I'd like to share an idea I had recently, which result I'd ideally also like to tackle this year still. Maybe even make a yearly recurring game out of this. So any feedback about this is greatly appreciated.
The idea is simple: A songwriting competition with limited sounds.
The participants will have access to 10-20 samples as starting point, and have the usual 24 days to create something out of that. With whatever tools they have at their disposal. Meaning: Granular Synthesis, Re-sampling, time stretching, morphing, extensive FX modulation matrices, whatever. As long as no additional synth sounds, sample content or instruments are used (though instruments are up for debate, please comment down below). It is only allowed to work with the material given.
Think of the following (although the example by Levi Niha uses custom samples for a beat, Andrew Huang uses what he has at his disposal):
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The genre doesn't matter. Since you can create pretty much anything with the content and even add your own vocals, it would be silly to request a Metal Song based upon noises and synthetic sounds. Could be possible (I can imagine that from some sample wizards), but won't be easy for sure.
But I do want to introduce a twist:
We won't be using freely available content (think 99 Sounds, free content via REKKERD and Bedroom Producers Blog), instead we''ll be asking the community to provide material for the participants, which will then be the foundation of the challenge.
I want to call this challenge "Community Scramble"
This is how I currently plan this to go:
- As of the start of December (roughly, can be sooner), I create a thread in "Songwriting Competition" for the community to provide self created samples
- each community member shall ideally provide no more than two (number: 2) self-created sounds. This must not be from free sample packages, but created by your own. This material can be synthetic in nature, or a Foley recording
- the material must be in 44/24 WAV bar minimum, and 96/24 WAV absolute maximum
- each community member has 21 days / 3 weeks to do this
- from all these entries, 10 samples bar minimum and 20 samples absolute maximum will be selected to be a "starter bundle" for the SWC in question. If there is not enough material, or not of enough variety, the Challenge will not happen. If there is too much, things will be trimmed down or used for future games of similar nature
- once the material has been prepared, the game starts to the next nearest possible month
- the month after the sample collection will be used to hold the game, which will be January
- Other than the limitation "only use the samples at your disposal, no additional samples/synths/instruments" are allowed (vocals are fine), the regular rules of the SWC apply
And this is where your feedback comes in:
What are your thoughts on this?
What would you add as fine prints? (like: will the samples be released as Creative Commons, etc)
What are your concerns other than "the preparation will take a lot of time for one person?" (which hints at a possible "judges panel" for the samples, which will definitely mean extra work)?
Please share your thoughts and concerns.
Thanks for reading.
INFO: This thread has been started in the Patron Vault on 24th September 2018