One Synth Challenge #164: Ghost (beta) by exacoustics (ChristopherWD Wins!)

[ELEX]

in the voting data what are the last 2 columns? I think Gen is the total scores you gave but not sure what the percentage in the last column is.

Deviation from average aggregate scores, I think. Quick indicator of grumpy voters.

[Frank Geppert]

Congrats! A lot of songs went into my playlist this round.

PS: I met exactly the 114 fairness score
But my judging is very easy: I give a 5, when I like a song that much, that I give it a "like". Thus it automatically joins my personal playlist. Songs that made it almost into my list get a 4 and good songs a 3. The 1 is reserved for really annoying songs and a 2 is somewhat bad. This round I gave not a single 2 and only one 1 for my own song

[J.Ruegg]

Thank you so much for putting me in this place.

Congratulations ChristopherWD, DoubleTap, Solidtrax & Jasinski
I'm a bit sad about ToggleAudio, it was my favorite.

As for the prize, I would like 2 soundsets from TheUnfinished :

- Serum Alpha
- The Snarling

Looking forward to how Ghost evolves, was a good synth

[toggleaudio]

Congrats to all winners - this was my bad, somehow I forgot voting's to be done until the 15th.

[toggleaudio]

As a bonus, here's the song cut together to what I had in mind when making it (the long-awaited SLS launch):

[solidtrax]

Fellow KVRians, what a nice surprise of the top 5! Thank you so much! Would love to pick the AudioThing plugin if possible.

[silverpants]

Congratulations to the winners.

With me however I am even more confused as to what I need to improve on as I thought I had a good chance of at least top 10. Based on the scores the overwhelming majority liked my track as all but 3 gave it a 3+ but only 3 5's. This actually still put me in the bottom half 35 points off the leader. I received lots of nice comments on SoundCloud too with few issues mentioned.

So I hope this doesn't sound like sour grapes I genuinely wish to know where I missed out on ~35 point's. I do hope it was just that you didn't like the genre.

I've looked at the stats of this round, and to get in the top 5, the average of your scores need to be above 4. So to get a podium place, anyone giving you a 4 is actually detracting you from that goal. So it's all about getting as many 5's as possible. Any other score is bad (if you're worried about winning).

As you say - plenty of people "liked" your song. But you need to give people a reason to bump you up from a "good" (4 )to a "great!" (5).

One way to do that is to take a difficult genre like metal and nail it - like Dorgan. Or you can capture people's imaginations with a story or vivid imagery, like Cape Canaveral, Machine In The Ghost or Arcade Blaze. From what I've seen - variation helps get higher scores. If you can skip through the song and it doesn't change much - then that could knock a point off. Just a guess.

The other thing I'd say is EDM is a really competitive genre. To get high scores your production has to be flawless and pro sounding like Ruegg, Solidtrax or Jasinsky. A quick scan of the comments shows that they didn't have a single negative comment on their production skills. Whereas you did have some criticisms and ideas for improvements - which could have kept you at 4 rather than a 5 - even if they enjoyed the song. I think the quality bar for EDM is pretty unforgiving.

Of course this is all my guesswork. I don't actually know how people do their scoring. But I'm spotting patterns as time goes on.

[emikaela]

Congratulations to the winners.

With me however I am even more confused as to what I need to improve on as I thought I had a good chance of at least top 10. Based on the scores the overwhelming majority liked my track as all but 3 gave it a 3+ but only 3 5's. This actually still put me in the bottom half 35 points off the leader. I received lots of nice comments on SoundCloud too with few issues mentioned.

So I hope this doesn't sound like sour grapes I genuinely wish to know where I missed out on ~35 point's. I do hope it was just that you didn't like the genre.

I've looked at the stats of this round, and to get in the top 5, the average of your scores need to be above 4. So to get a podium place, anyone giving you a 4 is actually detracting you from that goal. So it's all about getting as many 5's as possible. Any other score is bad (if you're worried about winning).

As you say - plenty of people "liked" your song. But you need to give people a reason to bump you up from a "good" (4 )to a "great!" (5).

One way to do that is to take a difficult genre like metal and nail it - like Dorgan. Or you can capture people's imaginations with a story or vivid imagery, like Cape Canaveral, Machine In The Ghost or Arcade Blaze. From what I've seen - variation helps get higher scores. If you can skip through the song and it doesn't change much - then that could knock a point off. Just a guess.

The other thing I'd say is EDM is a really competitive genre. To get high scores your production has to be flawless and pro sounding like Ruegg, Solidtrax or Jasinsky. A quick scan of the comments shows that they didn't have a single negative comment on their production skills. Whereas you did have some criticisms and ideas for improvements - which could have kept you at 4 rather than a 5 - even if they enjoyed the song. I think the quality bar for EDM is pretty unforgiving.

Of course this is all my guesswork. I don't actually know how people do their scoring. But I'm spotting patterns as time goes on.

solid analysis i think.

it's not enough to be flawless, you need to find a way to make people go "wow, this is really good!". this is something entirely different than the absence of easily identifiable mistakes, even if that's somewhat important too. the "where are the points i missed out on" mindset doesn't reflect how most people seem to vote and carries a risk of focusing on the wrong things.

[] Peter:H []

Congratulations to the winners.

With me however I am even more confused as to what I need to improve on as I thought I had a good chance of at least top 10. Based on the scores the overwhelming majority liked my track as all but 3 gave it a 3+ but only 3 5's. This actually still put me in the bottom half 35 points off the leader. I received lots of nice comments on SoundCloud too with few issues mentioned.

So I hope this doesn't sound like sour grapes I genuinely wish to know where I missed out on ~35 point's. I do hope it was just that you didn't like the genre.

Cute ... you believe that the "awesome" comments somehow "must" reflect in points. No, you can't expect that happen 100%. It's you have to learn that this is a community of people and in such a community there's always kind of "politics" as well... sometimes it's just that these comments are about to encourage people to go one making music even if the track does obviously not meet the standards of one giving the comment ... or there might even other reasons. I do not mean to say that this is true for all comments ...
And as sbdy said above - If your gooal is to end top, the you shall strive to perfectly reproduce what people expect to listen too today, e.g. skrillex like neurobass stuff - you can make it. Generative Experiments like we've had a few in the past rounds - not that good. If you'd be like skrillex then, then grab your self a bunch of youtube tutorials and do what they show you ... then add a bunch of mixing tutorials and ... yt is your friend.

[Frank Geppert]

@BrainBeatMusic: The playground of the OSC is actually an experimental place, where I can try some technologies and some music theory applied to the "new" technology. Therefore I personally do not aim for a good place here. I want to learn and to get some constructive critics from you all.
When I play my music at home and ask my own family for some comments, they are not really helpful. They tell me, that it sounds professional or that it is not their genre. But you guys and girls can give me some more helpful insides. I am hungry for more, but that is the best I can get

Thanks for all this and best regards!

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

Congrats everybody!

Since we all really loved the number one you should all check out this OST:




Personally I would have wanted to see @H-man at the top 5.
Both @liqih and @purchasingly made beautiful, more on the emotional side, raw pieces. Had some other favorites too like @bh9090!

My number 1 favorite this month was actually @doctorbob, light jovial fun.
If I ever bought a flying drone with speakers and wanted to harass the people who lives in the neighbourhoods that support the current government, with music 24/7, I'd go for that type of fun music like Hot Ghosts, since I really have no aggression towards these idiots… (would just be fun to irritate them a little)

This one below would be PERFECT for this flying drone with speakers experiment:
(Imagine sympathizing with nazis and being forced to listen to this on repeat in the middle of the night)

[silverpants]

@BrainBeatMusic - if you really want to know why you are not getting top scores, you could put at the top of your description

IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME A 5, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY. BE BRUTAL. I WANT TO LEARN.

See what happens?

[ELEX]

Treeheated more or less does that. Not much happens.

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

@BrainBeatMusic - if you really want to know why you are not getting top scores, you could put at the top of your description

IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME A 5, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY. BE BRUTAL. I WANT TO LEARN.

See what happens?

I don't think I could ever give advice to anyone on how to ”improve”, just let everyone do their thing and be happy! Whose standards in creativity does anyone have to live up to really? Since most of the voting at the same time seems also to be very very subjective(!) Therefore I'm not even the slightest offended by getting 1s,

This probably has to do with the fact that while living in Cambodia a deranged psychopath Khmer Rouge asshole held a loaded gun to my head….to my suprise I wasn't even scared at all but the f**ked up experience has put other trivial bullshit like votes etc. in some context But that is probably just me!

[doctorbob]

Many thanks @YADRICHIK_CHAYA ... glad I was able to give you some crazy music

My aim is to make music, surprise sometimes, but in the end have fun. Anything over halfway placing is a bonus to me. That means half of you "liked" it

dB

PS Battling with COVID at the moment, so hoping to get something done for next round. I might string my rough ideas together as a set of "movements" ... to at least get something in.