PLEASE READ ALL THE CHOICES BEFORE PLACING A VOTE!

This poll will close on August 15th, 2008 at 06:14 pm EST
You may vote for more than one choice, but keep it to a maximum of two please! Everyone can see what you voted for.

Here's your choices...

Table for Four
In this contest you must utilize a string quartet to make your composition.

Four-way Stop
In this contest you are free to make a quartet of any instruments you please.

Musical Scores
In this contest each contestant will setup a score, then a number will be assigned to each score, finally numbers will be drawn from a hat for each contestant and that is the new score they will have to work with.

Frankin-composer
The only limitation is that the composition must tie into a Halloween theme.

The Soundtrack Composer
This contest each contestant must compose to a given prompt. Be it a video game, short film clip, or a short story. The composer must try to capture the best of the prompt.

The Piano Man
Your goal is to create a piano score given a certain mood to keep in mind.

Different Colored Socks
Here, you must make a composition in a style you have never worked with before.

Wacky Time Signatures
Here we will take the numbers 1-32 and put them in hat A, and numbers 1,2,4,6,8,16 in hat B; pick three out of each, and that is the time signature we must use.

People All Over the World
Compose ethnic music for the nations all over the world.

You Must be This Tall to Ride
Your composition must meet certain requirements such as a new time signature, specific instrumentation, length, etc. One requirement may be that it must be a march.





Also, please respond in this thread as to how you would like to be judged. We can do...


100% Open Poll Voting
50% Poll Voting - 50% Judge Voting
100% Judge Voting

And I vote for 50/50 scoring. ^_^

I vote for 50% Poll Voting - 50% Judge Voting.

50/50 for me as well.

100 judge

50/50.

I like the 50/50 approach... that way there is some audience feedback as well (and the goal IS to please the audience... well, it used to be... i dunno).

50/50 scoring !

50/50 because I suggested it :P. How do you vote twice?

You can check mark more than one box. After vote, I feel now for a march piece.

Looks like 50/50 is going to win, but what the heck. I say 100 judge.

People can't help being biased towards their favorite author, myself included.

I vote for 50/50 voting.

I'm really excited for this contest, honestly. :)

50/50

^.^

umm I kinda like 100% judge.

50/50

100% judge. :]

either 50/50 or 100 poll

100 judge is ridiculous- would be way too subjective

also as soundtrack composer looks like the one to win i was just wondering how the stimulus will be picked- will there be another poll on whether it will be film/story or game or is each composer allowed to pick their own starting point as long as it is one of the three?

From the negotiations I've had with porsche, it'll end up being one audio-less video (likely anime) that everyone has to compose to.

From the negotiations I've had with porsche, it'll end up being one audio-less video (likely anime) that everyone has to compose to.
hmm... hopefully it's not a series where you have to know backstory. The "inspiration clip" should be able to be standalone.

Additionally, I'm sad... I really wanted to try a quartet or march :( Although I've always dreamed of writing soundtrack music I'm not sure how good I am at it.

well i dont think knowing the background story is particularly important- leaves more scope for your imagination

and why dont you just write a quartet and/or a march anyway and put them in your own thread?

The whole idea of a soundtrack competition is not to get inspiration from the clip, but to make the music that can do the narration for the clip on its own.

Yeah, the guys at VGmusic.com are running something similar to this, so you might want to check their clips out to get an idea of how it should work. Right now, it's down to the finals match, but soon after they should have all the past matches listed as well. They also decided to add a limit factor of only using MS-GS MIDI sounds - I think maybe we should have similar restrictions to prevent people with better samples and software to have an edge.

Here's the link to the thread: http://www.vgmusic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10911

Wohoo go midi power!
There's no way I'd have a chance competing against your virtual instruments =p

But even now I'm not sure if I'll enter...

Or people could just ask to have it run through VST by someone with that capability if they want.

Or people could just ask to have it run through VST by someone with that capability if they want.

That true, but you really need to be working directly with the virtual instrument to get the best out of it. They have different temperaments (for example, different velocity scalings for multisamples and modwheel behavior) that one needs to get a feel for personally. Of course, the person who renders the music may help them tweak and optimize things, but then that may be going beyond what they should be doing. It's a tough call, really.

Or people could just ask to have it run through VST by someone with that capability if they want.
This.

But if not ^, then a general midi restriction is a-okay by me. I don't have the computing power for a large sampler on my machine, so I'm lucky to have Kontact Player with Sib3.


Also @ Thorn...
Well, I personally like a little motivation (in the case of my Piano piece it was a class, my woodwind octet my father). So having a contest with a deadline (which I will most likely overshoot by 3 hours) is a great way for me to compose.

Well...I personally would like to see how people do with the technology they have available to them, but I guess I'm not wholly opposed to some restrictions to keep the playing field even.

I don't care of what sample people would use. I have been in the position of competing with professional and no professional people that use high quality samples. And me with cheap ones and lower in quality.

I think people should not judge a piece of music by the sample if not by what the composer did. Also VST behave differently and music may sound a mess in one different. Also not all soundcards have the same sounds, this mean the midi will sound with different quality in different soundcards. And what if the person want to do a more electronic approach to the music? Meaning using electronic sounds founds in techno, trance, eourbeat, etc. Or to record effects?

I think is just do not let yourself to be amaze by the sound quality of PorscheGTIII. :P

just making sure here... does the contest start on august 15th?
is the theme already decided?

Voting for the theme of the competition closes in the 15th. The competition start date is still pending, though it will be held in the fall. The thread for it may open early, but the data of the contest will remain blank until the date arrives.

Or people could just ask to have it run through VST by someone with that capability if they want.

I see what you are saying, but I've had negative experiences doing this. I once asked someone to run a piano piece through their copy of GPO on Finale, and it came out completely muffled and over-saturated with reverb. It sounded underwater. :/

While I'm fine with either idea, I like being able to use samples. I do not use any expensive sound libraries, but have found that you can get a pretty good sound with free soundfonts and a bit of tweaking. Squidfont Orchestral, for example, is an excellent strings and orchestra sample, and Florestan Woodwinds has a very nice Flute, Oboe, and Clarinet IMO. I just use an FL Studio Demo and soundfonts, all free. But I'm fine with that. :)

And as Nyu001 brought up, it is a bit difficult composing techno with midi sounds. xD

On the topic of to restrict samples or not, music is music, nonetheless. If we can't agree on a restriction, how about I throw in the wild-card and say we can only submit sheet music?

That'll get everyone's inner ears perking.

But, going to something possible with everyone, there sound not be any restrictions; it would make the music community that we do have here scale down (as far as entering, and the quality of everyone). Absolutely every can use General MIDI, no doubt, but ruling out the use of it and only having VST is unfair , and already cuts out people to even enter--plus, the quality of some compositions change when different reverbs and timbres are in the mix. Go back to the beginning: Anything goes.

P.S. Why not cast a useless vote, 50/50 :P

There will be no such restrictions. We haven't done it in the past and I see no reason to change. If you would like a nice sampled entry, I'd be glad to help you with that but you will have to do all the setup work to your score first and I'd be glad to tell you what to do if you want it.

I will not be entering because I do not see it fair to set-up and know what's going to happen while other entrants have no clue. But as far as a restriction, the only restriction is that everyone must be able to play the sound file that you submit so basically stick to MIDI and MP3.

Well that settles that then >_>

Also, what is "VST"?

VST: Virtual Studio Technology.

Seem "The soundtrack composer" is going to win.

I got in the mood of work in a march. But, too late. Already voted. lol

Dammit... I wanted the math rock one

Remember this poll will close tomorrow at 6:14pm EST and the competition will begin soon after.

I vote for 50/50 as well. I hope the contest ends up being soundtrack composer, because I'll definatly participate in it if it is, provided I don't get mountains of homework when school starts. XD

Are we (you) all going to use the same prompt?

When does the contest start and end? :heh:

The poll closes in a couple hours. A new thread with the details and the background information will open up within a few days.