One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread

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abovethoughts wrote:Within the rules?

Can I run multiple hosts simultaneously into this "Commercial" software from DDMF

http://www.virtualaudiostream.com/
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with the idea of recording the output. That output would most likely complete the arrangement phase of the song with only a final mix needed to get eq and levels in check.
That seems legit to me, since its not an effect.

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General Rules Vote (January 2014)

Let's see if anything needs fixing or adding so please enter your votes HERE before 20th January (KVR time):

If you want a rule changed, write the new alternative here.
(please formulate the new rule if you can)

If you have suggestions or ideas for any other topics that should be voted on, write them here too.

A follow up poll will then run from 21st to the end of the month if necessary and new rules counted from the next OSC onward.

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I just voted on the rules and would like us to change this one:
Track licenses are whatever you set it to when they are on your own account at SoundCloud, but when in archive it's: Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
I usually attach a CC-by 3.0 license to my tracks (Creative Commons Atribution), which means I grand the listener much more freedom. Others use traditional copyright by not declaring anything or they attach another Creative Commons license.
This leads to the problem that in various places on the net you find different versions of your track with different licenses (e.g. SoundCloud vs. Archive.org). Not a desirable situation in my opinion, set apart the legal implications.
Any other opinions on this?
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Personally I don't care a bit about that since my music is and always will be available for free. But I can understand why that might be a problem for some so whatever you guys decide is fine with me :)

The only thing I'd like to be changed is this: if the top 5 participants decide to pass on their prizes, it would be cool if those will be offered to the next top 5, and so on (provided the sponsors agree). There are some regular winners that prolly already have all that software from previous OCSc and on the other hand it would give others a chance to get some cool stuff. Just sayin' :)
TELURICA - "Made In ___ [INSERT LOCATION]" - EP.
Available now on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/telurica/sets/ma ... t-location

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Voted for the rules. Two things I'd like to see changed (and voted accordingly):
No external samples or live sounds like voice, guitar etc allowed. However, for convenience or CPU saving, synth bouncing/sampling are allowed but only where the EXACT same result could have been achieved using the original synth. This means that for example pitching and reversing is not allowed. Sampling for example a bass drum in order to get a consistent sound is not allowed either. Sampled or bounced audio must not be edited in any way. Samplers used must be host samplers or freeware and easily available.
I would like to see sampling allowed for drums. I think the consistency of a bass-drum (for example) is subordinate to the fact that a convincing bass-drum has been made in the first place. At the same time, having to manage several instances of a synth for the rhythm part is both time-consuming and load-inducing on older systems.
Your entry must be composed specifically for this contest
It is pretty hard to actually check if a track was pre-existing or not, so for that alone I would drop this requirement. I have loads of old (15+ years) tracks that would qualify nicely for me to do a re-record within a OSC.
Cover tracks are not permitted.
In addition to the previous point, sometimes a certain synth can simply beg to do a certain cover-track with (SQ8L comes to mind). Besides that, there obviously have been (partly) covered tracks submitted in older OSC that didn't seem to be a problem then.
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, using Reaper and a fine selection of freeware plugins.

Ragnarök VST-synthesizer co-creator with Full Bucket

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I voted "keep as is" to all except the following:
Your entry must be composed specifically for this contest
I agree with Crimsonwarlock on this one. It's not easy to verify if someone released the same track elsewhere hence I don't see a point of this rule. If someone wants to use a previous released track then why not. We can add a couple of restrictions like:

1. No one should be allowed to use a track that they submitted in previous OSC.
2. If a track was released elsewhere then the same track can be submitted once.
Cover tracks are not permitted.
Again, I cannot think of any logical reason to not allow this. One synth challenge is basically about the synth and how one is using it in producing a track. If the track is a cover then why not. One can argue that it doesn't need any song-writing skill, etc. but let the voters decide how they wanna rate the track.
satYatunes - Sound and Graphic Designer
Beautiful UI and skins for VST plugins.
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Thanks for the votes and suggestions so far, keep'em coming.

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Sampling drums? Hell no. Drums are critical and can dramatically affect the impact of a song. If ppl are allowed to use samples the result would not be fair. Now if we're talking about creating the drum patterns yourself from the synth's sounds for the entire song then bouncing the whole track to audio, that is currently allowed. The whole point of OSC is to force you to work with whatever that synth can produce.

As for the track being created specifically for OSC, I take it as in not previously published. It doesn't matter if it's an older song as long as it makes its debut as an OSC entry. At least that's how I see it (I could be wrong though).

Last, but not least: I am against covers. It's not fair to simply replace some instruments with sounds produced by the synth, while others are squeezing their brains to come up with a new song. There are plenty of websites that offer the arrangements for various wellknown songs, all you have to do it copy/paste 'em. Not cool. Plenty of ppl were forced to skip an OSC edition because they were not able to finish a full song - they could have just used a cover and be done in 5 minutes...add to that the fact that a hit song will potentially make a greater impact than a song created by a regular KVRist and I think you can see why it would be terribly unfair to be allowed to use covers (I hope) ;)
TELURICA - "Made In ___ [INSERT LOCATION]" - EP.
Available now on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/telurica/sets/ma ... t-location

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crimsonwarlock wrote:Voted for the rules. Two things I'd like to see changed (and voted accordingly):
No external samples or live sounds like voice, guitar etc allowed. However, for convenience or CPU saving, synth bouncing/sampling are allowed but only where the EXACT same result could have been achieved using the original synth. This means that for example pitching and reversing is not allowed. Sampling for example a bass drum in order to get a consistent sound is not allowed either. Sampled or bounced audio must not be edited in any way. Samplers used must be host samplers or freeware and easily available.
I would like to see sampling allowed for drums. I think the consistency of a bass-drum (for example) is subordinate to the fact that a convincing bass-drum has been made in the first place. At the same time, having to manage several instances of a synth for the rhythm part is both time-consuming and load-inducing on older systems.
Your entry must be composed specifically for this contest
It is pretty hard to actually check if a track was pre-existing or not, so for that alone I would drop this requirement. I have loads of old (15+ years) tracks that would qualify nicely for me to do a re-record within a OSC.
Cover tracks are not permitted.
In addition to the previous point, sometimes a certain synth can simply beg to do a certain cover-track with (SQ8L comes to mind). Besides that, there obviously have been (partly) covered tracks submitted in older OSC that didn't seem to be a problem then.
Interesting points. The drum programming in OSC is really a lot of the 'Challenge' part of it. After doing so many OSCs, a lot of drum programming is becoming 2nd nature, and definitely gets easier over time. That's also a barrier that keeps out people who are not as well versed in synthesis - which helps keep this community tight knit. This is an elite challenge, much like a triathlon, and many things are required.

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idfpower wrote:Sampling drums? Hell no. Drums are critical and can dramatically affect the impact of a song. If ppl are allowed to use samples the result would not be fair. Now if we're talking about creating the drum patterns yourself from the synth's sounds for the entire song then bouncing the whole track to audio, that is currently allowed. The whole point of OSC is to force you to work with whatever that synth can produce.
It should be clear from what I wrote, that I'm talking about still making the drum sounds with the choosen synth from the specific OSC. So you are still doing the synthesis part. There is nothing unfair with that. My whole point was that there is very little difference between bouncing a whole kickdrum-track to audio and bouncing just one kickdrum sound to audio (= making a sample of it) and load that into a drum-sequencer. The only difference is that a kick (for example) will be the same kick throughout, not subject to oscillator drift and stuff like that. As I stated, that little nuance seems not really important to me in the total perspective of a track.
bjporter wrote:Interesting points. The drum programming in OSC is really a lot of the 'Challenge' part of it. After doing so many OSCs, a lot of drum programming is becoming 2nd nature, and definitely gets easier over time. That's also a barrier that keeps out people who are not as well versed in synthesis - which helps keep this community tight knit. This is an elite challenge, much like a triathlon, and many things are required.
I'm not talking about drum-programming, but more about the logistics involved from the DAW-perspective. For example, there is a huge difference between doing this in a pattern-based DAW (e.g. FL Studio or Orion) and a linear DAW like Reaper. So what I proposed has nothing to do with the synthesis part ;)

But lets not forget that it's a vote and suggestions, not some attack on the current rules. I'm actually fine the way they are :D
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, using Reaper and a fine selection of freeware plugins.

Ragnarök VST-synthesizer co-creator with Full Bucket

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crimsonwarlock wrote: I'm not talking about drum-programming, but more about the logistics involved from the DAW-perspective. For example, there is a huge difference between doing this in a pattern-based DAW (e.g. FL Studio or Orion) and a linear DAW like Reaper. So what I proposed has nothing to do with the synthesis part ;)

But lets not forget that it's a vote and suggestions, not some attack on the current rules. I'm actually fine the way they are :D
K, gotcha. Perhaps save up for a different DAW if possible? I did that for a few DAWS.

I actually do all my drums by hand in Piano roll, each with their own channel, and sometimes multiple layers. I prefer not using the pattern stuff (cubase has some pattern stuff)

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bjporter wrote:I actually do all my drums by hand in Piano roll, each with their own channel, and sometimes multiple layers. I prefer not using the pattern stuff (cubase has some pattern stuff)
I don't use patterns myself as well. But I really like to 'play' things when recording and having a bunch of synth copies each on a midi-track means I can not drum-in track like I want to. If I could load my drum-sounds (as samples) into something like FA SoftDrums (what I 'normally' use for drumming) would make it a lot more fun for me to do the drum-parts for a OSC.

There is a workaround for this (in Reaper) to consolidate all the drum-synth tracks on one midi-track, but that is cumbersome to setup (to say the least) and just too much work each time to do within one month worth of available time.
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, using Reaper and a fine selection of freeware plugins.

Ragnarök VST-synthesizer co-creator with Full Bucket

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crimsonwarlock wrote: I don't use patterns myself as well. But I really like to 'play' things when recording and having a bunch of synth copies each on a midi-track means I can not drum-in track like I want to. If I could load my drum-sounds (as samples) into something like FA SoftDrums (what I 'normally' use for drumming) would make it a lot more fun for me to do the drum-parts for a OSC.

There is a workaround for this (in Reaper) to consolidate all the drum-synth tracks on one midi-track, but that is cumbersome to setup (to say the least) and just too much work each time to do within one month worth of available time.
That does seem cumbersome, but then again I start my project from scratch every month. Each month it gets faster and faster which is nice.

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bjporter wrote:That does seem cumbersome, but then again I start my project from scratch every month. Each month it gets faster and faster which is nice.
Maybe I need to elaborate: it means I need to setup a midi-track that splits specific notes into separate midi-channels that I then need to route to the different tracks holding the separate drum-sounds. It means at least the use of some midi-zoning plugin. That simply IS cumbersome. However, I could probably setup a track-template for that in Reaper, but yet again that seems to me as a lot of work related to DAW-organization instead of composing, and it takes the fun out of it (for me at least). It goes pretty closely with my personal need to be able to setup a controller-template for a OSC-synth, to actually see myself participate in the first place.

If you know of a simpler way to do it (in Reaper), I surely like to know ;)
CrimsonWarlock aka TechnoGremlin, using Reaper and a fine selection of freeware plugins.

Ragnarök VST-synthesizer co-creator with Full Bucket

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crimsonwarlock wrote:
bjporter wrote:That does seem cumbersome, but then again I start my project from scratch every month. Each month it gets faster and faster which is nice.
Maybe I need to elaborate: it means I need to setup a midi-track that splits specific notes into separate midi-channels that I then need to route to the different tracks holding the separate drum-sounds. It means at least the use of some midi-zoning plugin. That simply IS cumbersome. However, I could probably setup a track-template for that in Reaper, but yet again that seems to me as a lot of work related to DAW-organization instead of composing, and it takes the fun out of it (for me at least). It goes pretty closely with my personal need to be able to setup a controller-template for a OSC-synth, to actually see myself participate in the first place.

If you know of a simpler way to do it (in Reaper), I surely like to know ;)

I don't for sure, V'ger & Zprime know Reaper well though. That sounds yucky

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