One Synth Challenge #98: Any One Synth (Photonic Wins!)

[nickamandote]

I give 1 or 2 when that track doesn't "move me" and I don't talk here about dancing. And again it's totally subjective like the 4 or 5s I give. I think we could all improve a lot if comments on the track would be mandatory be it good or bad, it helps you evolve and see where you done a mistake.

[wagtunes]

I give 1 or 2 when that track doesn't "move me" and I don't talk here about dancing. And again it's totally subjective like the 4 or 5 I give. I think we could all improve a lot if comments on the track would be mandatory be it good or bad, it helps you evolve and see where you done a mistake.

I absolutely agree. Comments should be mandatory and a minimum of at least 2 or 3 sentences. Maybe create some kind of feedback form. But yeah, giving somebody a 1 with no explanation is useless and helps nobody improve or at least make them understand why they were scored as they were.

Total agreement here.

[EnGee]

I give 1 or 2 when that track doesn't "move me" and I don't talk here about dancing. And again it's totally subjective like the 4 or 5 I give. I think we could all improve a lot if comments on the track would be mandatory be it good or bad, it helps you evolve and see where you done a mistake.

I absolutely agree. Comments should be mandatory and a minimum of at least 2 or 3 sentences. Maybe create some kind of feedback form. But yeah, giving somebody a 1 with no explanation is useless and helps nobody improve or at least make them understand why they were scored as they were.

Total agreement here.

I absolutely disagree!
I made a comment when I feel a need to. No one stopped you of making any comments! Actually you are being the hypocrite here! Who stopped you from making any comment? It was your choice to give points in two days without commenting on others work!

I don't mind to reveal all the voting, which the organisers still know every details about it of course. They know which one is hypocrite and which one is honest. You are being disrespectful about acusing the participants with such bs!

Is it your strategy now to undermine others works just to feel better with yourself? Or is it that you felt disappointed because other works are much better than yours?

[sfiks]

I have zero problem analyzing every track in this contest right here in this forum.

Remember this, wagtunes?

I know an average track of music after 40 years of composition.

wagtunes, I would very much appreciate if you could give me some details of your point of view on my piece "after watching Amphibian Man", which by your definition is below average (2 points)
Thank you.

I honestly do not remember your track. The whole contest is a blur to me when you have to listen to over 60 songs. Sorry.

So, please show us your analytic skills on mine.

[wagtunes]

I give 1 or 2 when that track doesn't "move me" and I don't talk here about dancing. And again it's totally subjective like the 4 or 5 I give. I think we could all improve a lot if comments on the track would be mandatory be it good or bad, it helps you evolve and see where you done a mistake.

I absolutely agree. Comments should be mandatory and a minimum of at least 2 or 3 sentences. Maybe create some kind of feedback form. But yeah, giving somebody a 1 with no explanation is useless and helps nobody improve or at least make them understand why they were scored as they were.

Total agreement here.

I absolutely disagree!
I made a comment when I feel a need to. No one stopped you of making any comments! Actually you are being the hypocrite here! Who stopped you from making any comment? It was your choice to give points in two days without commenting on others work!

I don't mind to reveal all the voting, which the organisers still know every details about it of course. They know which one is hypocrite and which one is honest. You are being disrespectful about acusing the participants with such bs!

Is it your strategy now to undermine others works just to feel better with yourself? Or is it that you felt disappointed because other works are much better than yours?

First of all, why should I waste my time making comments when they're not required? When they're required, and I still think they should be, I'll make comments.

I'm the hypocrite? Ha, that's rich. You should see the comments on my Soundcloud tracks (all positive) but then when it comes time to vote, mostly 1s and 2s.

And if you look at my voting record for this contest, I am constantly above the curve rating the work of others higher than the rest of the community in general. So get your facts straight buddy before you start throwing accusations around.

All I said was that I was disappointed with the tracks this month. Something OTHERS have said as well. But since I'm the poster boy for "let's bust his chops just for the hell of it" around here, I'm the one who gets singled out.

Yeah, that's rich.

I stand by everything I've said here. At least I have the guts to say it.

[wagtunes]

I have zero problem analyzing every track in this contest right here in this forum.

Remember this, wagtunes?

I know an average track of music after 40 years of composition.

wagtunes, I would very much appreciate if you could give me some details of your point of view on my piece "after watching Amphibian Man", which by your definition is below average (2 points)
Thank you.

I honestly do not remember your track. The whole contest is a blur to me when you have to listen to over 60 songs. Sorry.

So, please show us your analytic skills on mine.

You want me to analyze your track from this month? I'm assuming that's what you're referring to.

Fine, no problem. Let me go find it and listen to it again.

[wagtunes]

Okay, here's the track.

https://soundcloud.com/slava-fiks/after ... hibian-man

This is why I gave it why I gave it. Again, this is all subjective.

Starts off with what sounds like sea and some bells. Around 45 seconds in switches to wind like instruments. Tempo throughout all this is very slow and wandering. About a minute in we switch to some other theme with different instrumentation. Sounds to me more like a movie kind of soundtrack piece. These have a slight disadvantage for me because for these type of pieces I need the visuals, which I am not getting. So for me, this is disjointed. I'm sure in the right context of a movie scene this could be excellent. But for the purpose of this contest and simply listening to music, it doesn't do anything for me.

That's why I gave it what I did. The piece is all over the place. I can't follow it as a conventional piece of "popular" or even electronic music. In short, I just find it boring.

Now, having said all that, I can tell you put a lot of work into it. Had it been just thrown together, I'd have given it a 1. The 2 was because of the work put in. But it was just too out there for my tastes.

This is in no way a reflection of whether or not your piece is "good" or "bad" music because there is no such thing as I keep on saying. This is all just subjective taste. And I explained why I personally didn't like it.

I'm curious. How did this track do overall for the contest?

[ontrackp]

I absolutely disagree!
I made a comment when I feel a need to. No one stopped you of making any comments! Actually you are being the hypocrite here! Who stopped you from making any comment? It was your choice to give points in two days without commenting on others work!

I don't mind to reveal all the voting, which the organisers still know every details about it of course. They know which one is hypocrite and which one is honest. You are being disrespectful about acusing the participants with such bs!

Is it your strategy now to undermine others works just to feel better with yourself? Or is it that you felt disappointed because other works are much better than yours?

I think that comments are very important -- especially for lower scores. If someone gives me a 2, and I know my song has a beginning and end, a decent melody, is harmonically interesting and is produced to what I consider a professional standard, I'm definitely interested in why it scored below the average, and comments will help with this. Most of the comments are positive, which could be people being "politically correct", or maybe just being nice as this is a friendly community.

[RuediRena]

BJ, have you noticed there are only 28 tracks uploaded to archive.org? Could you please upload the rest. I hope this wasn't stated in this thread before.

Greetings
Ruedi

[nickamandote]

BJ, have you noticed there are only 28 tracks uploaded to archive.org? Could you please upload the rest. I hope this wasn't stated in this thread before.

Greetings
Ruedi

+1

[sfiks]

Starts off with what sounds like sea and some bells. Around 45 seconds in switches to wind like instruments. Tempo throughout all this is very slow and wandering. About a minute in we switch to some other theme with different instrumentation.

If this is an analysis, I'd better get out of here.
And yes I voted and gave your entry 2 points.

[wagtunes]

Starts off with what sounds like sea and some bells. Around 45 seconds in switches to wind like instruments. Tempo throughout all this is very slow and wandering. About a minute in we switch to some other theme with different instrumentation.

If this is an analysis, I'd better get out of here.
And yes I voted and gave your entry 2 points.

I wasn't going to get stupidly in depth for a song from a past contest in what ultimately wasn't going to mean anything anyway. I've learned not to waste my time here because it wouldn't be appreciated anyway. Had I talked about motif's and time signatures and orchestration and all that crap, do I really believe I'd have gotten any better a response from you? No, so why bother?

You don't like my analysis? Ask me if I care.

You gave me a 2? Ask me if I care about that too.

In the grand scheme of things, this contest is so unimportant to me, you can't even imagine how far down the importance scale it falls.

[] Peter:H []

Popcorn time? Shall I grab me a some and watch ...
Seems the discussion is going a round personal taste, personal disappointment and that like...I think we cannot discuss taste here.
And if anybody has a feeling of disappointment then, yeah, why not...completely okay and everybody has the right to be disappointed.
I mean you all know Murphy - "what ever can happen will happen". Therefore the chance that there will be at least one All Synth Challenge where only disappointing entries are on display is close to one
But this disappointment thing is the analytical side of the game...there's also the constructive side of it. At this competition in time and space the creators/artists felt exactly the piece of music is her or his perfect entry! I think we should respect this, there went a lot of work into the tracks. And be it Jazz or be it the uttmost monotonic meditation music (just listen to some binaural beats stuff on youtube...I like that from time to time) it will find it's listeners. And finally in some cases both sides enjoy the outcome, but in some cases one side does not...
Some tracks, I'm honest are not my taste at all, that might have various reasons. Maybe it's just art...like the first time Kandinsky put one of his drawings into a gallery and people where shocked, because it was so unusual and they simply cannot get the point.
One other thing is that I try to remember the time when I've started with creating sounds. It was ... ehm ... absolutely crap. But my LOVE to music and the fascination of creating something has kept me going. But I'm still not a master. I'm an apprentice in that I try to mimic what certain masters do...anyway...where's my popcorn?

[wagtunes]

Popcorn time? Shall I grab me a some and watch ...
Seems the discussion is going a round personal taste, personal disappointment and that like...I think we cannot discuss taste here.
And if anybody has a feeling of disappointment then, yeah, why not...completely okay and everybody has the right to be disappointed.
I mean you all know Murphy - "what ever can happen will happen". Therefore the chance that there will be at least one All Synth Challenge where only disappointing entries are on display is close to one
But this disappointment thing is the analytical side of the game...there's also the constructive side of it. At this competition in time and space the creators/artists felt exactly the piece of music is her or his perfect entry! I think we should respect this, there went a lot of work into the tracks. And be it Jazz or be it the uttmost monotonic meditation music (just listen to some binaural beats stuff on youtube...I like that from time to time) it will find it's listeners. And finally in some cases both sides enjoy the outcome, but in some cases one side does not...
Some tracks, I'm honest are not my taste at all, that might have various reasons. Maybe it's just art...like the first time Kandinsky put one of his drawings into a gallery and people where shocked, because it was so unusual and they simply cannot get the point.
One other thing is that I try to remember the time when I've started with creating sounds. It was ... ehm ... absolutely crap. But my LOVE to music and the fascination of creating something has kept me going. But I'm still not a master. I'm an apprentice in that I try to mimic what certain masters do...anyway...where's my popcorn?

Sorry, we're out of popcorn. But I agree with the above statement.

[Frostline]

Now, having said all that, I can tell you put a lot of work into it. Had it been just thrown together, I'd have given it a 1. The 2 was because of the work put in. But it was just too out there for my tastes.

I find this interesting.
So you vote weighing >60% of the potential score based on composition alone? Not passing judgement on that, it is just very different from how I usually judge.

The title of the competition lends me to weigh more heavily on the quality of the sounds that one can get from the synth and how well those sounds are mixed/mastered together.
While composition is important and can carry a weakly mixed track I try to prevent it from overwhelming an otherwise well produced track if I find the composition not to my usual taste. To say simply I have given tracks a 4 or even 5 that I did not enjoy listening to and would not listen to again for pleasure. The skill creating the sounds was impressive enough on their own to merit a high score to me.
On the other hand there are tracks I listen to just for appreciation of a great melody or interesting compositional idea but the final mixing might have only merited a 3 or 4.

Interestingly enough the track in question here was one of two 5's I gave that month (they placed 4th and 14th). So I can't say that I am completely in tune with the majority in my voting, but in full disclosure I shuffled down several other 5s in the hopes that in the future I could hear more tracks like the two I left at 5's. I still find them both amazing tracks.

What I find most perplexing in this conversation is that someone can admittedly put forth an indifferent effort and yet find any of the other entries or the competition itself disappointing.
Perhaps they all were indifferent in their submissions as well?
Or is it all other must try, but I free myself from that burden? Strange mindset either way.

The feedback issue (especially on low scores) has got me musing on a potential solution though I have no idea of the technical feasibility.
Would it be possible for an addition to the voting page where participants could opt-in to have a small text box appear if their track is placed below a user selected score that would allow the voter to privately provide a reason why they are scoring a track a certain way?

I say opt-in because some participants are not interested in the "why" but some are. I have found there are some people who do not want to hear any negative feedback or suggestions for improvement.

This way say I for instance could opt-in. Then when a voter (who has also opted-in) tries to slide my track into a 2 slot a little box would pop up and the voter could quickly type in "Bit boring melody, some sounds were harsh, mix is muddy-recommend adding some EQ on your reverb buss".
A nice quick and convenient thing where real feedback could be given yet without the potential of public embarrassment to either party.
And with it being opt-in those who want real feedback are also required to give it. That is when someone else opt-ins and I want to score their track a 2 I am required to provide some feedback as to why (because I was also opted-in).
Those who don't want to bother with either getting or giving feedback (positive or negative) would be free to carry on with how things currently are and only be required to award a number value of 1-5.
Having an opt-in system would make it easier to keep track of which participants actually want real constructive(even if negative) feedback (like I do) and which participants only want a number.