Rules:
Tempo: Any
Genre: Chiptune
Time Signature: Any
Compulsory Sample: None.
Additional Rules: Renoise only. All features, functions, DSPs etc of Renoise allowed. No sample pack! You may use the Chipsound Instruments provided with Renoise (Disk-Op - Instrumet - Chipsounds.) Additionally you may create your own single cycle waveforms and use them. Below is a rough guide for creating single cycle waveforms in standard tuning.
Submissions: Please submit links for download to me via PM so we can keep voting closed. Audio file accepted, preferably mp3 at 320kbs; other encodings and rates acceptable. .XRNS submissions also accepted, preferably alongside a audio file but in isolation only (allowing Demo users to join in.) Would be extra nice if people can provide both.
Deadline: Midnight Wednesday 22nd December (GMT.)
Happy tracking.
Genre example as provided by Mammoth:
Single cycle tuning guide (with very kind thanks to dBlue):
Also Mammoth has promised a prize to spread a bit of Christmas cheer. I had hoped to be able to offer a Renoise licence for the winner of this, the Christmas round, but really don’t feel I currently have the funds! I will leave it up to Mammoth to disclose what the prize may be or whether to keep it as a surprise until the end.
Ahah! I’m searching since 3 month now, how to make a proper chiptune that sound great, and that’s hard to me, but I’m in! great challenge!
Good luck to all!
goddamnit i can’t make this because i just have to work all week. too bad, but good luck to all of you and really curious about the prize. this competition rules.
As for the prize, i hope you like to play, i thought to give the winner a gift code to get the humble bundle pack, five great independant games working on Linux/Windows/Mac:
EDIT: The gift code will allow the winner to get 6 more games, so a total of 11 games.
If I’d known you were going to quote me, then I would have bit put a little more thought into my rambling words, haha. No biggie though.
I shamefully haven’t been following the compos, but is 1 day really the standard duration? It really doesn’t seem like enough time for people to check the forums and respond, especially given the busier holiday period. Perhaps it would be a good idea to extend this one?
To be honest I had meant to prune it further to the basics needed but realised it was time for the competition to start so just used a bit more of it as you’d out it than originally planned. Made perfect sense to me and I’m sure others though.
I’m working today and tomorrow, should be going straight home on the train after work tomorrow and then back on the 27th, weather permitting. Extend it to the night of the 27th? not that I expect many people to be say around tracking over Christmas…
Well, this compo attempt raises some good issues anyway. Following is in NO WAY a knock at this compo, but just some thoughts I had about quite a few compos in the last couple years that have kind of built up:
So we are all (well, not all…) older and busier now. One problem. Solved with better communication (how?) and slightly longer deadlines.
Now, another problem. Compos need prizes. They really do, ‘cred’ is not enough (anymore)! The scene, whatever scene ya had wherever you lived, it doesn’t seem to be there. Or maybe it is but ‘older’ might feed into this so I just don’t know about it… Anyway, Renoise license is a great idea for unlicensed fans. Sometimes being older and having an ok job doesn’t translate into more folding money so this still works both ways: poor broke kid/rich broke adult. Maybe a few people chip in for a good quality but not so expensive vst? You might have a hard time getting one guy to put up 60 bucks, but 10 guys putting up 6 bucks via paypal, it’s a good bit of legwork but prolly can be done. One thing I learned from living in Memphis was that ya never wasted anything by asking but some breath, and ya was prolly gonna waste that anyway. Cred might not mean so much but maybe props do here? Convince folks it’s a tip to the best busker? I dunno.
Rules. Need innovative, interesting rules that get people thinking ‘I would like to try that’. Problem 3, hard to do now, I know.
The other problem: Organization and judges… people don’t seem as willing to be fans of other people’s music as much anymore or really that interested in listening anyway. I use the word ‘seem’ intentionally. I bet if you asked kindly and had a good plan set up even dblue and maybe taktik would be willing to consider. Celebrity judges, there ya go. Maybe…
I say all this and then reading it over, it seems like setting up an attractive compo is almost as hard a writing a good finished tune! Man, I don’t wanna do that, but I will put in 6 bucks. What a hypocrite! I guess this is the biggest problem.
barbarian_ascension!: Not to be rude but if you want a competition like you describe set it up and run it yourself.
Sure this round may of suffered a lack of contestants but the chosen rules were particularly hard for those not used to working with that style (if I was more skilled or had the time I might of tried to create an instrument pack trying to get some basic drums, based on methods of analogue drum machines, at the least.) Plus the fact it’s so near to Christmas I would imagine most free time anybody has at the moment will be spent doing last minute shopping and the like.
Generally I have found it has been running quite well. Most rounds so far have had 5/6 entries, which is not far off that of the competitions you see that run for a month or two on here, so I don’t think time scale is a problem. In fact the idea was for regular, short rounds, so people could do one when they feel able and it not matter if they miss some, plus only being a couple of days tracking every so often it’s less likely to take away from your “serious tracking” time.
Rule are 100% flexible and set by the winner of the previous round. How innovative it is is down to the previous winner, with some basic, quite open guidelines, any of which can be overruled if desired. Not sure how you could get more innovative on a regular competition…
For this kind of thing I think open voting is the best way to go. If it was a one off competition, or aimed around certain styles, record labels, remixing or the like, then judges and regular prizes would make more sense. ((see Back2You for an example of this http://back2you.co.uk/competitions
At the end of the day this is meant to be a bit of fun for Renoise users. Tracking, and Renoise users in particular, is quite a small segment of electronic musicians and if you wanted to do something more on the scale you seem to be talking you would want to aim at a much larger audience. Good luck with setting something up if you decide to do so, this competition will remain as it is and I hope people continue to enjoy it.
No, I think he was calling himself a hypocrite for being willing to put in the kitty towards a prize but not the rest of the effort to make the actual competition. Maybe I read it wrong though…
@barbarian_ascension:
you make a couple of good points. however, i’m not sure if this is the right place to post them (see kazakore’s reply for an example of that).
what you said about prizes is actually a nice idea. it should be possible to gather some money and put out a prize like a cool VST or samplepack or whatever. but the only way to get to that point, imo, would be to ask contestants for money to be able to compete. as the scale of this particular compo is so small (short periods of time, lots of competition rounds), i think that would put off a lot of people from competing. at best this idea could be done once every so-many rounds, like every round at the end of a quarter (3 months) is a prize-round or something like that. that would also allow people more time to consider if they want to chip in for the next prize-round, because they know when it’s gonna come.
the thing i think you forgot, is that these competitions already have a prize: Renoise-experience and musicmaking-experience. those are the main reasons i compete in these. i love getting a random samplepack, an assignment (or no assignment), and just go ahead and do something. i’ve discovered a lot of things in the rounds i joined in, and i like the fact that it’s all small-scale and no pressure whatsoever. it feels like it’s all amongst friends here, and i believe real prizes or more ‘seriousness’ might change just what i like about it now.
I’d be willing to change to that if there was general consensus it would be preferred. Wanted to keep it pretty short and kinda in the vibe of the demo scene, where you have one day events and even one hour competitions (used to have a few on them on Renoise, some warning on here and advertised on the IRC channel.) But as I said I am always open to improvements and discussion.
In fact ALL rules are flexible and set by the winner of the last round so technically somebody could change the times set for the next round, although I’ve never explicitly said or even really though about it, nothing is set in stone.
Maybe worth starting a poll… Current timetable can be a little confusing too, which probably doesn’t help.
Also must get the website fully updated! Haven’t yet paid to renew my webspace though, as been having all these FTP troubles, but at the same time don’t want to loose it. Just feels wrong paying for something that you can rarely use as intended!
Yeah I like that vibe too, but in demoparties, you book one/two/three day, months ago, and you dedicate these day to drinking/geeking/tracking/… it’s different from a competition in wich you have to find your time between works/family/other projects.
Anyway, renoise are not, I would love to organise/participate to, a “demoparty” strictly reserved to music with live show of the submissions the evening or something like that. But something like that might exist and I was not aware?
, maybe this was not a good idea of mine to put such rules on Christmas period. 
