The Queen- JDJ original song/video collab (jenndye429, nzmetal, Ddye) plus new band name…

We’re back :wink: :crown:

Jeff @nzmetal Dan @DDye and I are super excited to share our latest musical creation with you all. Buckle up everyone, this one’s a bit of a crazy ride! :laughing: I apologize in advance for the lengthy write up, but there’s so much to say here!

This is our third original song and video collab together. Shortly after we completed work on Time Bomb we decided that our trio deserved a proper band name. So… we will now be releasing our music as CounterPlot :partying_face: We had way too much fun brainstorming band names and this one really just fit the feel and content of our music the best.

Now a little info about the song and video…

This was by far our most ambitious project to date, both in terms of the music and the video. We have been steadily plugging away at this one behind the scenes for about 2 months now. We were joking with each other that if this song were a Beatles album, this would definitely be our Sgt Peppers :laughing: This song was actually written as a kind of a natural extension of Time Bomb. They were designed to be played together back to back on an album seamlessly with no pause in between. While each song has its own distinct character and flavor, they were written to complement each other. While Time Bomb explored a developing psychosis while attempting to maintain a semblance of humanity, The Queen is an imagining of what happens when that humanity disappears.

If you’ve watched either of our previous two videos, you’ll know that we have a liking for songs with a bit of a longer length- this song clocks in at about 6 minutes. While we know that a 6 minute song is not going to be for everyone, we hope that you stick around with us :wink: The bulk of the actual structured part of the song is actually a little over 3 minutes. The second half of the song is what we are calling an outro jam. If that is not your thing, you can exit out the graffiti castle (will make sense when you watch :laughing:) However, Jeff does some absolutely PHENOMENAL guitar work here, so you should definitely stick around to give it a watch/listen.

As for the video- this one was definitely a big undertaking! Our first video, Sirens, was done using physical sets and real world backgrounds. Time bomb was entirely green screened. The Queen is a hybrid of both and uses some special effects. Even my guitar gets in on the action :wink::fire:The video was filmed over the course of two weekends and took about a full week to edit once we had all the footage. Both Dan and Jeff split the editing duties this time and both did an incredible job!!

We are learning so much making music together and are having an absolute blast! We hope that joy comes across on screen. Every song we do sparks more creativity and we figure out ways to do new and more interesting things. You have definitely not heard the last from CounterPlot… :wink:

Full song lyrics below. We hope you enjoy :crown:

The Queen Lyrics

(Verse1)

I’ve got you right where I want you
Down on all fours
Signs of fear
That flash on your face
Are begging for an encore

I take no prisoners
You are free to leave
But once you get a taste of the action
You’ll know better than
To deceive

You’ll be begging for mercy

(Chorus)

Give me your loyalty
I don’t ask, I receive
Is this real or Fairytale
I want you to believe
You want a piece of this
Then down on your knees

It’s too late to resist now
You’d better bow
Bow down
Bow down to your
Queen

(Verse 2)

Got you locked into my sights
Threw away the key
You know too much
to earn your freedom
You’ll surrender to me

Only I understand you
You know this to be true
Wipe the tears
away from your face
Euphoria ensues

You’ll be begging for mercy

(Chorus)

Give me your loyalty
I don’t ask, I receive
Is this real or Fairytale
I want you to believe
You want a piece of this
Then down on your knees

It’s too late to resist now
You’d Better bow
Bow down
Bow down to your
Queen

(Outro jam)

You’ll be begging for mercy

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Well that was another jolly dark romp, loving the new name !!

Definitely the same vibe artistically (theatre) and musically to what has gone before. The three of you had found a consistent “style” in the previous 2 recordings and this certainly follows in the same vein. It would definitely work back to back with Time Bomb. Good to see you kept the trademark pace change mid song ! Vocals, guitar and drums all sounded good to me and the inventiveness of the video was not only captivating but incredibly well produced.

Top quality all round, even if it won’t be everyone’s go to java. Next !!

:sunglasses:

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Wow, you guys keep stepping it up. What an excellent song and video. Your songs may be long as measured by time, but when listening to them they are so engaging that they don’t feel long.

The next level video skills on display are truly inspiring (as is the band playing and production too). Glad you are having so much fun. Hope you didn’t burn your fingers on your fire guitar.

What a dilemma having to decide which bands stuff you are going to work on…

Great finding out you have a youtube channel too. Which served them up as your proposed running order.

As Toby rightly says … Next!

You need to be on a weekly release schedule.

I am on my knees Bravo to you all.

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That is fantastic, CounterPlot. Some great peforming (music and acting), production, amazing video.

As already said, length was not a problem for me. Loved the extended jamming outro.

In a few places maybe Jeff’s guitar and Dan’s drums could be a little louder in the mix? But mix is always a matter of taste.

And would have liked the credits to run through a little slower so I could enjoy them properly.

But most significantly, you had that gear in your wardrobes :joy:

Keep rocking. I reckon you need to get some promo videos made for Tik Tok and you could go viral with a bit of luck (heard worse, way worse, go viral)

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Excellent production, it looks and sounds really professional. It is a bit long, but definitely follows the same vibe established in the previous videos. I loved the gig at the end, the guitar outro was fantastic!

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Congrats to all of you :100: :boom: :partying_face:!
This performance again was even more professional than the previous ones. You guys have a steep learning curve :star_struck:!
I like the concept of the complimenting tracks a lot. I already mentioned elsewhere, that I’m a big fan of story telling videos and you have even lifted them up to a bigger concept. That’s great! Even, if I still feel a bit „uncomfortably touched“ by the whole subject (as mental disorders are is a real serious one), I found your “sequel” of the story really thrilling.

The whole realisation of the project via music and video is incredibly good, given the fact, you are still doing all this without external pro support.
Filming/editing is top :100:, all the backgrounds and sets are very well selected. +1 for the costumes and requisites (very gothic :joy:).

Musically, I liked this video more than the previous ones, your individual style gets more and more into a signature thing. I truly admire your ability for composing, even if it’s normally not my prefered musical direction. I didn’t feel concerned about the lenghth at all, as long as it stays as thrilling and it has been for the whole length. Loved the “outro jam” a lot!

@Jenndye429 Jennifer, your singing and acting performance was sensational! Did you write the basis of the whole song alone?

As others have already mentioned, Jeff’s guitar and dan’s drums could have been slightly more prominent in the mix, but that’s a matter of taste.

@nzmetal :star_struck: :100: for your lead work, Jeff, you are developing great as a leading guitarist! Where are the limits? Your musical vibes are crossing the oceans from your almost extra terrestrian base with ease :joy:!

@dan Great drums! Next time step out of the greyish background :joy:!

I really enjoyed watching and listening and I definitely will come back to rewatch, as I assume, there is much more detail to discover! Have to go back to work, lunch break has already been stretched….

Again: congrats! :partying_face: :clap: :clap: :clap:

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Wow, that was a phenomenal production.

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Wow Guys!! @nzmetal @Jenndye429 and @DDye !! Such a great production!! IT must have taken hours to get the video effects sorted out. LOVE IT!! The music the video everything looks top notch. I have been away from the community since May so I haven’t seen the others (yet) but this one is really quite professional looking and shows a great deal of effort and care in putting everything together!! Congratulations!!

Just one question: Where do you find the time?? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :exploding_head:

I have enough on my plate trying to learn a few blues licks and some blues standards to keep me busy for more horus than I can ever practice in a day. . .your committment shows through . . .you guys ROCK!! In the multiple senses of that word.

Keep going and, as always, enjoy the ride!!

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Thank you so much Andrea! Thank you for giving it such a thoughtful and thorough watch/listen! So happy you enjoyed it :grin:

This makes me so happy :grin: :grin: I think the three of us are aware that our style is not going to suit everyone, but we were hopeful that people would stick with us even if we are not their go-to genre. It also makes me happy as a burgeoning songwriter :grin: A lot of my guitar time now is spent songwriting and the fact that people seem to enjoy what we put out there makes me smile :grin:

Thank you! When I used to do community theater, I always wanted to play villains :wink: I seemed to always have a knack for it :laughing: Dan called my singing in the second half of the song “vocal gymnastics” at one point. I’ll take it! :+1: I’ve always had decent singing ability, but I feel that since I’ve picked up guitar, that it’s just gotten that much better since I do it a lot more! I’ve gotten a lot more used to hearing what my voice sounds like recorded.

As for the song, yes, this one definitely started as my child :laughing: if I remember correctly, we all had the idea to connect this song with Time Bomb and then I kind of just ran with it. Writing lyrics is one of my favorite parts of the whole process. Typically, once I get an idea for a song, I’ll bring it to the guys for feedback. Sometimes there is back and forth on the lyrics. We actually had two different versions of Time Bomb going at one point with a slightly different chorus until we settled on one. The Queen’s lyrics ended up staying as they started :grin: :crown:

Thank you again! I hope you get more out of it with further listens/viewings. I even catch things I didn’t notice at first :laughing:

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Thanks for checking it out Toby and glad you like the new name! I think we are well on our way to developing a signature sound :sunglasses: :guitar:

Luckily the Queen’s fingers seem to be fireproof :wink: :fire: They appear to all be intact so far :laughing:

It’s a good dilemma to have! It’s actually kind of fun for me. When I get an idea for a song, I’ll work on it and if it’s sounding good I then decide which band it would be a good fit for. I actually had it happen recently where I had two pretty good ideas in one week and one kind of naturally worked for CounterPlot and one ended up going to DyeV.

I would love to! We just need to rid ourselves of those pesky things called day jobs and the need to sleep first :wink:

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Thanks David! Glad you enjoyed it! We did originally work on a version of the song that did not have the fade out and had a shorter jam section with a bit more of a concrete ending. The more we worked on it, the more the three of us liked the idea of having an extended outro with the fade out. It sounded really cool to us, so it stayed :grin:

Noted! We will keep the feedback in mind for the next one :+1:

Good idea! I think none of us are Tik Tok experts, so I may actually utilize my daughter’s help for this one :rofl:

Thank you! So glad you loved the outro! I think the three of us were a bit nervous about how that section would go over, but so far the feedback has been overwhelming positive! :blush:

Thank you so much Mark! We’re happy you enjoyed it!

Thank you so much Jeremy! The credit for this definitely goes to Jeff and Dan. Both of them spent hours doing the editing. Dan did an initial very rough cut of the video which Jeff then took and added a lot of the backgrounds and effects before passing it back to Dan for a final polish.

That’s a good question! :laughing: It helps that Dan and I both work our day jobs from home so it’s easy to get done with work and just head into our music room to work on stuff. I’m usually up fairly early in the morning before Dan and my daughter get up, so I often times will work on stuff while it’s quiet and I can really concentrate. I have found that I tend to be at my most creative right after I get up in the morning. It’s when I seem to have my best ideas :laughing:

The time zone difference seems to actually kind of work in our favor in that regard too. Jeff’s afternoon and evening time is when we are sleeping, so when we are really in the middle of project, we will often wake up to new files to play with and vice versa :grin:

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Yeah, as someone who also works from home (and is his own boss) this makes it easier for me to make time for things I enjoy (or even don’t enjoy but have to do). I am also DEFINITELY a a morning person and live with two nightowls so I tend to do my most important stuff first thing. Some days that’s guitar practice (in the basement well way from second floor sleepers!!) and then just fit other things in where I can. Some days I am fitting guitar in around other important stuff. . .anyway, the time difference sounds like it makes for projects-that-never-sleep, great way to adapt the circumstance to your benefit. Once again, great stuff definitely looking forward to the next chapter, and, hey, no pressure, right? FUN is a three letter word, Take your time and enjoy it ALL!

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Please have some mercy for me being late to the party, but getting up from my knees takes longer these days… :wink: :rofl:

:metal: :fire: :metal:

Seriously, that was another incredibly awesome production. If someone is asking me to tell me “What is art?”, I will show them this and other works of CounterPlot (amazing name choice, by the way!). This is art on all layers and from beginning till the end. It’s still hard to believe you are not doing this as professionals each and every day, that’s how high the quality level already is. And you keep raising that bar higher and higher! Amazing! :exploding_head:

The idea of being played back to back with Timebomb is perfect, they just belong together and are tightly attached. Great stuff plot wise, despite being very, very dark - or maybe because it is that dark? Also these stories want to be told…

From musical perspective, it was a great delivery from all involved!

@Jenndye429 Jenn, your vocal performance was once more mesmerizing. And hope you didn’t get burnt by your guitar while delivering that rhythm. :wink:

@DDye Dan, fantastic delivery on the drums (as I can tell not being a drummer). Since having the Ludwig you upped your playing even more!

@nzmetal Jeff, that was some fabulous lead work in the pro-longed outro, most enjoyable to watch and listen to.

Overall, the 6 mins flew by - never felt too long and I always stayed engaged with you. From the very first impression, I tend to favour Timebomb a little, but that’s just a matter of taste. Nevertheless, you definitely produced another great song here.

Regarding the acting and the video you all outdid yourselves once more! Still struggle to find the right words, it was definitely next level. You put so much love for detail in it with regards to set, costumes, make up, plot, pretty much everything… wow! What struck me the most was the way Dan was staring while playing - felt my blood run cold. Sir Jeff (I guess knights are always entitled Sirs, right? :wink: ) you had a great presence even though your face wasn’t visible at all. Jenn, how you were acting as the Queen (or actually being the Queen here!): Only thing I can do is to obey. :saluting_face:

Great delivery, CounterPlot! Please keep them coming! It’s a pleasure to see how you all influence and enable each to create art at its finest! :smiley:

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Thank you so much Lisa! What an incredible compliment :grin: :grin: And you are definitely not late to the party :wink: We are still in party mode over here :wink: Glad you liked the name as well! It was an easy choice once we thought of the name and saw it wasn’t taken! Which still kind of baffles me since it so hard to come up with an original name!

Thank you so much! The vocals were super fun for me to do. And kind of different as well! This was the first time that I’ve done more of an improv style vocal and I really liked it. Luckily my fingers survived the fire :wink: We had thought of the idea to green screen my guitar early in the video process and had discussed potentially making my guitar snakes :snake: :laughing: Although, I am very much not a snake fan, so I was much happier with the fire idea :laughing: :wink: :fire:

This is one of my favorite parts of the whole process :grin: As a theater nerd I love the whole set, costume and makeup experience. I love getting to be in character. Or maybe it’s not a character…. :wink: :crown: I had bought the crown I was wearing very early on in the process before the song was even done and I had fun running around my house wearing it :laughing: My daughter tried to steal it from me several times :rofl:

Thanks again, Lisa! We will definitely keep them coming :wink:

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@TheMadman_tobyjenner @philsmith @DavidP @Boris1565 @Helen0609 @TheCluelessLuthier @jgottwals @Lisa_S
Thank you so much everyone for your lovely comments! :hugs: :hugs: :hugs:
Feel very humbled and grateful from reading through all your insights. You are all so kind and thoughtful. Super appreciate that you’ve not only taken the time to watch, but also comment, and in many cases, post very detailed replies, which takes a lot of time and I really want to acknowledge that means a lot! :heart: :blush:

Also, just wanted to shout out to @Jenndye429 & @DDye, thanks again for being so awesome to work with!! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: Thinking back on putting this one together, much like the previous two, it was so much fun! :smiley: As mentioned before, I’m constantly astounded by what you create and in awe of the hard work you put in to these projects! :star_struck:

I thought I’d add a couple anecdotes from putting this one together. I feel Jennifer glosses over her capabilities as a performer. Dan & I were both laughing about this with her in our catch up last weekend :sweat_smile: Somehow, Jennifer has the ability to just step up and deliver! :muscle: For example, with the “outro jam”, we had all come together and discussed how the second half of the song would play out and, as Jennifer mentioned, we unanimously agreed that we should go for the jam-type concept, with a build, working to a fade out. We didn’t put any specific length around it, but the next day I had a 3min jam section added to the end of the original version, with drums and rhythm guitar to play over… not daunting at all! :flushed: :rofl: Thankfully they were at the time very busy with organising the recording studio session and the mini-gig prep, so I was left to work on it without a set deadline. My process has been to tab out the songs first, which helps me to ingest what is happening throughout the song, get a feel for the timing, start to form some ideas about what could work. So once that was done, I recall sitting with the GuitarPro file in front of me, going through the jam, one or two bars at a time (out of 80 odd I think from memory!), trying figure out what I do to fill all that space! (Somewhat unbeknownst to me, that wasn’t the expectation at all! :confounded: :laughing:). Anyway, after a couple of weeks and lots of flip-flopping and consternation, I eventually got recorded what you hear on the song. So, feeling like it might work, I flew it off to Jennifer and Dan, not expecting to hear back for a while… However, only a few hours later, when waking up the next morning, I had a message notification with an updated file! :astonished: This had the outro jam vocals that are on the track, recorded in basically one or two takes by Jennifer with help from Dan! Blown away! :exploding_head: :rofl:

With putting together the video, there were heaps of laughs and fun times! (I am pleasantly surprised that no one has given me much stick for my outfit, I certainly got plenty from my mates here! Their comments were pretty hilarious! :see_no_evil: :joy: ). I do need to throw out to Dan for his insane work on putting together Jennifer’s throne and his outfit, both of which he constructed from scratch and I think he did an amazing job! The detail on both is probably not as obvious in the video, but it’s pretty impressive! Certainly sets a high bar! :laughing:

Can’t wait to get stuck into more of these in the future and thanks again everyone for taking a look and giving us your feedback! :smile: :hugs:

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I did wonder about the contents of your closet, and the fact that you forgot your shirt on many scenes, but I was being on best behavior.

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:rofl:

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Thanks for typing (i m busy :sweat_smile:) …now I can do …
@nzmetal and @Jenndye429 and @DDye
sunglasses
clap

Greeting :smile:

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Thanks, Jeff, for offering some more insights into the creative process, Jennifer already told us about the lyrical aspects, but I was also interested in the process of creating the lead lines, now we know a bit more about that too.

This is soooo “Jeff” :joy:! You are a „machine“! An „obsessed“ so to say :partying_face:!

I‘m truly amazed how much potential can be found in all the three of you! Super creative, connected with the ability of realizing all those ideas in such a project. That‘s really outstanding!

Only my good education saved me from a few cheeky comments :joy:… . :speak_no_evil: :speak_no_evil: :speak_no_evil:. Mmh…… the web never forgets…… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:….

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All good! Perhaps to expand on that, I could add a couple of other points, as it has been a real eye opener for me working on these. The solo for the first song, Sirens, came so easy I didn’t really have to think about it. Not sure why, just happened that way! :sweat_smile: The one for Time Bomb took longer and I remember being somewhat concerned that it would never eventuate! :laughing: This one was different, not really a solo… something else, a jam maybe, like something I would try to come up with if I was just playing with friends in-person, not that that ever happens! :joy: I’d love to say that it just came out in one go, but it didn’t, I spent a lot of time on versions that I didn’t like at all :confused: However, when I finally settled on the one in the song, that did kind of come together more fluidly. I think all the time I had spent just listening to the song on rotation, it eventually evolved into an idea I could live with. It isn’t complex and perhaps a bit simplistic for many, but I liked that it had some melody and momentum. Something I did find though was that my lack of in-depth theory knowledge really held me back as I struggled for ideas of where to take it. I spent a lot of time playing the minor pentatonic over it, but it just didn’t work for me, so eventually switched to the major and that opened up a door. The benefit of Jennifer playing power chords, gave me the freedom to go either way I suppose.

:rofl:

Thank you, Andrea :hugs: It certainly seems that we bring out something in each other that helps to breed creativity. I know for a fact I wouldn’t have ventured down this road so far without Jennifer and Dan’s motivation (I am inherently lazy! :wink:).

:joy: :joy: :joy:

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