Brainstorming about Renoise contests

No VSTs or any other extra plugins.

Or only a very very small set of VSTs allowed - ones that are multi platform and free - and they do something essential that Renoise can’t. Like Surge XT FM synth.

I agree that it’s better to have 2 contests with 30 contribs than 4 contests with 5 contribs.
So I hope we will keep the yearly MBC + the yearly MBCR.
Composing and remixing are 2 musical completly different approaches and I like both.

Yes, this too.
Feedbacks are also parts of why we make music.

It was clear from the very beginning that MBC stands for “Mutant Breaks Compo” without being a competition and it’s about Breakbeats (unfortunately primarily Breakcore, what I really don’t like) and loops, that’s why I never participated except MBC14, which had a good theme for the very first time. All right, who else is interested in another competition? We can make it happen, no problem at all. I’m willing to help, but I’m not willing to be the only one organizing everything and pay for everything like all the prizes on my own. This should be a task for everyone who’s interested. But who is interested? We have to find out first. If there are not enough prospects it’s not worth the time to deal with it.

The name is ERA. Why ERA? Because having this competition is the beginning of a new era of electronic masterpieces ( :wink:). ERA stands for Electronic Renoise Audio. You can prove your composing skills by composing without (!) loops (!) but of course you can use any VST you can imagine. So what do you think?

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yeah man, start it up :+1:
I’m always down to clown, and a real competition could be fun. If it’s a competition, I think voting should definitely be open to all, contributors and everyone else on the forum, but contributor voting should be mandatory. Maybe all entrants can throw in $5+/euro as an entrance fee that goes towards the prize pot?

A long time ago I did a small project where I had to write a composition from a single sound fragment. 808 kick.

The project turned out to be very interesting from the point of view of creativity. and after 13 years I would like to repeat it.

but just repeating the walk is not so interesting and I found an ideal candidate

how about writing a track using a plug-in called Sonic-Charge Microtonic for synthesis without resampling.
at the end, I want to take all the tracks and make a mixtape out of it all.
If you are interested in this challenge let me know.
The term is limited by the demo period of the plugin.

have a fun!

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I’d be down. You should start a new thread for it, so it’s all in one place. Maybe link to the microtonic demo download there, too

any other rules besides no resampling? external processing or only microtonic? can we sequence in renoise just using microtonic as a tone generator?

@TNT I can contribute with making virtual trophies/medals and manage a web presence for ERA compos. Always only hold compos over holiday periods so we have time.

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I’m afraid that will cut participation in half though.

Why not join a compo with proper rules like this one:

All right, that’s a good approach. And yes, I would suggest April/May and/or September/October for competitions. Let’s see who else is willing to contribute something. We need to collect everything right here.

Ok, I’m up for that. But if voting would be open to everybody on the forum, votes by participants should count more. I think that would be fair. Maybe keep my suggestion from above in terms of voting of participants (1st place 5 points, 2nd place 3 points, 3rd place 1 point) and every vote by anyone else counts 1 point, regardless of who’s first, second and third. Personally I’m also cool with an entrance fee of 5€. The question is what kind of competition is desired? A competition with prizes as an incentive to participate (and more fun if you ask me), or a competition without prizes but “glory and honor”? Should this become a more serious competition without losing its fun or another random, funny pastime? If a more serious competition is preferred there’s no question about an entrance fee as long as nobody sponsors everything. Let’s collect some more opinions here.

Personally I don’t like contests promoting a specific thing like a specific VST or contests having (too many) restrictions at all. In fact MBC14 was the first music contest ever I participated. And the only reason I participated was because I liked the theme and VSTs were allowed. I’m not interested in showing my skills regarding restrictions just like “create a tune by only using VST X”, “only 4 tracks are allowed”, “file size max 100 KB” or whatever. Instead I’m interested in creating MUSIC. Of course without limitations. It’s about the music and not about playing around with technical limitations. Back in the 80s and 90s it was cool to push the boundaries and to get the best out of technically limited possibilities, but not today. There are no more technical limitations, so there’s no more need to fuck around with that.

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I am down to give some money but not for the competition as a prize, instead I feel those who will take the time to organise the competition should be paid.I don’t care about winning prizes and no I am not a rich guy I barely make my monthly payments .Making some good music is enough for me and I stand on what I said on an earlier post that there should be an official contest from the developer of Renoise giving away a licence either Renoise or Redux .

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I don’t care about winning prizes or money. I also don’t care about restrictive rules. I like Mutant Breaks because it’s the real fun. But it’s only once per year. That’s why I would like at least another cool contest. And to me, MBCR is already that other cool contest. In both cases, those who want to make something all native can do it, and perhaps they deserve points for that. IMHO, voting should be mandatory, and it must give some extra points. Mini-reviews should give extra points too. It’s a bit weird to have more contribs than votes. Making noise about Renoise outside of this forum is to condider, since some users moved to Facebook groups or Discord channels.

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All right, so why are we talking here? It seems you already got what you desire…

Why do you think it’s necessary to make noise outside of this forum if this ends up to be a contest within this forum without any goals and prizes? I also don’t care about winning prizes or money. I even don’t care if there’s a contest or not! And I don’t think those who organize a contest needs to get paid. It’s not much work to organize a contest and those who are willing to do it are doing it because they like to.

Ok now, as I said, if there aren’t enough prospects it’s not worth the time dealing with it. So I’m out unless there are at least 10 more opinions who like to have another contest next to MBC and MBCR. In case there aren’t 10 more prospects, those who want another competition can do it anytime on their own. Just open a thread, name the theme and your rules and there you go. Have fun. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Well, I like to win synths or plugins, because this is fun and feels good. It’s then a perpetuum mobile system. Also well chosen restrictions highly improve the fun factor. If everything is possible, I can simply take any song. This is not my personal opinion, but also proven that restrictions can increase quality and productivity. Renoise only restriction IMHO is annoying, because Renoise lacks on the generation side, it is a good sampler, but not at all a synth, if you compare it to a real one. In a good synth, you can also learn a lot about audio, sound sculping, emulating the reality, coloration, and doing so with very basic tricks. Simplicity is the key. For example, try to emulate a proper lead guitar only using a synth and distortion fx.

A proper synth should provide at least the usual stuff like: PWM, the base waveforms, sync, ringmod, one or better two filters, mod matrix and ultimately waveshaping. Most of these base technics are not available in Renoise plain, or only via lot of workarounds and coming with a lot of limitations. I personally don’t like it to waste my time with technical aspects or reinventing the wheel. But I see that I seem to be quite alone here with this opinion. But I wonder why. Habits?

at this time, nothing tells MBCR 14.1 will happen
but after that, I’m ok for something different too, yes, why not

just to make coming back the old people that moved from here to elsewhere
and in some cases, we know where is elsewhere

@sokoban
There’s surely a reason why people left this forum and moved elsewhere. Never hold up travellers!
And there is absolutely no guarantee that there will ever be a competition again, whether it’s called MBC, MBCR, ERA or whatever. It all depends on the willingness of the persons present. It’s about a fundamental decision, not about “maybe after that”. It’s about looking forward, not about looking back. There’s only one thing guaranteed in this world, and that’s death. Anyway, I’m out. Maybe I’ll get back to this topic IF there are enough prospects.

@ffx
What you describe is primarily a contest about sound design, but not about composing.

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Does anyone have any ideas for like a super minimalist competition, something that would center old school tracking / composition techniques?

I was almost thinking hosting something like a single instrument, “one phrase only” deal, such that you’d kind of have to make a concise but interesting composition that either loops mod/etc files.

Any other ideas? I was mostly posting this to see if there was any latent interest in this sort of thing.

I guess we could just have a 4 tracks, limited samples type of thing but that feels too artificial.

Hope everyone’s having a good day :slight_smile:

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I’m always down for a one (or more) sample challenge. Everyone uses the same sample(s) and everything in the song has to come from that sample(s). Resampling allowed or not allowed making for different challenges.

Would be fun hearing the different spins people put on it

Honestly, I think the thing with challenges/competitions/contests is just to issue them. People that want to participate will, and not everyone will ever be on board with one idea. Even if only a few people participate, it’s still fun for those that do :slight_smile:

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