Next to come: BEATBATTLE v2

General Discussion
21

Well… The problem is really that the most interesting tunes often gets some very good reviews, and some very bad. The average will then be just… average…

With open style, then the most popular style will most often win. Too many people give low reviews on styles they usually dont listen to. I dont know if its like that with people hanging around in the renoise-forums, but its very often like that elsewhere. I’ve read lots of reviews like “I can’t find anything wrong in this song, therefore I give it 10/10!”, even if the melodies is something you’ve heard 1.000.000 times before.

But anyway… I’m never in a compo to try to win… If I should try to win, then I would try making something I really didnt like too much myself. I’ll always stick to what I believe in myself. :)

I guess I will join the compo no matter what you decide. Theme compo is ok, style compo is ok, picture theme compo, whatever. It’s just for fun anway, but I want it to be a challenge.

22

music for spare rooms

and we could capitalise on it afterward by releasing a ‘the only spare room album you’ll ever need, volume one’ cd

i really like the picture idea. it could work nicely. though if people start deducting points because they don’t think a song fits the pic- actually never mind; there’s no way or need to moderate people’s opinions anyway. it’s a good idea.

CONSIDER

23

Ok, before we go on and on about discussing what kind of competition we should have, lets agree on one single basic thing -> why do a music competition at all?

Competing in music is really impossible, coz it’s not the shortest or longest tune that wins, its the “best”. Furthermore, 10 people can have 10 different favorites, so everything is a matter of taste. Therefore we do a competition for these simple reasons:

  • Its fun!
  • Its a challenge.
  • Its a learning experience.

Keeping this in mind, I suggest the following “rules”:

  1. Theme based compo, choose your own style / approach to express yourself.

Reason: Lets say theme is “Summer”. I really dont want to listen to 20 hip-hop songs about summer. 1-2 would be interesting, perhaps hip-hop is the way to go. I can picture a few gangsters in a red cabriolet listening to hip-hop while eating ice-cream on a hot summer day :)

  1. Sample-pack, nothing can be added.

Reason: A music competition does not only come down to taste. It’s also about skill. With everyone having the same samples to work with, skill will very much come into play. You need to showcase your sample editing, instrument enveloping and tracking skills - all within Renoise. This way, we can learn from each others techniques and methods.

  1. Anonymous entries.

Reason: Should be pretty obvious. The listener can focus entirely on the music instead of being pre-biased through knowing the author.

Any viewpoints?

Klaus

24

  1. Theme based is ok, even if “summer” is a bit “make-whatever-you-want” theme. Consider my picture-theme idea. :)

  2. Agree. And we need some weird samples in there. Not just plain drums, bass, lead, samples.

  3. I agree.

25

well, i completely agree with everything you said. :]

26

toa,

samplepack should be varied and nice. regardless though, i promise you that if those who loves trance are happy with the pack, most other people will hate it!

its a skill contest, use the samples to your best of ability. suprise us, catch us off guard. thats the beauty of competing with trackers as an instrument :)

cheers m8!

klaus

27

Ok Renoise People!
Since we’re heading to the beginning of BeatBattle 2 here are some point I noticed and would like to remark before we start…

Afraid?
I was surprised at the way some of you FEAR the themed compo.
It’s just like saying: “I have PLENTY of mind obstacles keeping me from composing in a different way”… or worst… “My creative spirit sucks but I don’t really want to realize this because I like to think that I rule… so, as far as we stay in a “my musical World” where I can say that I’m a good composer (and nobody can interfere with this… since is a matter of personal taste) it’s ok… but as far as we are put in a real confrontation and it might be shown clearly to everyone that I suck… I will not partecipate”

:rolleyes: Hmmm! …the adult choice! :)

Samplepack??
Samplepack alone it’s not much of a challenge today as the first beatbattle should have shown more than clearly… I just heard one competitor complaining because being still new to all this he didn’t knew how to work samples and so… the others?.. well… they cutted, filtered, re-Equalized, distorted, inverted, compressed, looped… untill obtaining what they were intended to find… (Yes Celsius, including pads and strings ) :lol:

So, samplepack it’s not much of a challenge… let’s remove the theme thing as well… and what’s left? Nothing. A “Gallery” of tunes… each with equal dignity because each tune is faithfull to the idea of the composer… making it impossible for anyone to have a judging criteria… or at least… compelling everyone to judge by “own taste”… that allow for the previously illustrated shortcut “Ah… it’s not that I suck… it’s that I was intended to make it sound EXACTLY like this… can’t I?”

Fun and learning
This “Game” we do, like any other game in mankind’s history, it’s some sort of simulation. What’s this simulation about? I suppose that in the best anthropological tradition, this game is the playfull version of “tomorrow I work into music” pretty much like a cat that’s playing with a ball is playing the “Tomorrow I will go hunting for rats”.
Like any other game, a compo is mostly intended to give fun while training people to seriously deal with music… whether they realize this or not.
This should explain to you WHY most of the compos are themed.

When someone will come to you and ask “Hey… I know you’re a great composer… I need a X soundtrack for my Z, I will pay!”
(where X is a genre…a style… and Z is anything in need of a soundtrack)… what will you answer?

“I can’t stand themed compositions” ?? :lol: ;)

If you don’t find yourself comfortable with compo rules…
If you can’t stand themed compositions…
If you’re not here to “compete” or to “work into music”…
If you’re not here to learn anything or you think you’re at your 100% already…
If you’re in music because of aesthetic reasons…
If you think that’s unfair and stupid to have own tunes rated and judged by anything else than personal taste…

it’s so easy, brother…
don’t take part to the compo!!! :lol:

Compose freely what you’re used to, post freely your song on the songs page… and have people freely judging by their own free taste… that’s what the song page is there for.
You will not be put on test, you will not undergo the humiliating experience of having to bow to someone’s rules… you will not have your creativity bounded by deadlines… you’ll not be discriminate, there will be no second place, no third place, no first place… just your song… and people’s comments… if you like it this way! :rolleyes: :)

To the rest of you might I say… Be joyfull! :lol:
The beatbattle2 is coming.

Samplepack is almost complete… and I’m waiting for Celsius to let me know about next site…
:D

28

Hurry up!!! :D

29

I have no plans of becoming a composer in that sense. My musical goal is to one day have a guest release on a net label like mono211 or hellven.

I agree with you that perhaps the sample pack itself is not much of a challenge with all the possibilities of Renoise… but I do not agree with you that compos are primarely for training. The big word here, atleast for me, is FUN.

Anyway, you won Parsec. You set the rules.

30

:(
I would like to think that these rules I’m setting are made for our good…
not to let me “Enjoy the taste of the winner”… at least, I had a short wait in order to probe some opinion from the forum’s people… and I did this to try and deliver big fun to everybody… not to remark “hey… I’m the winner, you know”… <_<

Then you agree with me… since I never said that compo are primarely for training :)
Compos are, obviously, for FUN… musical training is what you obtain as a side effect by having fun in -this- way.
Is a cat playing with ball because he wants to train himself?
My opinion is that from his personal point of view… he just knows he’s having fun… so we can say “playing with ball is mostly done by cats to have fun while practicing hunting skills” …and that’s what I declared about compos: made to have fun while training our musical abilities…
;) :)
I wouldn’t be too disappointed if my cat would claim that he’s playing for fun only… all in all I don’t expect him to be so intelligent and smart to understand why he likes playing with that ball…
I could be rather disappointed if you people do, instead. since I expect you all to be slightly more intellectually gifted than a cat…
:lol:
Uh… am I wrong?? :ph34r: :lol: :P

31

when I’ve won ComposIta (an italian fast music compo) I had to set the rules for the next edition.

The samplepack was an XM with NO samples: just sampletext.

The sampletext contained the description of the sample (for example: snare), but most of them were italian word jokes.

The participants had to track song without knowing the real samples (though they could load a snare into the snare slot and then delete it, obviously), send the song to me, and I added the samples.

The result was a mass of funny crap, but at least the samplepack was minimal :D

32

:lol: :lol: :lol:
I imagine that… very original!!!
:D

33

Parsec,

Please stick to the concepts here. As It-Alien so correctly pointed out, there is a huge difference between Theme and Style. Themes are emotions, atmospheres and ideas behind a certain setting, whereas Style is all about what category of music it should be placed in.

I can tell you right away, its less of a challenge for me to compose hip-hop, than composing music for a theme. Creating a hip-hop tune is just listening to hip-hop allready made and doing something down that street. Composing for a theme evokes a train of thought. You imagine what the music for this theme should sound like without restrictiopns.

I’ll tell you right away, if you (Parsec) decide that we should all make trance music, I am not going to enter. Why?

  1. I hate trance 99% of the time. If done really well, it’s neat.
  2. I would absolutely dread the votepack.
  3. Where the hell is the fun in making a trance tune just for the sake of making a trance tune??

And you say, “where is the challenge if you dont HAVE to make a certain style??”… That makes me question your approach to music. It sounds as if you are looking for stuff that emulates styles in the best way. What i would like to see is people being creative and making something unique - regardless of style. Anything else is dead boring.

Klaus

34

:)

Maybe I was a bit vague… What I meant was… YES! You should enjoy the taste of being the winner! :) You earned it!

As long as you don’t go with It-Aliens idea for the compo, it’ll be fine. :D

35

I’m starting to think that this whole discussion is getting a bit ridiculous. The thing is deffinitly not about to FEAR themed compos. I’m not agaist the idea about to have themes in the compos, I infact think It-Alien’s idéa is great, but to have compos totaly concentrate on just one genre is nothing more than boring. A genre is only defined by it’s own clichés, and as soon as you take a few steps away from the predifined frames of the genre your music will “risk” to be classified as somehing completely different. And my personal view is that a song becomes interesting first when it becomes original, and a song that strictly follow predifined rules will never be more interesting than elevator-music or a jingle in the local radio-station ;) I can only speak for myself but I’m NOT making contributions to compos like this because I want to learn more about to make elevator-music that I can sell to the nearest radio-station, so why do I do it then? I do it because I think it is FUN, and personally I do not think it is fun to hear 25 compo-entries that sound pretty similar, wich would have been the case if the rules of the compo would have stated that it HAS to sound like PURE hip-hop. Even your tune, Parsec, will probably not even be close to be called hip-hop by a hardcore hip-hop-fan, so the question is if you would have been qualified with those type of rules ;)
In the previous Beatbattle I first hadn’t even a slightly thought about to contribute with a tune, but anyway I started to play with the sounds just for FUN, and after a few hours of work I had a small little song, it didn’t sound very hip-hopish, that can maybe be because I’m totaly untalanted or because I thought it was more fun to do something completly different, your choise, I do not care, but even if the song wasn’t very hip-hopish I was thinking it was a pretty FUN song, fun enough to have as a contribution as long as it was qualified. So I wrote a mail to celsius and asked if I had a chance to qualifiy, he told me all contributions was automatically qualified so I chosed to send it in. And some people obviously appreciated my song even if it is very untalanted (in this case equal to NOT hip-hop). So did I do anything wrong when I chosed to contibute? Yes obviouse, cause some people seems to think “My creative spirit suck”… So shall those wiseacres stop me from participate in further contests? I guess I have to say yes, cause as long as the primary theme in the competition is not FUN, then I do not see any reason to participate. And I deffinitly do NOT think it is fun when someone lecturing the exact rules how I shall make music…
As you already know, Parsec, your song was my favorite, I gave your song higher scores than any other song in the compo, and I didn’t do it because your song did sound hip-hopish but because I thought it was the song that sounded most well-produced and also got nice idéas. If your song has sounded more hip-hop it would probably not even have been intresed enough in my ears.

And finally, what do you mean by saying “don’t take part in the compo if you’re in music because of aesthetic reasons”??? I would rather say “Do not make music if you do not have any kind of aesthetic reasons”… ;)

Sorry if I souned alittle bit harsh but I realy thought it was nessesary this time ;)

36

if you make a samplepack you define the style of the music, no matter how long you go blabla about themes.
if there is only a hard basedrum and a openhihat drumwise I know what you want to hear. I cant do d&b with drums like that.
thats the reason why I asked to be able to add my own drums.

37

:rolleyes:
Absolutely not. That’s why there will actually be a (very detailed) theme for next beatbattle instead of a style :)
I’d say you, toghether with other users, have probably misunderstood my post regarding this point… What I’m pointing out is that we actually need to bound… and set criteria… how would you chose a “winner” otherwise? We would end like I’m about to write…

You can see this by pressing the “Songs” button in the top menu…
That’s the place to be freely creative with no restrictions at all… and people is posting songs continously there, instead of having to wait for samplepacks… ;)
I could ask “Then why would you mercilessly restrict creativity and freedom by imposing a single theme? What I would like to see is people free of chosing the theme they like most” …and so on with the samplepack… with the duration and weight of the final song… with the deadline… and so on untill, as I said, we end up with a second songpage ;)

What we’re speaking about, instead, is a “game” that’s full of restrictions… his name… “compo” (from “Competition”) means a “battle” where we are put to a line and somehow matched one against the other.
Certain people thinks that competition it’s a typical-aggressive-male behaviour… other they think it’s just childish to compete… you might like competition or not: To those who don’t… my best and most friendly advice is simply not to take part to any of the existing musical competitions (at some sceneparty, IRC, Usergroups, websites…) Those who likes to play in this competing way, I suppose, would rather like to see who’s the most elastic, who’s adapting best, who manages to pour his creativity into his tune and kick asses regardless of what rules and style-genre-theme-samplepack you impose.
:)

Peace, mates :lol:

38

competing in music compos always means “please most voters possible”, aso known as being a whore. sorry for the harsh words, but I went to so much demoparties where a certain german melodic-trance composer won (no names), I am sick of it, because his tunes he presented there simply sucked music-wise, atleast in my terms, and believe, I have a quite huge field of music I like and pretend to understand.

anyway, the point which I would like to turn up : this is about beatbattle v2, there will be a beatbattle v3 and the rules there might be completely different, so it might be wise not to discuss this thing to death.

39

can we just get on with it so i can enter or not :(

xerxes, if you’re still concerned about parsec’s approach to making music as just being to emulate the style he’s asked to, listen to his beatbattle 1 entry. it was without a doubt the most interesting hip-hop track in the entire compo, that was why he won.

looza, i think beatbattle 1 proved that the samplepack doesn’t dictate the musical style in any way. gemini’s song, the end of herbert’s song, parsec’s song… all sounded completely different. it’s down to the musician.

40

gwilym,

yes i heard it and i think its excellent. i didnt question his skills. its just that i think the fact that you have one week, one set of instruments to do the best you can is challenge enough. if we have a trance compo - i won’t enter. not coz i am afraid, or think competing is scary - (i think i can hold my own regardless of style) but simply because both making the tune and listening to the entries would bore the living hell outta me.

:)

klaus