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Hi Folks,

I am working on the guidelines for the 2003 Lyric Award. I hope to have them posted after the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. We're going to give everyone the entire month of December to enter/post their lyric. I've also decided that to make this work, we need to have participation from each entrant. To make it easy/reasonable to do, my idea right now is to have 3 stages of voting instead of 2. First, we will have each entrant vote (at random) on their 5 favorite lyrics on a single page. That means they only have to sort through 50 lyrics and pick their top 5. I will then take those top 5 choices (which will reduce the final choices down to 10% of the entries) and we'll have another round of voting for the final nominees. This should help with voting fraud a great deal because in the first round, only entrants will vote AND they will only vote on 1 randomly chosen page.

I haven't decided whether to make the lyric entry that someone makes who doesn't vote inelligible, or to simply grant bonus points to those that do vote? Any opinions on this would be appreciate.

In the second round of nominations, we'll open it up to anyone who wants to vote and we'll carefully monitor for fraud/abuse. Id someone "beats the system" through the first 2 rounds, then we'll have to rely on the final round to weed them out. It's really the only way I think we can keep this fair to everyone, friendly and fun without charging any money.

I will continue to entertain additional ideas/thoughts on this up until I post the final guidelines after the Thanksgiving weekend, just before Dec. 1st.

DON'T post any lyrics until we officially launch this.. and then ONLY in the designated place. I will also require the help of several volunteers again to facilitate the tracking and operation of the process. Let me know if you want to help out.

Thanks,

Brian


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Another huge benefit to this new format will be that it will remove the penalty of entering a lyric on page 7 or 8.. we had almost no nominees in the middle and late pages of entries last year.. this new system will remove any advantage or disadvantage based on when you posted your lyric.

Brian


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At first I thought this a wierd way to do it but then I realized it was tantamount to assigning a judge a certain amount of entries to judge and I was OK with that but I am still uncomfortable with the requirement that the entrants do the judging.

As my imagination started working and I thought if I were an entrant (without scruples) and had a really good lyric, what would be my best chance of making it through the first round? The answer?
Vote for the 5 most poorly written lyrics.
(Of course if everyone did that, we may end up with the worst lyric winning, LOL.)

Anyway, this is an extreme example but after interacting with a lot of songwriters both on and off the board for the last couple of years, I have noticed that many songwriters (not all) seek more support than they are willing to give. It is the nature of the industry I suppose, compounded by the foibles of human nature. Isn't this the very reason you are requiring voter participation?

What's to stop the entrants from just taking the first 5 of the page they are assigned. In that case, they may be ignoring the most deserving of the entries, just to qualify their entry. I would almost prefer the block voting problem to that one.

Sorry to be a stick in the mud, but I would rather the question arise now than after the contest. And once again I would like to emphasize that the other awards do not involve an entrant voting requirement.

I think we really need judging teams who are assigned a number of pages to voteon. For each section there should be 3 judges voting on the same entries. Although one can't guarantee the impartiality of the judges, it is better than having entrants who are only voting because they are being forced to.


JeanB





[This message has been edited by AKA JeanB (edited 11-27-2003).]


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Jean,

Unless I charge an entry fee, I can't find judges to read 400-600-800-1000 lyrics. That's essentially like asking them to read a very long novel (or several really) with no direct benefit back to them. Let's say I can find a handful.. it won't really be enough to offer up the diversity.

As for people voting for the worst lyrics, it won't help them get to the next round really. Because they aren't voting on their own page.. and thus, no matter what they vote for, it would have ZERO impact on their lyric ever making it to the second round.

If we have 50 people voting on each page (which is how it would work) even if 10% of them tried to cheat or manipulate, it wouldn't matter.. it would still be a better system than last year. Would someone "phone it in" still? Sure.. but people essentially did that last year by putting ALL their votes into the first page or two of lyrics and probably without ever even reading the rest. That happened a lot.

I do have a big concern in all this.. and that is what seems to be a nearly total apathy among the regulars here on this entire topic. Maybe we don't really need to do a lyric award at all this year? If only a couple people are interested enough to even give feedback to make the system as good as we can make it, why go through the work in the first place? We have plenty of songs, albums and video's to go through.

Perhaps if we require more work to be done to enter the lyric portion, we'll have far less entries making the entire process easier. As for it not being fair that the other awards entries don't have to participate in the judging, it's just the nature of the beast. I can find tons of people happy and interested in helping with the musical categories.. but A&R, Publishers, Producers, Musicians, Media folks, and even our own members (and even the most active lyric board posters) have made it clear they don't have time or interest to sort through hundreds and hundreds of pages of lyrics. I MIGHT be able to find third party judges to do a page each, but then 1 person is the sole determining factor of what get's nominated.. and I don't really like that idea much.. Someone who likes Country will ignore Rock or Religious.. someone who likes religious may avoid Rap... someone who likes Rock will likely dislike Country.. that's reality.. sure. lyrics can be many genres.. but there are clearly tones/story lines that someone might be against or for... and before people start saying we need a "genre" distinction for lyrics, we can't even seem to get a workable program for 1 category.. let alone 50..

Brian


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I personally like the idea of random page voting. I think it will create a more fair environment for all involved. Although I believe most folks here have morals, from what I've read on previous posts, there were those last year who did not. So, I'm all for the voting page being assigned.

As for whether you should disqualify someone for not voting or to award bonus points for those who do...my 2 cents are for disqualifying. By breaking the voting down to one page each, I don't personally see any excuse for one not voting. Everyone has lives, but we're only talking 50 lyrics on a page to read through. And if one has time to read through their OWN lyrics to pick which one they want to enter, they can certainly read through their fellow writer's lyrics.

As the motto says..."We're ALL In This TOGETHER"

Just my thoughts. :-)

Take care,
Amelia

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I agree with Amelia's ideas here.

Emily

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Hi Brian-

Pardon me if this has been said already, but another way of insuring people are not just voting for their friends would be to leave the names(writers) off of the entrees. When random judging, why does anyone need to know who the writer is? This would insure people are judging on merit.

Herbie


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If you want the lyric entrants to participate by voting then that's fine, athough I think having all of them vote t is impractical because it involves an awful lot of painstaking data checking on top of tabulating all the votes.

The thing that bothers me a great deal is the possibility of an inferior lyric on one page making it in the first round over a superior lyric which happens to fall on a page with many superior lyrics. I noticed that when I was voting last year. Some pages were full of really good lyrics and others had fewer really good ones.

I would like to propose the following procedure which may remedy that problem and also may help reduce the difficulty of checking if the entrants have participated by voting.

Let the first round be an elimination of lyrics which are not contenders. Criteria could be established for that. (Emotional response should not be the only criterion. More should be considered in the crafting of a good lyric. My opinion, but that can be dicussed later. )

It takes a long time to decide when you have to compare lyrics but when you only have to eliminate the poorly crafted ones, that can be done quickly and fairly easily. You have quite a few good writers and moderators on the boards who are open minded and experienced writers and probably would cooperate if asked.

Get 12 of these people to be judges, divide the lyrics into quarters. Assign each quarter to three judges. If two of the three list the same song (as a non contender) , eliminate it. (This can be tabulated by entering the lyric number on a spreadsheet and then auto-sorting it.

(If you can only get 9 people to judge, divide it into thirds, 6 to judge by half.)

(An easy way to do this is for the judges to copy and paste the assigned pages into a word processor. Then they delete the good ones and are left with the ones that aren't contenders. They then delete the lyric itself leaving only the number and title and e-mail these to the person who is doing the tabulation.

You can entitle the topic post that contains all the entries, First Round. Duplicate that post and name it Second Round and then delete the songs which were eliminated. You wouldn't need to renumber them just leave them with their original numbers at this point.

Divide the entries again and then have the judges choose up to half of the lyrics which have been assigned to them as the second round contenders. Once again they will submit the ones they think should be deleted. They follow the same procedure and e-mail the lyric numbers and titles to be deleted to the tabulator. Only those with two or more votes should be deleted.

Follow the previous procedure for setting up the next round. You will now have a fairly well-screened and manageable number to work with and the pages will be fewer to have to work from.

This time the ENTRANTS who make it to that round are required to vote on the contenders and decide which of the lyrics are of higher quality. Since their own songs made it that far, that is some assurance that they have at least a basic understanding of what constitutes a good lyric. You now have the best of the best judging their peers. Even if they try to vote for what they perceive is a lessor lyric they would be unable to really because the other judges have already deemed them as worthy contenders.

They may vote for themselves but must ALSO choose the best 3 from EACH page and submit them by a certain deadline. If they do not meet the deadline, their lyric is eliminated from the list, which automatically bumps others up to the top.

I definitely think the voting should be from each page in the event the entrants don't come back to vote which would penalize the people who are on the page they were assigned to. Also you wouldn't have to designate individual pages which would be a headache.

You then tabulate the winning votes and send the top ten (or whatever number you think is reasonable) to our JPF mentors for final judging. And ask them to pick the top 5 (or what ever number you think is reasonable) contenders. Now it is simple math.

I think we CAN get those 12 judges, Brian. I feel confident I can even get several good candidates from my own chapter who would be good at judging and would do so if asked to. I am sure there are active chapters coordinators who can and would do the same.

Anyway, this is the fairest way I can think to facilitate good judging and active participation.

JeanB

PS: I am not sure what random page voting means exactly but if all the songs are not examined equally, it constitues a lottery and that isn't fair. If you are going to pull a page number out of a hat and assign that to each entrant to vote on it that may be fair but the page would have to be reassigned if the entrant flakes out and doesn't vote. And I wouldn't want to be the person who has to keep track of THAT headache.


I left out a few important words which caused some confusion but I think I have fixed that now. The object is to leave the best for last.



[This message has been edited by AKA JeanB (edited 11-28-2003).]


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Jean,

Thanks for the input, but I am afraid you're idea is so long and complicated I couldn't even get through it all completely.. imagine trying to get a ton of judges to understand it and do it...

Now also imagine the hurtful impact of being publicly "eliminated" in the first round for all to see? I don't post/publish the Albums and Songs that we eliminate each round of the awards for a reason. Why humiliate someone? Plus, who are these people who are going to go through 400-1000 lyrics? What if they hate almost all of them? What if they like almost all of them? The number of possible results are staggering... and the room for bias in that system is even greater.. because you get to "vote out" the people you either don't like.. or don't know.. we might as well just run a popularity contest, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid.

In the system last year, one 5 songs got votes/nominations by each judge out of 500+... in the process I am suggesting, 50 songs would have gotten votes/nominations. You'd have a 10 times higher chance of making it to the second round than you had last year.. that's the beauty of the system.. if the 5 best lyrics are all on page 2.. that's still okay.. because all 5 will make it past the first round.. your argument actually supports my system even more..

I am definitely concerned about whether the lyric award thing will even work this year. Again, last year there was a ton of interest in the program.. this year.. barely any.. all of this may be a moot point.

Note to Herbie: Removing the names only elimates honest bias.. (i.e. oh.. that's Fred's lyric.. I am going to vote for Fred..) but it doesn't phase dishonest bias at all.. (i.e. me and Mary and Cindy and Fred are all friends and will each vote exclusively for each other to get a nomination...and we know which lyrics belong to each of us because we're talking about it between ourselves...). That's the type of stuff I am trying to eliminate.

The Grammy's simply give people a list of names/titles and people vote.. like a name recognition/popularity contest, which is all that it really is. You can vote on stuff you've never heard. Last year, though we did the best job we could, the truth is that a LOT of people voted on stuff without reading ALL the lyrics. Even honest people sort of skimmed stuff and focused on stuff that friends had written (or nemesis's even).. but the great masses went mostly ignored.

Having each person who entered read 1 page of lyrics serves many purposes. It would mean that they'd be learning about the other lyrics and writers, especially many they might otherwise never give a second thought/notice to. It makes it very hard for people to intentionally manipulate. Sure, you could still get a page that had friends on it (or enemies) but it would at least be random.. so pre-planned plots wouldn't work. For those who would STILL try to cheat, or just phone in their votes (i.e. pick stuff at random), we can't really stop that completely under any system. Even a hand picked "judge" could do that.. and we'd never really know. But there is a certain karma thing that says, we may never know if someone cheats.. but they sure do. I'd rather create a decent system that eliminates the lazy cheaters and simply accept that a hard working one will likely get away with it.. but fortunately, we'll never know and they'll have to live with it. There's no cash prizes here.. just recognition.. if you cheat to get it.. I can't imagine that it would be very satisfying right?

I will work over the weekend to come up with the best (and simplest) system I can. I was hoping to get some more ideas to make it even simpler and easier.. but so far only a handful of you have offered any ideas.. big thanks to those who have.. for those who haven't, they won't have much reason/cause to be unhappy with the resulting system. And if only a few dozen people enter this year, all the handwringing will be for nothing.. (but I imagine we'll have hundreds again before it's all over..)

Brian


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"Don't sit around and wait for success to come to you... it doesn't know the way." -Brian Austin Whitney

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Jean,

We had plenty of people flake out last time.. only a small number of members voted last year.. and many of them didn't really read all the entries.. if 2 out of 10 entrants actually voted, that would be a big increase over last year.

Brian


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Brian,

Your last comment really surprised me. I was under the impression that most entrants voted last year.

Jean,

Can you imagine what the participation would be...The awards are held in your backyard and now you offer to pick the judges from your chapter. I think that would be a great way to limit participation to your chapter.

I honestly can't even imagine people voting for the worst lyrics possible...and I have a pretty twisted imagination.

dawg


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I accidentally left out some important words in my prior post and I believe have remedied that. No wonder it didn't make sense.


Dawg,

Where the awards are handed out is unrelated to the judging process. The final judging does not occur in LA as far as I know. If the awards were handed out in Nashville, I would not suspect for a moment that the location of the awards there had anything to do with the judging process.

Did you not read the next sentence?

"I am sure there are active chapters coordinators who can and would do the same."

I don't see where I said ALL the judges would come from my chapter. I am confident that I can get SOME volunteers who would be good at it. Other chapter coordinators can get some from their chapters too.

If we aren't going to hire them, the judges have to come from somewhere. A good many of my chapter members don't even post or read these boards and may not have any intention of doing so. If the judges did want to enter it would be easy enough to have their works screened by someone else from a different chapter or from the board.

I can see where you would think it was twisted to vote for the non contenders but I was tired and left out some of the words as I tried to edit the post. If you go back and read it again it will make more sense.

I meant that the judges should vote for those which should be eliminated from the competition so that the best is left for last and evenly divided on the pages.

If there is anything else I said that was confusing please let me know and perhaps ask me to clarify before accusing me of things like trying to set up an entire lyric contest to benefit my own chapter.


Brian,

If you want to avoid the outcome of people feeling bad then the lyric entries should not be posted on the board at all but kept confidential just as they are in the music portion of the contest and that would take care of the humiliation aspect of knowing which round an entrant was eliminated in.

Then just like the music entrants, the lyric entrants will feel the same disappointment at not qualifying as all the other entrants do at the end of the contest.

Anyone who submits a lyric or a song they care about and really believe in is going to feel somewhat let down about losing, and although knowing you were actually in the running at one point may ease the pain somewhat for the runners up, there is still a let down for all the rest.

Separating the lyric contenders from the rest of the entries is no different than you sorting out the contenders for the music end of the contest.

You may be able to find a committee of people you trust to do the judging in the lyric contest if you approach them. There is no reason judges can't be allowed to enter their work as long as someone else judges it. Also the judges do not have to know who the other judges are.

If you CAN get people whose judgement you trust to help you, then I propose that the entries be posted in a private forum. You give out the password at first so the entrants can post their songs.

After the deadline has passed, you then change the password and give it only to the people who are going to judge the contest. Assign certain pages to certain judges. You could even have two sets of judges if you have enough who have volunteered. One group to sort through the lyrics and select the most likely contenders and the other group to select the nominees. You can even change the password one more time so that only the nominating judges can see the remaining candidates.

Then let the mentor judges deal with the nominees.

The duplication of the posts and subsequent deletions is just a way to keep each stage intact.

The copy and paste for the judges wouldn't be a requirement it's just a method I like to use to make sure I don't write down the wrong number and keep the number, title and author together as a further safeguard . I also like having the posts convenient on my hard drive when I am not on the net or if the isp is having troubles and would cause a delay. But the judges could certainly just write down that information.

I know I sounded heartless by recommending a first disqualifying round but it appeared that posting would be the method of entry and I couldn't see any other way to sort through them. However, the private forum is an option that you do have with this site software and the preliminary judges would be able to sort through and pick out entries in the same confidential way you do with all the music entries you receive with none the wiser as to who made it until the nominees were revealed.

I am sorry about any confusion in my earlier post, if you read it again you will see that I am trying to set up the best for last so that it is evenly distributed on the pages which was a big concern to me if entrants are going to be voting. All judging is subjective when it comes to art so however you determine to be the best and most practical way to sort through things (considering the lack of volunteers,) then that's the best way to go.

JeanB

And this is my last out of sync edit tonight.



[This message has been edited by AKA JeanB (edited 11-29-2003).]


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Jean,

I am all for more help in judging. So, lets have any/all the folks who want to vote (i.e. in your chapter etc..) participate as well. We'll still require everyone to vote if they want 6 points towards their own lyric. That seems as fair as we can make it. We'll use the best of all the suggestions. We'll also need judges for the second round, which will exclude all those still in the running from voting.

Brian


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Here's my first draft of this year's Lyric Award Process. It is only the draft and may not be final.. REPEAT, THIS IS ONLY A DRAFT AND WE MAY EDIT AND CHANGE THE DATES AND RULES.
--------------------------------------------
2003/2004 Just Plain Folks Best Lyric Award
We are ready to launch the 2003/2004 Best Lyric Award process on the website. If you want to enter, it is free, but you must be a member and registered on the JPFolks.com message boards and follow the guidelines posted there. Here are the rules we have set up.

You and your fellow members will do the screening for the nominations, but we've improved the process after last year to make it easier for everyone. Last year we had 500+ entries, and it was tough for folks to read through all of them to vote on their 5 favorites. So this year, you'll only be asked to pick your 5 favorites out of 50 on 1 page (each page holds 50 lyrics, see last years entries to see what I am talking about). We will award 5 points for each first place vote down to 1 point for the 5th place vote. We'll then take the top songs from each page and then have an second round on the top 50 overall only so that the process is much easier and efficient and every song has an equal chance of being read and considered.

The entry/voting dates are as follows:

Dec 1st-December 31st: This is the window to post your lyric. Each member can post 1 lyric in their name. If it is co-written by multiple members, it will only count against 1 member. (the one posting it.) We will need full names given for each writer. We will request full contact info for each nominee once they are announced.

Jan 10th-Feb 10th: We will have voting by actual members on their 5 favorite lyrics (in order) from an assigned page via email once the posting/entry deadline passes. Voting will be confidential. The end date may be adjusted if needed by us to complete the process. But we will give advanced notice if the date is changed. We will take the top 50 (or less if there are less than 500 entries this year, but not more than 50) lyrics and place them on a final nomination page for final voting.

March 2004: We will post the final lyrics on one page in March and have open nomination voting to reach the final nominees. We will post the info on this stage when we are done tabulating and verifying all the votes. We will announce the nominations on the same day we announce the rest of the 2003/2004 award nominees.

Awards: We will announce the Lyric of the Year winner live in the summer 2004 in Los Angeles at our 2003/2004 Music Awards.

Voting Requirement: Because we do the awards free, it's necessary to use our own community to help get the mass of lyrics to the nominations stage. Instead of charging you 30 dollars to enter like a lot of "contests", instead we are requiring your direct participation in the judging process. To make it much easier than last year, we have a new system to do this which shouldn't require more than an hour or two of your time instead of weeks like last year.

After the deadline has come for entering lyrics, we will email each participant a page to vote on. Each page holds 50 Lyrics. You will choose your 5 favorite in order from 1st to 5th and email your votes to the assigned email address. (Complete instructions will be sent to all participants). When you vote, you will automatically receive 6 points (A first place vote gets you 5 points, so this is 1 better) towards your own lyric. If you choose not to vote, then you can still participate, but you're 6 points in the hole to all those who do. Because this year you won't be able to vote on your own "page" there are no conflicts in voting for your own lyric in Round 1. We will not allow those who move on to round 2 to vote any further in the process.

If we missed something, or you have questions, please email us here.

DO NOT POST YOUR LYRIC HERE!!!!! POST IT WHERE IT SAYS "POST YOUR LYRIC HERE"
----------------------------------------
For those of you checking in here, let me know if this makes sense. I will need to send a newsletter out Sunday/Monday to kick it off, so I don't have much time to make adjustments.

Thanks in advance for suggestions, ideas, problems and support.

Brian


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I just read through all the posts here and was thrilled to read the final one posted by Brian, cause I was getting confused up until that point.

Brian, your guidelines make PERFECT SENSE and it sounds like a much easier process than what those of us who voted with an unbiased and honest approach did last year.

This will work, imo, and should work beautifully!

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Brian,

These guidlines sound good to me. Those six points ought to get the voters going. If you want to vote for yourself, then help out.

I'm glad you're not stopping the contest this year.

All the Best,
Mike

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Sounds perfect Brian!! HHHHHmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Which lyric should I post????? Is it good to try and post a lyric that has something to say, or a fluffy one? What do you think?

Herbie


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Looks good to me! Got my lyric ready to go. Got my voting cap on. All systems go.

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Brian,

The guidelines look good and seem fair.
I certainly think that it will increase the number of people who vote.

I wasn't aware about the problem of block voting until I read the stuff you wrote about it. Hopefully, these new guidelines will make it an even playing field...

Great job! [Linked Image]

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Brian,
Excellent system. Simple and easy to participate. Count me in.

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Sounds great to me [Linked Image]


Boo...my name is Doug
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How do you make the "c" with a circle around it that people use to show copyright?

I got it!! You just put the c in parentheses!!

[This message has been edited by Herbie Gaines (edited 11-30-2003).]


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The last write up by Brian looks good from here too. At this point I think you should run with it.

I have a few questions/comments about the process from last year:

How many folks actually voted?

How many folks who posted an entry have only one post to their name?

How many folks registered during the voting process and their only participation in JPF has been the voting?

It wouldn't surprise me if "one post folks" were more than 50% of the entrants. These folks didn't participate on the boards before the awards competition and haven't afterward. The fact that they also wouldn't take the time to read the entries or vote for anyone other than themselves wouldn't surprise me either.



[This message has been edited by Marty Helly (edited 11-30-2003).]


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Herbie,

If you are on a PC, hold down the "ALT" key and type "0 1 6 9" from the keypad to the right.

dawg


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Thanks Dawg, that's cool. I also tried to put it in parentheses and it worked (c).
( uh oh, I dunno, on my computer it switched to this © when i did that. Whatever, I have it now either way, I just can't decide which song to post. Again, I've never done this before, any advice on what type of song to post? Funny, heartwarming, light, ??? Powerful with something to say?? HELP!! I can't decide and I have so many to choose from!!!

Herbie


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Herb,
I've enjoyed reading all the posts here, and think Brian's come up with a good plan. Sadly I don't relate to your pain with such a boggling selection, as I'd be choosing from only a few which probably suck compared to what will be entered..LOL (I doubt I will enter, but it looks like fun for those who do!) (wait...do instrumentals count? ;-)

I would suggest choosing a lyric which somehow "stands out" from the rest, regardless of it's nature of being comical, sad, fluffy, whatever. You'll need to command the attention of the reader, exactly in the same way the music aspect of the contest needs to grab the listener and reel them in.
I'll bet you can do some fancy cipherin' and boil it down to a handful of songs which you feel are rather verbally crafty, Eh?
-gary

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Herbie, if you have performed your originals in public, maybe consider the ones that the audience responded to the best.

JeanB


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Hi Gary-

Didn't mean to seem in pain. I think I'll post the one I just wrote. (Your last one is always the best, right?)

Hi Jean

Thanks for the help!!!

Herbie


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Sorry if this question seems obvious, but: does the lyric have to be written in 2003 to qualify? Or is it like last year's music awards, where you can submit older material so long as you haven't previously submitted it?

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Scott,

It can be written any time. The only limitation is that you haven't entered it before.

Brian


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