recorded a podcast with Ken Plume & Molly Lewis about the songwriting process for this month. YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT. (mp3 link)

And you can listen to the song we wrote about Bioluminescence, and even download it, if you want:

It’s called “The Way I Glow.”

The Songwriting Process

When the prompt for this month’s challenge was announced, I immediately decided that I didn’t want to be “too literal” in the interpretation of the challenge. This is one of the many winning strategies that I’ve learned from the reality fashion-designer-TV show Project Runway: don’t be too literal about the challenge. (Also: be true to your own aesthetic, be nice to nice people, and don’t use tulle).

There were a lot of ways still to go with Bioluminescence, however. For example: did you know that there is a bioluminescent creature with a Latin name that literally means “vampire squid from hell”? It’s true. Ask Wikipedia.

“The Way I Glow” is a song from the point of view of a bioluminescent girl, who is heartbroken and angry and maybe a little confused about why this dude broke up with her.

We must thank the scientists on Twitter (and my Bio 100 teacher) who helped us understand the affects of Green Fluorescent Protein: I’ve learned, for example, that if you tried to make a person glow the way you make mice glow with GFP, it would mostly show up in a person’s mucous membranes–mouth, nose, eyes, etc. Learning! Yay!

Plugs & Links

Stay tuned for next month’s Song Fu. The prompt will be announced on the Song Fu website on February 6.

Just over a dozen songwriters responded to this month’s Song Fu prompt. You can see all those entries in the Song Fu forum. You should also listen to and spend money on the song Molly Lewis wrote for this prompt, which I will embed below.

New Song! Uncle Geek’s House

This song is dedicated to our Uncle Ed, whose birthday is this week.

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Mr. Bear – A children’s song

Other quick updates: We’ve stopped numbering our songs by week. We skipped some weeks, and for copyright reasons we don’t sell the covers on Bandcamp – so… we’ll just post songs when we write them and not keep track of “numbers,” k?

Also: you should check out our Tumblr. Angela (that’s me!) is posting opinions and submitted fan art and other Internetty things we like over there, as well as our songs and lyrics henceforth. Perhaps that is a better blog platform: it is yet to be seen.