Patch Contest #5?

[replicator]

It is kind of weird how many people don't vote though...

Maybe the next one try anonymous voting. At least to try it.
Maybe write a post in the sound design forum about the contest.
I think more people would vote that way.

8 people joining a sound design contest is pretty good.
Less people join the 1 synth challenge.
Most people don't bother with making sounds, or have time to do so.
Most people here are musicians who don't go beyond small tweaking, and dj's that use loops and presets only. Developers with no free time.

MCnoone, many musicians are sound geeks to Kraftwerk made their own synths, Vangelis and Jarre have custom made gear. The very characteristic Vangelis brass is he's own design (I believe it is).

I hope more people join the contest and the votes, anonymous voting is worth a try. The contest is a good thing, because there are so many different approaches in sound design from the people participating, some Zebra secrets come a live now and then.

Cheers

Rep

[autodafe]

Well,
I didn't know about the patch contest until last month, I decided to study Zebra better, came on the forum and noticed the thread. Downloaded, voted, that's all.
And then I took part in this month's contest...(and it looks like it's going pretty well so far finger crossed)

I think that the contest needs most of all better "advertisement", or maybe only time. I mean, it's only been the 4th edition ..we should talk more about, it on the forum (other than this like sound design..), on our own blogs/forum, maybe Urs could talk about it on his newsletter and/or site/blog....and so on...

I agree that many people can be laid off by complexity.
Zebra is not the simplest synth to use and, for example, creating a rhythmic sequence like we did in the current (4th) contest was not the easiset task..
Maybe we should really consider easier contests, such as "one osc only" , "one filter only", "no XY", "no MSEG"...things like that to keep contests simpler?
Or just less complex kind of sounds ("make a bass sound", "make a pad")...

This would make the contest a bit less challenging, but could attract more (new) people...

[autodafe]

also, just had a quick count...

8 contestants and 17 people voting so far.

so teher's no really a lack of interest, it looks like people like to download new pacthes and listen to them.
Maybe we should find a way to encourage THIS people (the voters-only) to take part in the contest?

[leggie]

Can i ask why the comp isnt run on a free VST so more can take part? not that i have anything much to offer yet!

[hakey]

Can i ask why the comp isnt run on a free VST so more can take part? not that i have anything much to offer yet!

Because it's the Zebra patch contest!

You can use the Zebra demo to design and save patches - you just get, what is it 15 mins?, before it starts to go a bit wobbly.

And there are, of course, no other synths worthy of use for patch designing or patch contests.

[leggie]

Can i ask why the comp isnt run on a free VST so more can take part? not that i have anything much to offer yet!

Because it's the Zebra patch contest!

And you can use the Zebra demo to design and save patches - you just get, what is it 15 mins?, before it starts to go a bit wobbly.

Aha! i did not know i could save!

[leggie]

And there are, of course, no other synths worthy of use for patch designing or patch contests.

Are you serious? i did not see a wink!

Not that im knocking it, sounds top shelf

[hakey]

And there are, of course, no other synths worthy of use for patch designing or patch contests.

Are you serious? i did not see a wink!

Of course.

[blurk]

I didn't say ban the use of XY's, rather that there should be a points cost for using more than one XY pad - multiple XY's could still be used, but patch authors would, one hopes, consider there use more carefully.

I don't see the point (so to speak) of a points cost. Just make it a rule and be done with it. If there's a points cost, then no one will use them.

And I do think that sometimes the overuse, or innapropriate use of XY's, detracts from a patch.

Well, I respectfully disagree. I don't see how overuse of XY pads can ever detract from a patch. Personally, I think it always adds something to the patch by providing a simple way for users to explore the sonic space provided by Zebra. I'm willing to agree that people can differ in opinion about the need for programming the XY pads; maybe I go too far in believing it is my duty to provide XY variations. Certainly, it would be quicker to program the patches if we banned them or even limited them to one pad. But I see them as a hint to the user as to which parts of the patch are the most tweakable. After all, anything tweaked in an XY patch can be tweaked manually.

I believe the usage of X/Y pads should remain since I would imagine most work on the patch itself and then work on the X/Y pads later, which simply means the patch would sound the same if no one touches the X/Y pads (user or creator).

Exactly. I'd be surprised if anyone who bothered programming the XY pads did them as anything other than an extension a patch they had already crafted to sound good (well, as good as they wanted it to) on its default settings.

That said, I am all in favour of competitions with constraints. They do help focus the task. If those constraints involve XY pads, so be it. But I think the constraints should apply on a comp-by-comp basis.

Back on the topic of whether to base the contest on Zebra 2.5 or not, I'm afraid I remembered another reason why I believe it's too risky to update my main music machine to the beta, and that is because the main projects I am working on at the moment are based around or extensively use Zebrify, and I recall Urs saying that its UI hasn't been updated for 2.5 (or something along those lines).

[mcnoone]

I didn't say ban the use of XY's, rather that there should be a points cost for using more than one XY pad - multiple XY's could still be used, but patch authors would, one hopes, consider there use more carefully.

I don't understand your reasoning here, at all.
XY's chosen more carefully...proper use of XY's? What does that mean?
How do you program a non proper or inappropriate XY pad? Like when you move a dot and it curses or something? Warning: This XY control contains inappropriate material. Viewer discretion is advised.

[elxsound]

I believe the usage of X/Y pads should remain

I didn't say ban the use of XY's, rather that there should be a points cost for using more than one XY pad - multiple XY's could still be used, but patch authors would, one hopes, consider there use more carefully.

And I did respond to the idea of a "point cost" situation, which basically I am against. I personally don't see something like this as enticing towards additional participants. I'll repeat again (which Blurk said the same) that I can see and welcome a limiting contest (much like the 1 module per grid), but not a blanket rule, nor a penalty situation.

My main argument with regards to XY's within the ZPC's is that there is a danger that using all of the XY pads becomes necessary if one wants to be competitive, which could have the consequence of deterring those who would rather not have to assign all 4 XY pads, or who don't think that doing so would actually make a particular patch any better.

I'm not against the use of XY pads per se. I'm certainly not against people using all 4 XY pads, where it is appropriate. I am against a situation where the use of all XY pads becomes the norm. And I do think that sometimes the overuse, or innapropriate use of XY's, detracts from a patch.

I can understand this point of view, but I still think it's over assumptive that anyone won a particular contest based on the use of X/Y pads. I can honestly say that when I've voted, I have not based it on use of XY pads and of the winning entries, I have felt they were strong without the use of XY pads. I still think those entries would have won regardless. This is why I don't feel it's an issue and this is why I don't feel that their use would become a necessity to remain competitive.

Re: basic tutorials. Yes it is an idea; but who produces them? It could end up being quite a bit of work; you'd want to be sure that it really would have the desired effect, i.e. pulling the punters in.

This is why I was saying that it may require a bit of patience for allowing these contest to become what they have potential for becoming. It has been mentioned that overtime additional tutorials will be added to the proposed final destination site for these contests, and as these contest go forward it will be easier to point to certain tutorials incase anyone is either new to Zebra or just new to music in general.

I'm mostly just saying that we need to remember that many of the people that have in interest in participating might not have any experience in patch creating and many of these concepts might seem more foreign than we expect. More importantly, I believe the biggest gain in participants will come from those with less experience, so if participation is an issue, then we ought to consider covering some of the basics... or we just leave things as they are and wait till tutorials are added over time.

[hakey]

Okay - honestly I was just trying to think up ways to increase participation. I suspect that one reason that people are put off is where they think it's too difficult, or will take too much time. If having a full compliment of 4 XY pads becomes the default position if one wants to be competitive then I think that that will deter people from participating.

(Elxicano I'm not assuming that patches have won because they've used all the XY's, rather that I can see a trend developing.)

Anyway, I had a feeling that this would be contentious. Oh well, I don't want to be a dictator and impose my will. Diplomacy certainly isn't one of my skills and I don't really much enjoy having to make these kind of decisions, so if someone else wants to take over the running of these contests I will be more than happy to relinquish the reigns.

Hope this doesn't come across as me taking my bat home


@ MC and blurk -yes, I do absolutely think that there are cases where XY pads can detract from a patch! Open up another thread if you want to talk about, Ill be happy to oblige.

(And MC the word inappropriate has a broader range of meaning than the very narrow definition that you chose to assume. )

[hakey]

(strange self quoting) double post

[xh3rv]

proper use of XY's? What does that mean?

IMHO, a good question with a complicated answer. This is just my own take on it:

I find it much more time and brain intensive to manage XYs than direct MIDI stuff like velocity or modwheel. I don't think XYs are very easy to fine-tune and I always feel like some precision is lost when using them. It's also hard to keep track of what XY is doing what to a patch sometimes. Ultimately, I feel like using XYs is sort of chaotic and unstable - that can be great in some applications, and not in others. So, I believe there are probably are best practices depending on the type of patch for XY usage.

Something that's more towards the purely musical (leads, bass, sequence sounds) I really think shouldn't really depend on XYs too much. I don't think it's plausible to be expressive (instrumentally) with XYs, and there's a better way - mapping relevant parameters directly to a patch.

Something that's more towards sound design (pads, effects, percussion) can possibly benefit from heavier usage of XYs, especially something that should have some slowly evolving dynamics.

Sort of a special case is arpeggiations, here XYs can be great and feel really hands-on.

In actual practice I'm not always able to neatly categorize things as more musical or sound-design in nature. I've had some luck recently with limiting myself to 1 set of XYs with very simple parameters as sort of a general target, mostly just filter cutoff plus some kind of envelope tweak, or LFO rate / depth. I think I just really don't keep track of what XY does what, and having only a couple parameters there just makes the whole process a lot less complicated.

I'm fairly certain about this stuff for myself, but more certain everyone probably has an individual approach, too /shrug. Certainly more than one way to do things.

[elxsound]

Back on the topic of whether to base the contest on Zebra 2.5 or not, I'm afraid I remembered another reason why I believe it's too risky to update my main music machine to the beta, and that is because the main projects I am working on at the moment are based around or extensively use Zebrify, and I recall Urs saying that its UI hasn't been updated for 2.5 (or something along those lines).

Actually I believe nothing has been changed in Zebrify yet, which would mean that upgrading to 2.5 will leave Zebrify intact... can anyone can confirm?