One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread

[ontrackp]

@ontrackp - this month's album draft compiled into a single song didn't work for you? idk, you really have to admire the effort if someone goes to such great lengths. i'm not sure that there needs to be a hard rule though, let the voting decide.

To be honest it did not work for me, and I don't agree that a really long piece necessarily represents a lot of effort. In fact, it may be the opposite. It's very easy to throw lots of fragments and looping sections into a giant string out -- it's much more difficult, but ultimately more satisfying, to self-edit, pick and choose the best pieces and deliberately build something that has form and substance, that flows and works as a song.

To be practical, if everyone sent in 30 min tracks, it would be impossible to listen fairly to any of them while still having time for a personal life and work!

[SoundGoddess]

I get what you're saying, I mean I feel like it's only fair for me to make an effort to listen to the entirety of other people's tracks if I honestly expect them to listen to the entirety of my track. But if I submitted a 30 minute track I wouldn't be surprised or offended if people listened to the first 5-10 minutes of it and scored based on that. And I don't think anyone should feel guilty if they took that approach, life is busy and we all have limited time.

idk, I'm just trying to have fun and improve my skills and be part of the community. This contest already has a ton of rules, I'm not sure that adding additional rules like limiting track length is really necessary. I think it's unlikely that long track lengths like this are going to become a big trend. I say let the guy have his fun too. if he wants to make 35 minute tracks I don't see why we should discourage him from participating.

A friend of mine is in the music industry and told me that this is why he no longer participates in contests here...is this really the kind of environment we want to foster?

I do find KVR to be a strange little place full of little generals who seem to think they're running some sort of software army lol - every 'contest' has tons of pointless, stupid rules. I ended up getting into a debate with (redacted) there about the mix contests - the rules he set were absolutely insane and put most people off - consequently almost no one bothers with it now.

[wagtunes]

I get what you're saying, I mean I feel like it's only fair for me to make an effort to listen to the entirety of other people's tracks if I honestly expect them to listen to the entirety of my track. But if I submitted a 30 minute track I wouldn't be surprised or offended if people listened to the first 5-10 minutes of it and scored based on that. And I don't think anyone should feel guilty if they took that approach, life is busy and we all have limited time.

idk, I'm just trying to have fun and improve my skills and be part of the community. This contest already has a ton of rules, I'm not sure that adding additional rules like limiting track length is really necessary. I think it's unlikely that long track lengths like this are going to become a big trend. I say let the guy have his fun too. if he wants to make 35 minute tracks i don't see why we should discourage him from participating.

I agree. You submit your track and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. People who won't want to listen to 35 minute tracks won't and there's nothing you can do to force them to. So they might listen to maybe 5 or 7 minutes maybe and judge off of that. Some people will automatically reward you for long tracks while others may mark you down because they feel the song is overkill and not needed to show "skill" with the synth.

Bottom line is this. Whatever you do, the results are out of your control. Make the right decision and you'll do well. Make the wrong decision and you won't.

I've learned a lot from the 2 OSC's I've been in. I have a much better idea of what the community, in general, likes and as a result, will submit entries that give me a better chance to do well as I enter more of these.

FWIW, I gave the 35 minute track a 5. I thought he did an amazing job on it. I don't think he had to make that long a track, but because it was done so well, I didn't feel he should be knocked down because I personally don't like tracks that long for something that takes a lot of time to judge as it is. So I listened to enough of the track to figure out that whatever was going to come after I finished listening was probably going to be of the same quality. So that's how I judged it and it's perfectly within my right to do so just as it's within somebody else's right to go "WTF? 35 minutes? Screw this!" And give him a 1.

Like I said, you roll the dice and take your chances.

I don't think we need more rules than we already have.

[Touch The Universe]

@ontrackp - this month's album draft compiled into a single song didn't work for you? idk, you really have to admire the effort if someone goes to such great lengths. i'm not sure that there needs to be a hard rule though, let the voting decide.

To be honest it did not work for me, and I don't agree that a really long piece necessarily represents a lot of effort. In fact, it may be the opposite. It's very easy to throw lots of fragments and looping sections into a giant string out -- it's much more difficult, but ultimately more satisfying, to self-edit, pick and choose the best pieces and deliberately build something that has form and substance, that flows and works as a song.

To be practical, if everyone sent in 30 min tracks, it would be impossible to listen fairly to any of them while still having time for a personal life and work!

Touché , though I would like to add that I indeed put a great deal of time and effort into the track (easily over 100 hours and a few all nighters.) 9 out of 10 times I'd shoot for a song under 10 minutes that has been meticulously arranged and narrowed from a wide selection of fragments. A week is ideal for the arranging stage for me, but honestly even three days would make the world of difference compared to the mere day I had. I had originally planned for an under 10 min track again, but the process I always take when arranging is first laying out all the pieces then narrowing. This time once I layed them all out, I only had a few hours left to narrow and I still needed to add the drum parts for the entire track I narrowed as best as I could from an already over an hour track and cut it to half as quick as I could, then quickly added the drums. In short, alot of time and effort indeed, just not too much time in the arranging stage ( though still an overnight effort ). Still, I love melodies, melodies make a song. All the tracks I've created in the last 10 years have melodies running throughout mostly the entire track, with maybe 30 seconds of parts without them. Needless to say the track needs a lot more melodies imo.. which I again, didn't have near enough time to add. That would take a minimum of two days, which i did plan for, just forgot I had long class days for them.. That said, Illl probably be taking a break for a while in the OSC. I need to finish up my album, compile some va's, finish my website, try to book some gigs and find a new school to attend for next semester, etc..... Though I might enter a 4 minute track here and there from my music theory experiments. Cheers

[SoundGoddess]

FWIW, I gave the 35 minute track a 5. I thought he did an amazing job on it. I don't think he had to make that long a track, but because it was done so well, I didn't feel he should be knocked down because I personally don't like tracks that long for something that takes a lot of time to judge as it is. So I listened to enough of the track to figure out that whatever was going to come after I finished listening was probably going to be of the same quality. So that's how I judged it and it's perfectly within my right to do so just as it's within somebody else's right to go "WTF? 35 minutes? Screw this!" And give him a 1.

Yes, I really thought he did a great job with it too. I have pretty bad ADHD and still managed to get thru the first 12 minutes before thinking to myself "I still have 30 songs left to judge, I don't have the patience for this". But it didn't feel like he was sloppily throwing stuff together to arbitrarily increase the song length. So I rated him a 4 based on what I heard. I do plan to listen to the entire track between now and the 15th to see if I think he deserves the extra point, but if I get too busy to do so then I'm not going to feel bad about it.

If you feel like knocking points off because a song is too long then that is your prerogative...the voting system doesn't specify any criteria for how you vote, which is great because music is very subjective. I just try to follow the golden rule when it comes to voting. I don't think we need more rules, and I don't think that the voting system needs to be changed.

Here's some food for thought:

[Wyrrdbryyngr]

voted. still think it should be anonymous. familiarity with the artist plays too big a part, imo. kinda keeps things from being objective.

also, as the track count for this comp grows, it gets harder to give full attention to each and every song. gone completely subjective in my voting, but production quality and originality are my main concerns. might level the playing field if we each got a random selection of 10-20 to vote on perhaps?

the only improvement i would like to see in the voting process is being able to simply click a number right on the track. it get's to be tedious as the sections fill up on the left and we have to scroll around a lot toward the end.

[wagtunes]

voted. still think it should be anonymous. familiarity with the artist plays too big a part, imo. kinda keeps things from being objective.

There is no question that with some people it will become a popularity contest. Long term members will probably always get the benefit of a higher score over newer entrants. Fortunately, I don't suffer from this problem on the voting end because I am 100% objective when evaluating music. I don't care who you are. One month, the winner I gave 1 star because i thought the tune was downright dreadful with the first minute being nothing but noise. Didn't matter to me who he was. I judged it on the song and nothing else.

But you're going to get your cliques. It's unavoidable. And if you get enough of them it could literally determine the outcome before any songs are even heard, more or less. Sure, among the "elite" members you may have one person finish 1st one month and 3rd another but you're not going to find great variations.

Now, one could argue that this is because the ones at the top all the time are in fact that good and that's why they're there. The problem comes in when other entrants, even if they are just as good, aren't paid attention to as much because they're not established. So the "cliques" will vote those tracks just a little lower than their "friends."

I've been around the music business in general (over 35 years) not to have discovered that this is just a fact of life. Lots of artists have lived off their early "good" works long after they stopped producing anything really good. The Rolling Stones were a perfect example when they churned out crap like "Miss You" or whatever that stupid disco crap was as well as that other piece of garbage "I'm So Hot For You" that also went to the top of the charts.

They're the Stones. What did you expect?

If I sound cynical, I'm not. I'm being very realistic because this is how the business works. If you've made it, you'd have to virtually self destruct to fall out of favor.

Right now, the OSC is so far into its life span (going on 75 next month) that those who have been doing this from the very beginning would have to literally put together a track that was so purposely bad in order to receive low marks. Anything "decent" will score high. In the meantime, most newcomers, unless they are unbelievably fantastic, putting putting out the same quality material, have very little chance to break into the inner circle until they too have been around long enough that they absorb themselves into the inner circle on pure longevity. But the quality of their work will have to remain high for that entire time. They won't break in the first month no matter how great their work is.

In our world, seniority is rewarded.

Is it fair? Well, it kind of depends on which side of the fence you're looking at it from.

Those who have been slugging it out for months and months will say sure it's fair. I earned it because I've been at it so long. Those who just started will say it's not fair because their first entry was just as good as the entry that won. No reason I should have finished near last.

And I'm not talking about myself. I know my entry for my first OSC sucked. In fact, my goal was to just not finish at the very bottom, which I didn't do. So mission accomplished.

The problem is, had I submitted a world class track. I might have finished in the middle of the pack at best.

Why? Because I'm an unknown. People won't listen to my track with the expectation of something great like they would listening to something by Z-Prime, as an example. Oh, and by the way, the guy is really good at this. I've learned a lot from him. But equal tracks in quality between him and somebody brand new will not be judged the same way by those who have also been around a long time. They will favor the old timer. That's just the way it is.

Because of this, yes, I feel all entries should be anonymous. But it's not important enough to me to make a case for it. I don't enter these to win stuff. I enter because music is my life and I just love creating things. No, I don't want to be the absolute worst, but I really don't care about, nor expect to win.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the subject for whatever they're worth.

[ontrackp]

It's been interesting to read the various perspectives on the song length question. Please keep in mind my first post was simply that.... a question if making a length rule had ever been discussed.

Now that it has, I'm not in favor of adding a length rule. When it comes to OSC rules, I choose to follow the universal truth that less is more, and adding more rules would not be an improvement.

I'm relatively new as I've participated in only 10 of the OSC's. Every month I have the same experience -- a really friendly group of people who are making some really interesting music. I have not found the rules to be confusing or overly limiting.

I don't think there is an "inner circle" who automatically score well. I think there are a few participants who are really talented and very strong producers who consistently submit great pieces. I apply the same scoring standards to everyone. I've learned a lot from listening to the better tracks each month, and even if I don't agree with every high score, I think the top scores consistently reflect creative excellence.

One of the more fun parts of being in the OSC has been the opportunity to PM with a few other participants. Comparing notes, talking about production techniques and learning how other people, who are literally all over the world work has been great fun. I also look forward to reading the comments on my tracks -- both positive and critical.

BJ does a great job administering this, and I think that the number of entries and high quality of the competition speaks volumes about the attitude of OSC. I don't know about the rest of KVR, but this has been a very cool place to spend a little time!

[SoundGoddess]

I don't think that voting should be anonymous, if I like something I want to be able to pull up their soundcloud and comment on the song or follow the artist to see what other songs they have uploaded. I like making connections with people.

[mmoncur]

My thoughts as a relative newcomer to the OSC: (only two entries so far):

1. The voting will never be anything but WILDLY subjective. Think about it, we have judges who are experts, judges who are beginners, judges who love all genres of music, judges who love one genre. We have some judges who focus on musicality and some that focus on sound design. We have some contests with 80+ entries which means voting is a huge job. And yeah, it's a community where you can make friends and it's hard to objectively judge your friends. On top of that, MOST OF THE JUDGES ARE ALSO ENTRANTS!

2. That's fine, because I'm not here to win prizes. If I was I'd be insane. I spent well over 100 hours on last month's track. That's a lot of work for a chance to win $100 worth of software.

3. Why am I here? Simply TO FINISH TRACKS. My Hive OSC entry was the first track I finished and published since 2004. And now I've done a Synthmaster one and a Dexed one (almost finished!). And learned so much about my DAW and workflow and plugins in the process that I've started a bunch of non-contest tracks and finished one of those.

In short I think of this more as a "write a song in a month challenge" where lots of people get together with a common goal and encourage each other and hold each other accountable to achieve that goal. The voting/prizes are just icing on the cake...

I'm intrigued by other kinds of challenges that could exist -- like one where everything is anonymous, or one where the judging is done by a panel of electronic music experts and journalists rather than by the community. If someone wants to do the hard work of organizing one of those, I'll probably enter it too, because it's another way to encourage me to finish a track. But I'm happy with the OSC as it is.

And thanks to bjporter for putting so much time into running it!

[bibz1st]

I think it would be interesting if the entries were anon until after the voting then reveal who the artists a day or so before the winner is anounced.
But the voting shoulnt be anon.

[Touch The Universe]

About not placing well if you are new to submissions? I've seen quite a few that there first osc's they have made the top 5. My first two entries I made in the top five as well, so I think this theory falls flat... Bj usually adds in parenthesis (congrats on winning in your first osc) etc..

[wagtunes]

About not placing well if you are new to submissions? I've seen quite a few that there first osc's they have made the top 5. My first two entries I made in the top five as well, so I think this theory falls flat... Bj usually adds in parenthesis (congrats on winning in your first osc) etc..

Cliques, familiarity, popularity, whatever you want to call it, does exist. I'm not saying this is a hard and fast rule, but you can't discount it.

As an example, after just 3 OSCs, I see Z-Prime's name (and a few others) and I "automatically" expect quality. You can't imagine what a psychological advantage this is unless you've studied psychology. It's just like going to a Bull's game back in the day and watching Jordan. You automatically expect him to have a great game and when he doesn't, you're stunned.

This, of course, can be a double edged sword. Sometimes people get tired of your style. Suddenly, you're scoring lower because the novelty of your work is gone. The music, on its own, isn't any worse than it was. People just don't react to it like they used to. This is why so many artists over their long careers took the time to reinvent themselves.

Also, while this is going on (the loss of interest in the established artists) some people long for new blood and will rate somebody higher just because they are new.

But for the most part, overall, if you're established here, you're going to do better than if you're just starting out. Is this going to be 100% true all the time? No, of course not. Nothing is. But if I had my choice between being somebody who has been a member here for 10 years or somebody who just joined last week, I will absolutely pick the former over the latter.

How many people do you honestly think would not?

[ThePresent]

OSC is definitely not a place for just "the elite" or "the incrowd" or whatever term one can use to describe a sort of clique.
I've been only into 6 OSC's and been welcomed every time I entered.
The sweet OSC-people choose me as a winner on my first entry and they' ve kept on appreciating my contributions in various ways, be it with encouraging comments and/or high scores. I even realize I never gave as much to them as they gave me, OSC 74 being the first time I ever shared my presets, at last.
And most of all, almost everyone is willing to share, some even go to great lengths to explain what they are doing, if you care to PM them.
Incrowd voting may or may not occur sometimes, I don't know, but the general spirit here at OSC is a good one.

[wagtunes]

OSC is definitely not a place for just "the elite" or "the incrowd" or whatever term one can use to describe a sort of clique.
I've been only into 6 OSC's and been welcomed every time I entered.
The sweet OSC-people choose me as a winner on my first entry and they' ve kept on appreciating my contributions in various ways, be it with encouraging comments and/or high scores. I even realize I never gave as much to them as they gave me, OSC 74 being the first time I ever shared my presets, at last.
And most of all, almost everyone is willing to share, some even go to great lengths to explain what they are doing, if you care to PM them.
Incrowd voting may or may not occur sometimes, I don't know, but the general spirit here at OSC is a good one.

This may very well all be true. I am simply stating something that is very common in our world in general. In fact, one forum I used to attend openly stated that seniority has its benefits. And even though I was an 8 year member before I finally left, I never really thought this was fair. But that's the way it was. Old members always got the benefit of the doubt whenever there was an argument about whatever it was.

I mean look at all the nepotism in the entertainment business. Have you ever watched Murder She Wrote or Diagnosis Murder? The Lansbury and Van Dyke families were littered throughout the cast, crew, writers, directors, executive producers and on and on.

This is the reality of our world. I don't see how anybody can even begin to deny it.