One Synth Challenge #172: Lith by Soda Devices (ZioMau Wins!)

[phankiejankie303]

Also I apologize for my own track which, although I loved it, the reception suggests I might get last place. Sorry!

Man I guess most of the people participating in OSC do it for fun. We are hobbyists, we don't make a living out of music production so we primarily do it for ourselves. To please ourselves. We are our own crowd, our own fans so to speak.

So if you love your track... that is what matters. There is absolutely no need to apologize. It means you had fun doing it and you are proud of it so it didn’t gel well with some people… It happens and it doesn’t matter. Focus on the big picture. Having fun doing something you like, which is our case is making music.

I’ve been participating in OSC for some time now and tbh every time I finish a track there are certain moments in it that I am like “hell yeah at least there for 2 secs I nailed it!”… Well “my moments” never align with the other fellow OSCers, it seems like parts I love go totally unnoticed and parts I am like “meh…” or I don’t think are anything special get commented pretty often.

Individuals perceive music in their own very special way and I guess that is the magic of art in general once it’s out it’s every man for himself. You could write a poem about cucumbers where you are being pretty literal about cucumbers and a random Joe or Jane could see an analogy or allegory in it about their other half, the end of days, their (broken) childhood or whatever.

[zipidowski]

Voted

[Frank Geppert]

I understand this discussion about scoring, but I am still not convinced to change my rating. I always left place for really bad songs with bad mixing, bad composition and bad sound design. This would be a 1 or a 2 but these songs are very rare. So it is perfectly fine for me to give mostly 3 to 5 points.
And a 5 is for me, when I like it that much, that I add it to my personal playlist. So it is not a perfect decision. It depends on my personal taste, but I did not study music arts, I am just a hobby musician. So I can only trust my own preference.
Regards.

[doctorbob]

Yes, @FG, you do right voting your own way. This is exactly what we all should do. In the end the variation in voting practices allows the "best" tracks to float to the top. You are also correct in stating that there are/have been very few submissions (if any lately) which command a 1 or 2!

So, my "idea" to let our own track have a big fat ZERO is surely a good one, given that it matters not whether your own tracks all get 1's or 5's! Make no difference the the rankings of all the other tracks. BUT, it does make way then for people to use the 1-5 scale, either pushing poor tracks down to 1, or, adjusting your own votes to spread across the 5 categories using your own voting/evaluation schemes.

Brian/Richard? Any views on this? Just removing the "stigma" of upsetting people by giving a 1 or 2 hopefully can be resolved this way to some extent?

Just my view, what do I know? (Well, having spent most of my professional life using or assisting others in psychometric testing with various scoring techniques ... )

dB

[liqih]

Just my view, what do I know? (Well, having spent most of my professional life using or assisting others in psychometric testing with various scoring techniques ... )

dB

Yes, I agree that having to give 1 to our own track limits (hampers?) the scoring system, on the other hand I understand that bj and Richard already did and are doing a lot work to keep the OSC going.

BTW @doctorbob, from a psychometric point of view what would change having a a score with no numbers, like A, B, C, D? I was just wondering.

[doctorbob]

BTW @doctorbob, from a psychometric point of view what would change having a a score with no numbers, like A, B, C, D? I was just wondering.

In the main, people are better with numbers when giving scores with the lowest number in the series being at the bottom of the scale, whether you use 1-5 or 10-20 whatever. But, when you use letters, most people probably these days think of school and exam reports! So, "A" is deemed to be better than "E"! So in a sense, the opposite of the numerical approach, given that both are progressions of a sort. People though, are happier when given a set of questions labelled A,B,C etc, and then make a choice, but, it's really a choice, not a ranking.

Many people are happier with a sliding scale, e.g. a thermometer type of display, with the low end (or even blue!) being lower than the high end (maybe red!!)., so placing a mark somewhere on the picture is quite natural, and does not really imply directly (in their minds) an absolute score, but more like "in the region of" ...

I think here we are more like putting tracks into "bins", and effectively collecting tracks we find "similar" to each other in some way, and at the same time ranking the bins, not necessarily the tracks!). If you see what I mean.

As clear as mud I expect.


dB

[hennessey]

Voted!

[empphryio]

I appreciate the response and understand. Just thought my track this month could be especially annoying, though I liked it a lot. Safe to say it resonated with very few. 1 single like. Meanwhile 8 likes for a 173 legal track I made that I'm not even entering and which I think far less of. As you say that's how it goes.

[MalToné]

Voted!

[phankiejankie303]

I appreciate the response and understand. Just thought my track this month could be especially annoying, though I liked it a lot. Safe to say it resonated with very few. 1 single like. Meanwhile 8 likes for a 173 legal track I made that I'm not even entering and which I think far less of. As you say that's how it goes.

Don't fall into the "like/fav" trap on SC or everywhere else. The whole like, +1, fav thing is made to make you feel exactly like that in order to maximize engagement from the users due to dopamine addiction.

I know it's hard to resist too, pull up your defenses and distance yourself from this but think of it this way, the majority is not always right. Many artists we've grown to love and respect probably would be totally unknown today if in their era success was dictated by "likes" as is now because their sound was too weird or ahead of it's time.

I know in our age it's all about having access to everything but that also means that noise has grown significantly and you have to search through a huge amount of noise in order to find what you like or what is really good.

Back in the day when labels had A&R imho things where much better than now. Today's music scene seems more "democratic" but is it really? It's dictated by YouTube success. Make a tune and some how get 1 million views and there is your contract right there. Doesn't matter if it is a good tune or not. If it is a success on social media it will be picked up.

I was a bit devastated hearing the boss of Mute Records which is a label I have uber respect for managing to balance quality and commercial success saying that we don't listen to the music any more, we only checking the tune's buzz on social media platforms...

[silverpants]

Voted. Really enjoyed listening to the playlist many times - as always. I barely use Spotify these days!

As a reminder - I have downgraded all scores by 1 point to give myself headroom for my very fav tunes (Zio, Jas, VCA & Violator). 3 is still a "good" song in my new system.

[Eauson]

Voted

[Yadrichik_Chaya]

I appreciate the response and understand. Just thought my track this month could be especially annoying, though I liked it a lot. Safe to say it resonated with very few. 1 single like. Meanwhile 8 likes for a 173 legal track I made that I'm not even entering and which I think far less of. As you say that's how it goes.

Don't fall into the "like/fav" trap on SC or everywhere else. The whole like, +1, fav thing is made to make you feel exactly like that in order to maximize engagement from the users due to dopamine addiction.

I know it's hard to resist too, pull up your defenses and distance yourself from this but think of it this way, the majority is not always right. Many artists we've grown to love and respect probably would be totally unknown today if in their era success was dictated by "likes" as is now because their sound was too weird or ahead of it's time.

I know in our age it's all about having access to everything but that also means that noise has grown significantly and you have to search through a huge amount of noise in order to find what you like or what is really good.

Back in the day when labels had A&R imho things where much better than now. Today's music scene seems more "democratic" but is it really? It's dictated by YouTube success. Make a tune and some how get 1 million views and there is your contract right there. Doesn't matter if it is a good tune or not. If it is a success on social media it will be picked up.

I was a bit devastated hearing the boss of Mute Records which is a label I have uber respect for managing to balance quality and commercial success saying that we don't listen to the music any more, we only checking the tune's buzz on social media platforms...

I do agree about disliking/liking being very unhealthy = The root causes for all desires. So just before entering OSC my very first time I questioned myself if this was actually a good thing to do at all? As in being forced to both listen to many entries and forced to vote (like/dislike) since I'm also not a competitive person at all! After getting like place 42 out of 44 I realised I never have to worry and can just do OSC for pure fun!

This month I was actually a little inspired by how some now have changed the way they vote and I pretty much adapted a new way of voting where I only had some few favorites at the top 5 - But then I realised I prefer my usual way of voting: as if this is not a competition at all but just cool people all over the world experimenting with a free synth and I get to give points.
Voting is not based on comparing the tracks at all but just each track on its own merits: This also enables me to give the highest score to a genre I might not listen to myself.

As far as the music industry/record labels/A&R goes I totally disagree.
This is the best time to discover bands/artists not in it for fame, power, wealth but with just true love for creating music, be it whatever it might be.

An ambient guitar track playing for 47 minutes? No problem, the creator can just upload it instead of going to a greedy record label hoping it might be released. Releasing comedic parody tracks/remixes is also way easier, experimental stuff is everywhere, chip tunes, world music etc.

As far as Youtube goes it already has its rules/guidelines for success which is homogeneity/sameness. You've made a deep house DJ set and you want millions of views? Just upload a picture of some women in bikins on the beach.

Or react with a strange facial feature to something either being happy, angry, surprised, in awe etc.

The record labels and film/tv industry have also used sameness for decades.
Those american ”tv reality shows” where something awkward happens or someone suddenly says something inappropriate: This can only mean the viewer has to listen to a f**king pizzicato sound in the background music!

There are certain formulas that has been used over and over, and are still being used.

[empphryio]

I do care about the reception. If I didn't I wouldn't bother posting it. Trick is to suddenly not care when the reception is bad. Predicting it ahead of time makes this easier but I doubt there's any way to consistently do this. Convincing yourself you don't care can be dangerous as it might mean losing touch with your actual feelings. Then you're suddenly overreacting to something else.

[liqih]

I do care about the reception. If I didn't I wouldn't bother posting it. Trick is to suddenly not care when the reception is bad. Predicting it ahead of time makes this easier but I doubt there's any way to consistently do this. Convincing yourself you don't care can be dangerous as it might mean losing touch with your actual feelings. Then you're suddenly overreacting to something else.

Yes. And about me, I did write on Discord that "I don't care about who win or not", but I still care about voting and to look at the results later. But that's to see how the trend goes, obviously compared to what I preferred/favourited.