SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC076 December 2023 - Winners announced

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[Mister Fox]

Hi @Brandon740,

will we be able to download the song at the end of the submission period as per the rules?

[EsteveCorbera]

Dear fellow challengers and Mister Fox,

Another radical change in music style.
I wanted to make this a quiet topic since it is what inspires me the image that Mister Fox has shared with us this more.
I wanted to make a calm theme, but initially I found it boring and repetitive. I've been working on it and I've seen that adding percussion and a bass, things changed a lot. It added rhythm and excitement.
With an instrumentation based on bells I wanted to bring my theme closer to a Christmas carol.

I hope you like it.


Thank you colleagues.

(translated with google)



Equipment:
DAW:
Reason 12.7

Instruments:
Thor Polysonic Synthesizer
Europa Shapeshifting Synthesizer
Complex-1 Modular Synthesizer
Algoritm FM Synthesizer
Humana Vocal Ensemble
NN-XT Advanced Sampler
ID8 Songwriter's Toolbox
Pangea World Instruments
Klang Tuned Percussion
Mimic Creative Sampler
Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player

Effects:
RV7000 MkII Advanced Reverb
The Echo
Polar Dual Pitch Shifter
Audiomatic Retro Transformer
Channel EQ
Sweeper Modulation Effect
Quartet Chorus Ensemble
BV512 Vocoder
Master Bus Compressor
Rotor Rotary Speaker

Players:
Scales & Chords
Dual Arpeggio
Note Echo

Utilities:
Combinator
Line Mixer 6:2
RPG-8 Monophonic Arpeggiator

Reason Packs (like Presets):
Winter Sounds
Moms Fruitcake

Reason Rack Extension:
Kilohearts AB kHs Stereo (Effect)

Other instruments outside of Reason:
Spitfire Audio Originals Epic Choir
UJAM Virtual Bassist MELLOW

Other effects outside of Reason:
Bedroom Producers Blog BPB Saturator
Tone Projects Basslane
Rob Papen RP-Pan
Kilohearts AB kHs Gain
Ronan Fed Nube
Ronan Fed Pneuma

Samples:
Reason sounds

Other tools:
iZotope Ozone 9
Plugin Alliance SPL HawkEye
HoRNet Plugins HoRNet VHS

[becsei_gyorgy]

Hi all,

Wonderful to see so many people making music for the last competition of the year.

For me the beginning was difficult, I had so many good ideas for the picture.
I tried several times and started to make short sketches, but one by one I discarded my ideas.
In the end, I stuck with the traditional Christmas theme this week. Fitting for the first picture we received this month.

I've had a MUSIO subscription for a while, but I haven't really used it, so now was the chance to test it out. I put Cinesamples libraries in my template, did the sketch with a piano, then came the orchestration, and finally some decorations.

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VST:
MUSIO
Kontakt
LABS

Piano: Spitfire Intimate Grand, The Grandeur
Harp: Cineharp
Woodwinds: Hollywoodwinds, Cinewinds
Strings: Cinesamples, Cinematic Studio Strings
Choir: Strezov Essentials
Brass: Cinebrass, Cinematic Studio Brass
Percussion: Cineperc, LABS

FX:
Pro-Q3
bx_digital V3
RComp

Cinematic Rooms Pro
7th Heaven

SSL Native Bus
Sonnox Inflator
Sonnox Limiter
UAD Studer A800
SPAN
Youlean LM

[merci ferdi]

So here's my entry for this month challenge !
(final version)
https://on.soundcloud.com/zHZVT

[Lady Incognita]

Have a great Holiday Season and Happy New Year everyone!

I went with a sweet and romantic entry for the season, pretty much going in the opposite direction of Colorado and Doc Jon. I've enjoyed listening to all the entries. Thanks for sharing!

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Note for Mister Fox: Sorry, you'll have to dock some points for me. I mastered this at -1.00 dBTP but louder than -14.0 LUFS, since it was going to be my 'final' render out for YouTube, and of course my file name isn't right either since there's no download. I'm incorrigible, you'll just have to put up with me...

Production Process and Lyrics

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After I saw the image and the "lights" theme, I was initially going to go for something wintery and romantic and sweet and pop. I immediately got the "kiss me under starry lights" as a chorus line along with the melody for the line as I looked at the image. I wonder if it's slowly becoming a tradition to do a sappy sweet love song for the season... My last Holiday track was a sappy sweet country pop song at the end of 2021.

But I ended up listening to an Enrique Iglesias song on repeat after the challenge started, and I couldn't help trying out some Latin percussion for this instead. The laid back tropical beach vibes followed, along with the warm double bass, twinkly mallet instruments, a tongue drum and simple improv guitar accompaniment. I went with the old-as-time twinkling lights of the starry night sky, as opposed to the electric kind.

I'm also a visual artist in traditional and digital media, and wanted to do a music video, hoping to keep it simple. But no, it managed to turn into a sizeable project and took far more work than the music production as is usually the case for this. I was trying hard to get it and the final bits of the track done before the deadline. Phew, I finally reached that point of "Yeah, I think is where I'm going to stop!" with both the music and imagery just in time.

For my music videos, I like working with CGI using 3D software. Right now, I like working on still image narratives or mood/concept sequences. I decided to go over-the-top sweet and romantic for this one, with lots of twinkling lights to match the theme, and warm and peaceful. As such this song, unlike my momentum song from last month, has little to no momentum. It's meant to be a state of feeling, so there isn't really a build though some elements change up over time of course, especially from verse to chorus, to keep the forward movement. I kept the structure simple (just verse-chorus-verse-chorus) for the same reasons. Slower-paced but compact, with relatively sparse lyrics, and with a soft and hushed vocal style. The intimate style is meant to evoke a "I'm thinking and feeling this" rather than "I'm saying this out loud" feeling.

Production Details

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DAW: Reaper
Mic: AT2035

Instrument VSTs: Electric Mint and Picked Nylon (guitars), VB Mellow 2 (double bass), NI Cuba (percussion), Mallet Flux (lots of twinkly mallet percussion instruments), Cloudrum (tongue drum)

FX and stuff: Includes Replika XT, Raum, UAD LA-2A tube compressor, Saturation Knob, The Build, Transit, a couple of one shots and a shaker from a pack, a royalty free "ocean" sound file.

Mixing and Mastering: Izotope Music Production Suite (Nectar, Neutron, Ozone etc.)

[Mister Fox]

I mean...

As of this moment, you'd actually loose over half of your Bonus Points (Score Sheet). Reason being: no download link (see Rule Book), and exceeding the loudness values. Remember, if I analyze files, I always go by the "highest version available". So if you happen to post a separate WAV file that not only use the filename template, but also happen to have loudness values within specs... you get the idea

Same goes for @Brandon740, by the way.

You folks still have roughly 18 hours to figure something out.



Oh and... @merci ferdi -- could you please edit your initial post to add the final version? Or declare in your recent post that this is the final version? Makes it easier for me to collect the content at the end of each game. Thank you.

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your production.



Please get your production ready and submitted (through the forum) today. There will be no deadline extensions this month.

To make it easier for me to create the collection post, please update your initial post with the appropriate links (final version), or explicitly mark your entry as "final entry". Thank you.

If I didn't miscount, we have 12 entries so far.

[1ktone]

Hello everyone.

I honestly didn't think I'd get anything together for this. But, here today it popped out. The theme based on the first picture of lights turned into a journey into the infinite light shining within.

This was basically a jam in Bitwig using a number of instances of ZebraHZ. A little loose, but I kind of like the organic feel of it.

Merry Christmas to all and to a time of peace and joy to all.

https://soundcloud.com/1ktone/swc076_1k ... al_sharing


It was suggested to add extra details to the initial post - so here is the process I followed ....


Essentially I studied the pictures and went into feeling what they were about and the concept of light in general. Experimented with a few directions for a day or two. Left it alone for some time. Realised that it was the last day and figured I better get something together.

At this point I had been revisiting Zebra so I opened up an instance of Zebra HZ in Bitwig and started playing. Using the minimalist plucks preset I added the Bitwig Arpeggio MIDI plug in at the start and put it through a Waves Supertap Delay and a DDR-402 compressor. I then played the arpeggio sequence manually and recorded the structure of the track. The Arpeggio was an 8 note selection in 16ths with a 7th for the first note, a 4th for the 4th note and a 19th on the 7th step (which you hear occasionally when I hold the note down for a little longer). Most of the playing was for single and double notes that roughly spanned an octave distance (ie played with both hands) in the sequence with occasional longer holds. This track formed the basis for the song.

I then added a second instance of Zebra HZ with the minimalist plucks preset for the more melodic part. This ran through a Waves SILK Vocal instance and a CLA Echo Sphere. I also sent it to an instance of Wires and an aux version of CLA EchoSphere (because you can never get enough delay).

The pad sound was another instance of Zebra HZ with the Vox Fantasia preset going through an instance of Waves Abbey Road Plates and an FX send to the Echosphere FX bus.

All the parts were played in one pass and recorded on the fly. I went back and made a couple of corrections for timing and one change to one note's pitch and that made the complete track. For fun there was an instance of SPL Iron on the master to get a little tone out of that and to use the stereo widening dial to open up the track a little which made a huge difference to the depth perception.

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

I changed my w.i.p. version in final version. I did try some different drum variations (more low fi jungle beat). I thought my first attempt was better so I just left it as it is. I didn't have much time to work on it so I will keep the version i uploaded earlyer. This is the link:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ahp8xH6KRIfbgwL_Ujt ... 8?e=UUj72u

It is good to see so many participating this month. Can't wait to listen to all your work.

Cheers,

Jeroen