Mix Challenge

Hello and welcome to the Special Songwriting Competition - Community Scramble (2021)


This thread covers the first part of this yearly recurring challenge - collecting samples - which are then used in the actual Songwriting Competition in January 2021 (SWC041) as basis for every participant. Which also marks the biggest twist of this game - you are only allowed to use the provided samples to create music out of it.

How, is totally up to you. You can use sampling/re-sampling techniques, granular synthesis, wavetable synthesis, you can mangle the sounds with modulation techniques. As long as you only use what has been provided by the community in form of sound snippets and/or samples. Vocals can be added on top, but please no other sound sources for the time being (up for debate).

You can read up more about this idea and the last "Community Scramble" here:
Songwriting Competition - new game idea: Community Scramble
Songwriting Competition - SWC017 January 2019 (Community Scramble)
Songwriting Competition - SWC029 January 2020 (Community Scramble)




Image Source: Pixabay, photo by Nachrichten_muc, released under Creative Commons CC0


In order for this endeavor to be successful, we need 10 entries with 3 samples per participant each in order to create a good "starter pack" (20-30 samples). The more entries, the more variety to choose from. More below...




GENERAL INFORMATION

Time Frame: Sunday, 01st November 2020 to Monday, 21st December 2010 (51 days), extended until Thursday, 24th December 2020 (54 days)

Sample submission will end on Thursday, 24-12-2020, 23:59 UTC+1/CET (Germany) - until further notice.
There will be no global countdown available, but there will be reminders via the Newsletter, Twitter account and Facebook page.

Rules: The rules of the Songwriting Competition apply, with the main difference that you're not allowed to use any other sound source than the ones provided from this sample collection thread


How to submit sample content:

• each community member shall ideally provide no more than three (number: 3) self-created sounds
• This must not be from free sample packages, but created by yourself. This material can be synthetic in nature or a Foley type recording (please keep things appropriate!), anything from single hits and stabs, to loops
• the material must be in 44/24 WAV bar minimum, and 96/24 WAV absolute maximum
• the material shall ideally not peak higher than -1.00 dBFS to prevent clipping
• IMPORTANT: bundle the following filled out TXT, which adds full credits to your work (download TXT)
• the samples and TXT must be packed in a ZIP or RAR, then uploaded to any file storage to your liking (recommended systems that store longer than 7 days, like Google Drive, DropBox, etc)
• Link to the file in this thread, with some short info what you recorded (basically mirroring what has been written in the TXT)

From all these entries, 20 to 30 samples (maybe more) 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 on time on 01st January 2021.



And that's about it!

Let's get creative!

I've recently acquired a portable recorder of my own, so I've built up a small library of audio. Sometime before the deadline I'll handpick some good ones for mangling.
You can count on some samples from me; hopefully some other folks contribute this year, too.

Great to read!

This is why I started this thread one month earlier, to get more people involved, as last year fell a bit short and I had to improvise. Still worked out, but the more variety to choose from, the more creativity options.

A friendly reminder:
We're in month 2 of the sample collection thread, with 21 days left on the counter. So far, there have been no submissions.


You lay the groundwork for Songwriting Competition 041 "Community Scramble" / January 2021!
In order for the "Community Scramble" Songwriting Competition to work, we need at least 10 mini-sample packages.


Please spread the word!

Sample time!

These samples are unprocessed sounds recorded with a Tascam GT-R1 portable recorder. I wanted to make samples with an interesting sonic character, with a focus on the sound itself instead of a conventional musical instrument. Because I’m a fan of organic sounding productions, I recorded multiple hits with different dynamics instead of single shots.

You might notice a theme in these samples: Water. “Hmm, well how do you explain the claps?” - They are swimming in reverb These claps were recorded in a tiled hallway of the former Philips Bedrijfsschool. I just love that reverb, so much I will try it in a convolution reverb (hint). The footsteps at the end I left on purpose, so you can estimate how far I was from the mics

The 'WaterBowlWarble' is created by knocking on a metal bowl filled with water while moving the bowl in various. Both 'Water_Faucet_Drain' and 'WaterBowlWarble' are recorded from very close-by, so they sound pretty wide with a somewhat disorienting stereo image *warble warble*.

It may seem a bit seem a bit narcissistic, but I'm really looking forward to working with these samples, hihi.

Link to sample pack:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LvCfg4 ... sp=sharing

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left on the counter for submitting your samples. So far, we have one entry.


Remember: You lay the groundwork for Songwriting Competition 041 "Community Scramble" / January 2021!
In order for the "Community Scramble" Songwriting Competition to work, we need at least 10 mini-sample packages. So if you've been sitting on the fence so far, now is the time to get involved.


Please spread the word!

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 4 days left for submitting your samples.

I have a question/proposal. The city I live just made an awsome iniciative (http://www.remezclatuciudad.com) . They recorded sounds from the city and made them free to create music. There are some cool and quality samples to use. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... JUFKhERN6Z

Is it possible? What do you think?

We can definitely do that as "bonus content", like I did last year with snippets form "viral" content due to the lack of participation. But it will take me some time to dig through the material.


I still prefer more content from our community, or new members however. This is what the "Community Scramble" is all about after all.

Finally finished editing some of my recordings into samples.

You can find my samples here.

I did two set of 3 samples again, since there aren't many other folks contributing
- "main" which are 3 miscellaneous samples that should be pretty fun to make music with
- "exercise" which are 3 recordings clipped from inflating an exercise ball.

All of these were recorded with my Zoom H4n at 44/24.


That said, why does it matter so much that the samples are lossless and 24-bit resolution?
Personally, I've found that saving space is more important than maintaining high resolution since I'm going to process/alter/add artifacts to these samples when I use them in my music anyway.

p.s. I know I didn't enter a track in last year's scramble. This January I should have more time so I hope to participate in SWC 041.