Weekly competition rules & info

AlanRatcliffe · 2009-06-01T10:20:36+00:00

Info Competitions are free for all members to enter There are no prizes, but you will learn and have fun by entering Serious recording skills and equipment...

Weekly competition rules & info

AlanRatcliffe

Info

Competitions are free for all members to enter
There are no prizes, but you will learn and have fun by entering
Serious recording skills and equipment are not necessary, but you will need some way of recording
There are three skill categories - Beginner (B), Intermediate (I) and Advanced (A). You must specify which you are entering and you may change category from competition to competition if you feel the need.
Topics are set by the previous competition's winner with the highest number of votes in any category

Content

Please stick to the topic
Entries must be original compositions - No soloing over someone else's track and no covers.
Only four instruments - Vocals are allowed as a "freebie" unless specifically disallowed.

Duration must be no longer than two minutes - This makes it easier for voters to download lots of entries.

File Formats

Use compressed audio formats - such as MP3 or OGG. Uncompressed formats such as WAV or AIFF are too large for many downloaders/voters.
Put your username in the file name of your entry - this helps the voters know who to vote for.
Add a letter to the beginning the file name - "A", "I" or "B" to denote the skill category
Try and avoid spaces ( ) in file names - rather use underscores "_" or dashes "-". This prevents any chance of problems with links showing up properly.

If you follow the above properly, your filename should look something like: "B-Fred-Blue_Murder.mp3".

Uploading and entering

Once completed, upload your entry to a file sharing service like www.box.net, www.soundcloud.com or your personal web site.
Once uploaded, send a PM to Renesongs with the link and any details you want to share to enter.

Choosing a topic
Try not to get too specific. Topics with an open ended interpretive nature work best at attracting entries and voters and work well across different skill levels and styles of playing. So "heavy" works better than "heavy metal", which works better than "Viking death metal". Not essential, but try to steer away from topics that will exclude the beginners skill group by being overly technical by their very nature (Shred, Progressive metal, etc.). Topics do not have to be a style of music either - they can be a feel or a mood, a colour or an emotion - these topics will be completely open to interpretation, which often brings in surprising results across a wide variety of genres and styles.

AlanRatcliffe

Bump for changes.

Comments?

doc-phil

Sounds good to me. So we're reverting to the 1 minute rule? I kinda liked the 2 minute limit that has been used on the last couple challenges. Sometimes 1 minute feels too short.

AlanRatcliffe

doc-phil wrote: Sounds good to me. So we're reverting to the 1 minute rule? I kinda liked the 2 minute limit that has been used on the last couple challenges. Sometimes 1 minute feels too short.

Hence the "challenge" part. ?

Doubling the time doubles size and doubles listening time, so affects downloaders/voters who have limited bandwith or time to listen.

doc-phil

OK point taken ?

guitarboy2828

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
doc-phil wrote: Sounds good to me. So we're reverting to the 1 minute rule? I kinda liked the 2 minute limit that has been used on the last couple challenges. Sometimes 1 minute feels too short.
Hence the "challenge" part. ?

Doubling the time doubles size and doubles listening time, so affects downloaders/voters who have limited bandwith or time to listen.

Agreed, listening to 10 tracks of 2 minutes is 20 minutes. That's a long time to listen to tracks and try decide. I do not listen to anything past a minute. So, anything after that and I am no longer paying attention. So, why not keep them short and precise.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
doc-phil wrote: Sounds good to me. So we're reverting to the 1 minute rule? I kinda liked the 2 minute limit that has been used on the last couple challenges. Sometimes 1 minute feels too short.
Hence the "challenge" part. ?

Exactly.

I once read a Stephen King book in which the hero is very much attracted to writing a haiku. He said that he liked the challenge of having to distil whatever he wanted to express down to a limited, fixed number of syllables.

I feel the same way about the 1 minute limit. You have to pare your composition down to it's essentials, trim away the fat. I agree that sometimes it does mean compromises, but you can "say" quite a bit in a limit. If you think about it, most pop songs get through 2 or 3 verses and a chorus or two in three minutes, so one minute could easily be a whole verse.

[edit] Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne" weighed in at 4:38, with three verses, three choruses and two Larry Carlton guitar solos - one of which got a long a fade out. Paul McCarteney told a whole story in three verses and just 2:06 with "Eleanor Rigby".

DonovanB

Paul E wrote:Agreed, listening to 10 tracks of 2 minutes is 20 minutes. That's a long time to listen to tracks and try decide. I do not listen to anything past a minute. So, anything after that and I am no longer paying attention. So, why not keep them short and precise.

+1
Some of the latest 2 min entries I ended up skipping through. If it caught my attention then I carried on.