Zebralette patch contest 1 - Voting

[hakey]

[forget it]

[Slinky Productions]

Bring on the patchbender.com

[bmrzycki]

1) the Amen Break

The Amen break is a great idea, everyone has heard it at one time or another and drum mangling is definitely outside the box for these patch contests.

[abstractcats]

Someone mention the the Amen break


I don't know if any one has seen this:

"Video explains the world's most important 6-sec drum loop"


I think the original is really a great piece of drumming.

[heavensdaw]

That's a cool vid that..

I also think the Amen break is a top notch idea..

deffo gets my +1

Hd

[Gino Cortesi]

I agree, the Amen Break would be a great audio clip for a Zebrify contest.
There's got be a contest name in that combo

A clarification is you use 1 instance of Zebrify.

Any opinions on midi notes? For example, if you add horn hits into the Amen Break, you could add those with midi notes, but the synthesis would be in Zebrify (in the patch).

Best regards,

Gino

[hakey]

if you add horn hits into the Amen Break, you could add those with midi notes, but the synthesis would be in Zebrify (in the patch.

That might just over-complicate things - it would be asking quite a lot of the auditioners to match midi files up with patches (esp. if there's 20+ patches ).

With a bit of cunning you might do something similar just using MSEGs + the envelope follower/pitch detector + oscillators... etc, without having to input midi notes.

And I think the Amen Break is a great idea - already been experimenting!

[GeorgeZ]

Oh deary me... this is gonna be a tough choice... there are some REALLY good patches in there. Think I might sleep on it, come back to it again tomorrow!

[3ee]

... this is gonna be a tough choice... there are some REALLY good patches in there.

When I include something in the top 3, another isn't there anymore, though choice indeed.
Playing the patches is another thing in our judgement, so every day I try to get a better performance out of them.

[Happy Frog]

That is a great point about presets. Different day, key, melody, what ever and the presets becomes something special, better, or not. Sometimes I wonder how I missed a presets when I demo them, then later dial it into some midi sequence and it is amazing. Glade to read your giving your choice some serious considerations.

[hakey]

When I include something in the top 3, another isn't there anymore, though choice indeed.

Well, for this very reason, I had a discussion with Brian (bmrzycki) about extending the vote from 3 to 5 patches - I was in favour, Brian against. Admittedly it was a little late in the day (the voting thread had gone up, though nobody, at that time, had voted) but Brian effectively overruled me on the matter.

In future, where we have say more than 20 patches, I'm in favour of choosing 5 patches (scored 5,4,3,2,1) - I think it would give a richer, more representative result, with more patches making it onto the scoreboard (looks like there may be a few 'nul points' this time around ).

[Gino Cortesi]

if you add horn hits into the Amen Break, you could add those with midi notes, but the synthesis would be in Zebrify (in the patch.

That might just over-complicate things - it would be asking quite a lot of the auditioners to match midi files up with patches (esp. if there's 20+ patches ).

Makes sense. It's better if each person runs the patches against the same audio clip to judge them.

Best regards,

Gino

[Gino Cortesi]

... this is gonna be a tough choice... there are some REALLY good patches in there.

When I include something in the top 3, another isn't there anymore, though choice indeed.
Playing the patches is another thing in our judgement, so every day I try to get a better performance out of them.

I'm really curious how people judge the patches.

The way I did it was set up a few chords, and then some faster lines after it with varying velocities and spacing. I listened to each patch play the same pattern where part of it sounded good for pads, and the faster parts sounded good for leads.

As I listened I used "mark as favorite", and then played around with each favorite to make the final call.

After doing this, I really liked one of the patches I submitted, but it didn't get votes. After the contest, I'd like some feedback on why this patch wasn't vote-worthy. The truth might hurt, but that's how you get better.

Best regards,

Gino

[hakey]

I'm really curious how people judge the patches.

The way I did it was set up a few chords, and then some faster lines after it with varying velocities and spacing. I listened to each patch play the same pattern where part of it sounded good for pads, and the faster parts sounded good for leads.

I just played them by hand. That way I could adjust my playing to suit the patch. A fair few patches, for example, made use of mod wheel, or aftertouch. It sounds like your method wouldn't have picked up on this.

[3ee]

I just played them by hand.

That seems to be the best way.
Some patches have a more unique way of playing them thus we need to adapt... + maybe the patch info would help sometimes.

I'm really curious how people judge the patches.

Firstly I go through them having fun without reading the info + marking obvious "junk" and "favorites"

Then I try to find the best way to play them by hand trying to get the best out them, this includes reading the patch info if any and normalising in some cases.

I won't rush, taking my time to understand the patch, in some cases I will notice that the MW of AT isn't assigned because there simply was no more room for that, so who casts away patches because of the MW and AT has to think twice.

Some types are more appealing than others. i.e. playing some fat chords on pads will probablly be more impressive than playing lead/bass, basically legato type sounds, so... keep that in mind, otherwise everybody will make pads for future contests

Finally you will end up with the very best few and must think to yourself as unbiased as possible: What patches are really the best?! It's easy to pick your top 3.. but it doesn't feel right to notice other patches that you really like are getting pushed out of the top 3.

So I will pick my favorites by: tone and timbre dynamics, clarity, playability and expressiveness, detail and subtlety, originality. This would eventually translate into Zebralette as; the use of osc effects, waveshapes/spectrum, modulation use, perhaps MSEG? and other "perfect2patch tweaks.