Mix Challenge

Hello and welcome to the Songwriting Competition 23 - July 2019


This is the introduction post, where we directly link to the challenge corresponding files (theme, submission information, sponsors) and start of the voting process. There will be no Round 2



Please take note of the following

• IMPORTANT: please use the following naming convention for your productions: SWC000_ArtistName_TrackName.wav/mp3 (Artistname should be the same as the username)
• If you only post a SoundCloud link, please name the file properly before uploading and make your song downloadable

Also please take note of the following

• If you have an idea for future Songwriting Competition themes and/or genres, please post them here.
• Social Media accounts can be found via the handles @MixChallenge (Twitter) and MixChallenge (Facebook). Please spread the word!
• if you like what the Mix Challenge (community) has been doing in recent months, please consider supporting us.

This post will be updated with the corresponding links as we progress, and of course the suitable thread headlines. So please watch this spot:


Submission Period: General Information and Sponsors
Cheat Sheet: A couple of examples / audio demos for this month's challenge (not available if genre is "Free to Select")
Voting: Summarized entries and start of voting process
Results of the Songwriting Competition: Results of the Songwriting Competition

CURRENT CHALLENGE - GENERAL INFORMATION

Time Frame: Monday, 01st July 2019 to Monday, 24th July 2019 (24 days)

Challenge submission will end on 24-07-2019, 11:59pm CEST/GMT+2 (Germany) - until further notice.

Want to find out if you're still within the deadline, please consult the following options:
The Global Countdown on it's dedicated page or the countdown on the home page. You can also consult the World Clock at the top of the forum or alternatively the following tool - in this case please select "Berlin (Germany)" as location 1, and your location as location 2: Time and Date - World Clock Meeting Planner. We do post reminders via our Twitter account and Facebook page.



SONGWRITING THEME: Sun-filled Fiesta

GENRE: (Mainstream) Progressive House


Image Source: Pexels (via Pixabay), released under Creative Commons CC0/Public Domain


A few word about this month's theme:

Staff (Mister Fox) wrote: "Please do an EDM songwriting competition" - request granted, but easier said than done. Because "EDM" is an umbrella term. EDM is short for "Electronic Dance Music", which is then categorized into a lot of sub-genres. With it's main pillars being House, Trance, Techno, Breakbeat, Downtempo, etc. And that in turn splits into even more sub-genres. To make things worse, each person interprets a certain genre complete different (e.g. Techno is not the same as Techno). So it's not easy to find a good spot for a Songwriting Competition that everyone can compete in, while not being like "am I even doing it right?".

So as I usually do with anything EDM, I scour the Internet, I fine-comb through old "Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music" (yes, you'll see that in the cheat-sheet post again!), and try to find something that might work. After skipping through the 30th "Best EDM charts <month/year>" not to mention "Top 50 EDM tracks <month/year>" playlist, and finding the one or another track of interest, I decided on "let's go (Mainstream) Progressive House this month".

As of this moment, the northern hemisphere is experiencing Summer. Or rather, some very strong heatwaves. This is also the "outdoor party season". Which let me think of "Summer Festivals" ("Sun-filled Fiesta") as this month's theme.



Your task for this Songwriting Competition:
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This month, you can create anything in the "(Mainstream) Progressive House" genre, something that might work as a hymn for summer.

I'd love to see/hear productions in the 120-130bpm range (+-5 bpm), that use warm tones in terms of the beat section (this is House after all), some interesting melodies and/or chord progression. (Virtual) Bonus points if you're getting a vocalist involved that elevates your production even further. If you drift into "Progressive Trance" ever so often (more harder percussion, good old trance pads), I'm not mad - the lines are blurry.

What I do not want to see, are square-wave productions. Please keep the recommendation of -14LUFS ILk as loudness target in mind. -12LUFS ILk as absolute maximum. I always hear "EDM only sounds good if it uses strong compression and is mastered loud". I do not agree to that. You can still create something with "punch" while not going the deepend with a -5dB RMS master. I also don't want to hear/see glitched beats and vocals.

For all newcomers - I do stress that you should take a dive into the follow up post, where I invested the time to dig out some examples (again - since everyone interprets EDM completely different, this wasn't an easy task). Just to give you a certain idea how this can go. But please do find your own groove, and add your own spin to it.


As usual - please have fun, and create some outstanding music!

Songwriting Add-On Rules:

• Create a production in the "(Mainstream) Progressive House" genre (ideally!)
• you can use any tool that is at your disposal (samples, virtual instruments and/or real instruments)
• IMPORTANT: if you use non-licensed material (no material from sample CDs, etc), give full credit to the source material
• It is recommended to not go higher than -14LUFS SLk (avg) or K-12v1 (avg) in terms of perceived loudness. Music doesn't have to be squashed to bits in order to be impactful - and yes, EDM can be "impactful" at this loudness
• for newcomers: no cover versions or remixes

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Please take note of the official rules - they can be found at the following thread:
Songwriting Competition - Official Rules and Guidelines

Please address any OT question in the official Gossip thread:
Songwriting Competition - Gossip and Discussion

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SPONSORS (Prizes):

Prizes for Songwriting Challenge participants:

Note: All licenses are NFR (Not-For-Resale), except where noted.
Changes to available prices on short notice may be possible and will be announced separately.


RECURRING LICENSE SPONSORSHIP:


IK Multimedia is kind enough give away one license of MODO BASS to the winner
License will turn into NFR
More info on IK Multimedia: https://www.ikmultimedia.com



Tone2 is kind enough to donate a license of Saurus2 to the winner (until further notice)
License will turn into NFR
More info on Tone2: https://tone2.com



kv331 audio is kind enough give away a bundle of either SynthMaster 1+2 Bundle, or a freely selectable set of 3 SynthMaster Expansions
License will not turn into NFR, you need to have a kv311 audio user account in order to pick up Expansions
More info on kv331 audio: https://www.kv331audio.com



JRR Sounds is kind enough give away any-1 sound sets or sample set of winner's choice (exception: Bundles)
More info on JRR Sounds: https://www.jrrshop.com/jrr-sounds



Luftrum is kind enough give away either a license of Lunaris, or any 2 sound sets of winner's choice (exception: Bundles and Nano Electronics)
License will turn into NFR
More info on Luftrum: http://www.luftrum.com



Rekkerd Sounds is kind enough give away 1 sound set of winners choice (exception: Krezie EDM and Neurofunk Vol. 1)
License will turn into NFR
More info on Rekkerd Sounds: http://sounds.rekkerd.org/



Ghostwave Audio (Vincent Bastiat) is kind enough to donate any 2 sound sets to the winner
License will turn into NFR
More info on Ghostwave Audio: http://ghostwaveaudio.com



Hollow Sun is kind to donate one license of "Music Laboratory Machines - The Suite I" to the winner
License will turn into NFR
More info on Hollow Sun: http://www.hollowsun.com



Hornet Plugins is kind enough give away one license from the depicted tools (see image) to the winner
License will turn into NFR
More info on Hornet Plugins: http://www.hornetplugins.com



Sound / Graphic Designer, and honorary Mix Challenge staff satYatunes is donating one commercial product of winner's choice (until further notice)
More info on satYatune's page: http://www.satyatunes.com/





THANKS FOR THE DONATIONS!
And also a thank you to all former contributors as well.

If you want to sponsor content (please have a focus on instruments, samples and sound sets), please get in touch with the Mix Challenge staff.

Please spread the word of the challenge on social media.
For example with our dedicated Twitter Account or Facebook Page

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Good luck to all participants.
And most importantly, have fun!

AUDIO EXAMPLES:
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General In formation about Genres:
A Wikipedia entry on Progressive House
The infamous Ishur's Guide to Electronic Music (needs Flash Player, or use Chrome Portable)
Guide to Electronic Music Genres - by Cheeseguy on Youtube
Top 60 EDM Sub-Genres (+examples) - by TopEDM on Youtube


Random Playlists (Youtube)
Best Progressive House Mix 2019 Vol. #1
Best Progressive House Mix 2019 Vol. #4
Giolì & Assia - #DiesisLive @Vulcano, Aeolian Islands (can't decide on a specific genre - listed as "Electro")


Random hand selected videos (Youtube)
Camille Jones - The Creeps (Fedde Le Grand Remix)
Paul van Dyk - For An Angel (technically Progressive Trance - but the melody/chord progression is interesting)
Loreen - Euphoria (Official Audio) (technically gracing Mainstream Progressive Trance, Wikipedia lists this as "Eurodance" - another made up term, winner of "Eurovision Song Contest 2012")
Avicii - Wake Me Up (Official Video)
Coldplay - A Sky Full Of Stars (Official Video) (I know that Coldplay are usually rock, but they dip their toes into EDM, more specifically "Mainstream Progressive House" ever so often)
Armin van Buuren feat. Fiora - Waiting For The Night (Official International Music Video) (also check out his collaboration with Sharon den Adel - "In And Out Of Love", which is more going towards Electro, just to get a feel for the vocals)



Examples of the "Downfall of EDM" (as in: please don't do this)
The Mainstream Rise and Fall: A Timeline of EDM - an article by MAGNETIC Magazine
What not to do if you want to sound unique in the EDM realm (through SoundCloud) - Daleri - Epic Mashleg

It is unbelievable how high those viewer counts are on those songs. The songs are well produced and gentle on the ear, but 1.8 billion views worth? Just wow.

functionform wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 02, 2019 20:49 CEST

It is unbelievable how high those viewer counts are on those songs. The songs are well produced and gentle on the ear, but 1.8 billion views worth? Just wow.

You do realize that "Wake me up" was a pop-hit that placed #1 on so many charts over the world, and is not one of the usual electronic dance music song? So you can't really compare the views of that to whatever you listen to.

Here is my submission.

Tried to make this like a "summer festival banger" which are supposed to give people good feelings to dance and whatever else you might do at those festivals. Aka a summer track.

Generators used are Sylenth1 (lots of), Realguitar and Nexus. Samples are from Vengeance House Essentials and Sounds of KSHMR vol3.

LATE EDIT: This is downloadable now, sorry!

It's always funny how Vengeance Sounds interprets certain genres. I once had this sample set myself. I wouldn't consider this particular kick and synth to be "House" (the warmer side of it), but I wrote that the lines are thin in places.

Welcome to the forum, nice first entry - and good luck to all (future) participants.

Just to be clear, when you say mainstream progressive house, you're talking about the festival kind of commercial sounding EDM and not something like Strobe by deadmau5 right?

The thing is, that this is a very, very fine line. "Strobe" by deadmau5 feels like "Jump up", but is still fairly tame and has warmer kicks than Yuppi88's entry. I'd consider that particular entry a bit too much already, and not fitting to the premise - but I'm but one voice. This is why I try to steer away from EDM, as everyone interprets this differently. However, this game has been requested as this might generate traffic. So let's go with it.

This is also the very reason why I invest so much time in providing suitable audio examples, like in this post (third post of the thread).

Please take a deep dive, especially the quote-unquote "Best Progressive House Mix 2019 Vol. #4". This is what I'm IMHO looking after for this particular competition. There are still 16 days left to find a good middle ground.

What's the difference between a warm and a cold kick?