I wanted to poll you all about what the theme for MBC 14 should be. I’ve got a few ideas and am open to other suggestions if you’ve got a good one. Take a minute and vote for your top 3
mutant cats love freedom - whatever the fuck you want, no constraints, vaguely cat themed
bespoke acousmatic - all sounds start their life as acoustic samples. real instruments, found sounds, hand-drawn waveforms count too
one sample challenge - all song elements come from one sample, not to exceed 2 seconds in length as starting material
minimal file size - how much can you do with very little? extra points for the smallest xrns
mutant collabs - every entry must have at least 2 contributors. Could be interesting!
??? - you tell me and I’ll add it in here
0voters
voting good through November, winning theme starts MBC thread in December
the last option (???) is now the ALL VST challenge - every sound comes from a VST, no samples (including percussion samples) allowed, resampling allowed to save cpu
If you want the above^^^ option, click on the ??? box - the forum doesn’t let me change a poll after the first 5 minutes
MBC seems to be a sample based competition, and it’s also advantageous when you’re a sound designer type of guy, that’s why I probably won’t participate. But if VSTs are allowed and the theme matches my interest, it could happen that I’m in next year, provided that I’ve got some time left. So I vote for mutant collabs and I tell you that I would change the one sample challenge a little bit, just like that:
The idea is to build a track in your own style and your own way of composing (samples, VSTs, Hardware, everything is allowed), you just have to use this one given sample. But it’s not about creating every single sound out of this sample like the “one sample challenge”.
Hmm, I had an idea the other day that might be worth sharing here:
What if we made a community sample pack that would be open for anyone from the forums to contribute to, and then use that as the (only allowed?) source material for the compo submissions? Everyone would get a free sample pack and the forums could really collaborate together to show case just how far you can push sound design in Renoise. And the
compo would also have sort of its own sound as all the submissions would have the same pool of source material. I think it’s a cool idea that would bring a fun collaborating aspect to the compo, what do you say?
The pack could have a theme, and that could also be a subject of voting, or it could be open for anything. Somebody/some group of people would obviously have to take a role of an “coordinator” and organise the pack (deadlines, file standards, putting the stuff into a single file for distributing, possibly filtering some samples, maybe normalising everything etc…). A separate thread for putting it all together would probably be the best way to go about it.
We could do it this year…or maybe we could build the most amazing ultimate Renoise based sound design collaboration pack during the next year …and use it in the MBC15 or some separate compo. Could be pretty cool to build a pack with separate themes for each month (as an example January could be for kicks and snares, February other percussion, March for databending/glitches, April and May for bass design, June for pads and atmos, July for impulse responses and convolution tricks etc - just an example), and we could vote about those too. This way we could maybe share our best sound design techniques and really push the envelope on what is possible in Renoise. Could spawn some great advanced tutorials too. The pack would also obviously contain our best XRNIs, FXchains, doofers, impulse responses, FXpresets etc.
Just brainstorming here, but what do you say? I think it’s a pretty darn cool idea. We could really push Renoise based sound design forward and make a fantastic unified resource for some more advanced stuff.
Maybe we could throw together a sample pack by the end of the year and start MBC 14 in the new year? I’m very open to the group will here…
Would you be up for organizing the sample pack contributions and hosting and such?
I think it could be really fun (for me at least) to do all the sound design with native tools and fx, but i think it would be great if ppl could contribute whatever they wanted to add. If it’s a curated/voted on collection and ends up being decent (I have faith it will), perhaps it can be added to the renoise backstage for DL for anyone with access there
I’m also good with that being for MBC 15 if ppl just want to roll ahead with one of the above themes, too
Good idea, especially for those who work that way. But it’s all about samples and sound design again, and that’s simply not the way I work, so I’m definitely out. Nevertheless I wish all participants a lot of fun, of course.
I definitely could help with organising my idea and try to put together a thread or two for making it happen, but I would really wish it to be a collaborative effort as much as possible, at least in terms of what would eventually end up in the sample pack. It would be pretty damn cool to have it ending up in the backstage downloads.
Regarding the hosting etc. I’ll have to put some thought into it (the amount of free time I have available can vary greatly). So I won’t promise to host or anything just yet, but I’m certainly not ruling it out either. Let’s just have this vote first and discuss any ideas for the MBC14.
If people want to put together a sample pack during December and have MBC14 in January, I’m totally down with that and can try to help with the organising. But if we will have the MBC14 without this kind of community pack, I can certainly try to organise this on some level during the next year. (I think it would turn out even more magnificent it it would be a group effort spread over a longer time interval, with people trying to push each other to make the coolest shit they can and sharing techniques etc.) And obviously there’s also the possibility of both: putting together a pack for MBC14, and putting something bigger together for 15 over a longer period.
I would have to agree with TNT.Most of us use samples and vsts and we are not all sound designer’s.I think MBC would become more popular if the limitation of vsts is not there.The idea of SimulatedXen for a community sample pack is great so +1 for that
I don’t get this VST problem. I always thought most compos on the forum were ruling them out of the submissions for the sake of easier file sharing. When your XRNS doesn’t rely on plugins, but only on native devices, it can be opened by anyone with Renoise and it will play like it was intended to play. The whole compo is way more convenient that way and there’s less fuzz when you can just open any XRNS and it just works, whether you have some plugin or not.
Just use VSTs to your heart’s content in any way you want, and when your done, just freeze the tracks by rendering them out and putting them on a separate track inside your XRNS. I really fail to see how that is any different to, for example recording a sound into your project and tweaking and processing it 'till you’re happy with it. And I doubt anyone would consider recording your own sounds from hardware synths or with an actual microphone “cheating”, at least in any really meaningful way. How is using a hardware compressor and printing that into your project file any different from using a plugin compressor and printing that to your project file? I don’t think it is in any way that really matters, and I don’t think we should consider either “cheating”. And honestly, it doesn’t really take more than couple of minutes of extra work at the end, certainly doesn’t double the workload. I really fail to see any real problem there.
I always use a couple of favourite plugins for my pianos, since the plugin grabber just doesn’t do them justice (round robins, hammer noises, pedal noises and velocity layers just don’t really translate IMHO). When I’m done and happy with what I’ve got, I just render what I’ve done to save some CPU cycles. In compos I leave my original midi in a separate muted “dummy” track, so anyone actually interested can still see what I’ve done to make the sounds, and just remove the VST. I don’t think I’m cheating any more than I would be if I recorded my acoustic piano and put that recording into my project. And how exactly would that be “cheating”? So if there’s no explicitly stated rules on sound sources in a given compo, what really is the problem here? I just don’t see it.
I voted for the “???” thread, because I would like something with lyrics. The lyrics could be only one word, or a complete text, accoustic, robotic, autotuned, vocoder, text-to-speech, sampled, spoken or sung or whispered or yelled, in the language you want, all musical styles, with or without VST. Remember that Daft Punk made a banger tune with only 3 words (“Around The World”).
I also voted for the cats because this old thread shows the potential of cats:
EDIT: ok, sorry, I didn’t read that the ??? was equal to ALL VST, sadly, so now, I defo want the cats
So everyone who doesn’t design his own sounds from scratch is kinda “cheating”?
There must be A LOT of “cheaters” out there, whether professional musicians or amateurs…
That’s absolutely ok and makes sense in a certain way. But at the same time this also excludes a ton of stuff. Rendering VSTs is definitely not the solution because the result would be way different. Rendering tracks is a lot better in this case, but also a lot of work, especially if there are a lot of tracks to render. If I would like to render all my tracks of every pattern using VSTs, I would have to render round about 200-350 tracks per song. There’s no way I will do this. This would not only double the effort, this would multiply the work. In the end the whole song would primarily consist of rendered tracks, no one could see how it’s done, unless you leave the original tracks untouched and muted.
Anyway, I see what you’re after and it’s completely understandable, but I guess this is not the right competition for me to participate. I prefer something like what’s shown in the video I posted above. Something without any limitations. I was limited for 20 years in terms of composing (limited CPU, limited RAM, limited DAW, limited number of tracks, limited number of samples, limited sample quality etc., limitations everywhere) and I worked with samples only. The reason why I switched to Renoise is the possibility of using VSTs, too. That’s what I’m doing for 11 years now, and I surely won’t take a step back. Why should I work with recorded instruments and all its limitations if I could work directly with the instruments? That’s how I see it. But of course it’s great if the MBC competition is about to show other users how to do native sound design, how to use crazy pattern effect commands, how to manipulate samples and so on. Perhaps those who work differently “need” another competition.
Yep, there are, some folks just have a look and a label does it all; but that’s not important really.
I’m not saying it IS cheating but just like I said above, but perhaps more clearly stated, “I would feel
like im cheating myself for using other peoples loops or vst presets in a Tracker Compo”. = )
I don’t think it’s cheating, I just know for myself, it would feel like cheating… Or at least it would feel inauthentic to my process. But everyone has their limits with this. I use samples that other people have recorded sometimes and don’t think twice about it. I look at it this way. We’re all painters. Some people buy hundreds of different colors of paint. Some people mix just a few basic colors to create any shade they want. Some people dig their pigments out of the ground themselves, grind them into powder, and make their own paints. This all impacts the final image deeply, but says nothing of the beauty inherent in the work. To each their own everyone should work the way that helps them make their best music, however that’s to be judged.
200-350 tracks is a lot. But if that’s the reality in your case, you could just bus your tracks together in some meaningful way and print a single file for multiple tracks. You don’t have to render every single track just because you used multiple tracks. What matters in the end is only what comes out of the speakers, not how specifically it was made.
I’m definitely a wanker for sound design and synthesis stuff and I totally get the obsession of some people over “how” a sound/track is made. I’ve spend way way way too much time doing such weird niche processors in e.g. Reaktor, that I’ve never even heard anyone talk about anything similar, and I honestly think some of that stuff supercool and just endlessly fascinating. But even then, the only thing that really matters is what comes out of the speakers, how the music sounds. If the “infinetely linearly oversampled” multiband serial wavefolder saturation with ringmodded feedback path sounds worse than the first preset I get when opening Renoise’s basic compressor, then the latter is the only right choice, no matter how “cool” the process for getting the former was. The same thing applies to this obsession over here on the forums on using only native stuff for making the tracks. If a plugin sounds better, it is (I would even say objectively) the right choice there. And vice versa obviously. Otherwise you are confusing the fascination of the sound making process with the goal of that process. Only the destination matters here.
If you have 350 tracks that use plugins, send them to a single bus and render that and put it in your XRNS and name it “all the stuff I made with plugins”. I don’t see anything wrong with that, and it can’t be that much extra work. Or just leave your plugins on the XRNS and send it like it is. Ain’t nothing wrong with that either. The only thing that matters in the end is the music itself. Just because you’re not getting some extra points doesn’t mean you shouldn’t participate. In the last compo there was a competitor who didn’t even send their XRNS and was still very much fighting for the top places. The track was just so good. But this is the Renoise forums, so I think it’s rather reasonable to grant some extra points for competitors who specifically push Renoise to it’s limits and stand out as exemplaries of how to do extraordinarily cool stuff with Renoise. If it was, say Native Instruments Reaktor oriented forums, you should probably get extra points for exemplary/exclusive Reaktor usage and so on…
I don’t know, maybe it is too much work to render the tracks, even if you could bus, say 100 of them at a time to a single file. Only you would know if it is, since only you know your specific workflow. But I still have a hunch that you’re making this into more of a problem than it actually is. But maybe it really is such a huge work, I wouldn’t really know.
everyone should work the way that helps them make their best music, however that’s to be judged.