Mix Challenge

Posted: **Sat Dec 28, 2024 23:35 CET**

Hello and welcome to the Songwriting Competition 089 - January 2025 / "Community Scramble"

BEFORE WE GET STARTED:

Please consult the official and very simple "Rules and Guidelines" (TL;DR version) for the Songwriting Competition regarding principles of the game, it's engaging game mechanics (allowed editing/re-submission of your entry until the deadline has been reached) and upload/submission guidelines.
The general idea of this game is to "...just make music", to also challenge yourself by stepping a bit out of your comfort zone, and take a dip at realms you've never worked in before. Instrumentals are just as welcome as productions with vocals.
The Genre, "Premise" and Rules Summary for this months challenge can always be found in in post #002

Read more about this month's competition further down below. And if you got any question, please also reach out on Discord.

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SONGWRITING COMPETITION THREAD INDEX

Post #001 -- Introduction post and index for the various stages of the Songwriting Competition. Will be updated as we progress
Post #002 -- Submission Period: General Information, Source Material, License Sponsors
Post #003 -- Cheat Sheet: A couple of examples / audio demos for this month's challenge (limited if genre is "free to select")
Post #000 -- Voting: Summarized entries and start of voting process
Post #000 -- Results: Results of the Songwriting Competition

Posted: **Sun Dec 29, 2024 00:12 CET**

CURRENT CHALLENGE - GENERAL INFORMATION

Time Frame: Wednesday, 01st January 2025 to Friday, 24th January 2025 (24 days)

Challenge submission will end on 24-JAN-2025, 23:59 UTC+1/CET (Germany) - until further notice.

The current game deadlines can be found on the Global Countdown page and on the landing site. Short reminders will also be sent out via the newsletter, social media and Discord. Does the game time frame feel too long? Why not set yourself a personal shorter one of 5-7 days. Push yourself to focus on the essentials, then use the rest of the time to ask for feedback and possible refinements.

SONGWRITING THEME: "Community Scramble" (Special Sound Design Challenge / limited sound set challenge)
GENRE: free to select

Image Source: ArtsyBee (background, via Pixabay), released under Creative Commons CC0

A few word about this month's theme:

Staff (Mister Fox) wrote: Hello and welcome to our 7th special challenge on the Mix Challenge audio community - called "Community Scramble".

The twist of the current Songwriting Competition:
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Create a music production in any genre that you feel like. However, you are only allowed to use the sounds and samples that have been sourced and provided by the Mix Challenge audio community. You can read more about the "Community Scramble" concept in the news post from September 2018.

This year, you get access to 60 new "community sourced" samples, with additional content off of the web for more variety, plus bonus content from my own recordings, and the occasional "recycled" material from previous games (to balance things out).

You can find the source material for "SWC089 / January 2025 - Community Scramble" here, and again further down below:
SWC089 Source Sound Package - on the Mix Challenge server (199,65 MB, regular ZIP)

Your task for this Songwriting Competition:
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This month, you can create a production in any music genre you feel like. Due to the community sourced content, this might be more electronic based. However, since this game's focus is creative sound design, there is zero limitation of which route this could go.

Some Ground Rules:

you are only allowed to use the sounds and samples that have been provided for this particular challenge (exceptions apply)

you are free to mangle the content as much as you like, in fact, this is highly encouraged

you are allowed to use re-sampling, wavetable / sample-based synthesis, granular synthesis, modulation, or whatever else is at your disposal in terms of tools, to this counts:

time stretching, pitch shifting, layering, slicing into chunks, reversing, re-sampling, etc - then further treating the material with whatever is at your your disposal, and maybe redo everything again (e.g.: common technique for very stylized Reese Basses)

you can use your synths and samplers to their full potential (layering of more samples and/or build in signal generators, spectral editing, granulation, built-in modulation like LFOs and/or ring-modulation, etc), as long as one/the main oscillator/"wavetable" is from the the provided content (please also see "Audio Examples" follow up post, especially Andrew Huang's videos on "make a wavetable out of everything")

you are not allowed to add any additional sounds or instruments that have not been created from the available source material in any shape or form (e.g. synthesizer stock lead, pads or drum sounds, acoustic drum kits, pianos, choirs and/or strings from Kontakt samples, singing synthesis software, etc).

you can add vocals and ad-libs (your own voice or a collaborating singer), or sounds and effects created from your voice (think: breathing, shouts, grunts, robot voice, etc). This material can be as clean or as processed as you want, be creative!

if you feel the need that your production really can't do without, you are allowed to record an electric guitar or electric bass (actual hardware instrument, no software or samples!). As long as you twist, bend, glitch, warp and/or morph (blend with other sound sources) it in some form or another (the focus is sound design! not just guitar > DI > amp suite preset, see "Audio Examples" follow up post, especially Mick Gordon, Geoffrey Day and David Levy's videos)

Your creativity will be pushed to the limits this month. This is your chance to try something completely new out of your comfort zone, experiment with synthesis and sound shaping, to get a different perspective on sound design.

I am more than curious about the results.

Songwriting Rule Summary:

► Show Spoiler

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Source Files:

SWC089 Source Sound Package - on the Mix Challenge server (199,65 MB, regular ZIP)

The provided files were packed using normal ZIP compression (Deflate, Ultra). This format should work on all operating systems and does not require any special tools to extract. If you have problems extracting the files, please make sure that your OS apps are up-to-date!

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LICENSE SPONSORS (Bonus Prizes):

A huge thank you goes to our very generous License Sponsors for this month's game. Those being (in alphabetical order):

Cherry Audio, Ghostwave Audio, Hollow Sun, Hornet Plugins, IK Multimedia, JRR Sounds, kv331 audio, Luftrum, Musiclab, Rekkerd Sounds, satyatunes - Sound / Graphic Design, and Tone2.

A detailed list of offerings can be found in the following information block.

► Show Spoiler

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

Posted: **Sun Dec 29, 2024 01:39 CET**

AUDIO EXAMPLES:
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Articles and Info Pages:

A great starting point is the "Addendum"/Supplementary thread for the Songwriting Competition
Songwriting Competition - Addendum: Music Maps and BPM Charts

Since the genre this month is "free to select", there are no clear pointers

Difference: Wavetable Synthesis to Sample-based Synthesis (articles on Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavetable_synthesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-based_synthesis

► Show Spoiler

Video Collection -- providing Sound Examples, Synthesis Basics, Tips, Tricks and Tutorials (hours of content!):

► Show Spoiler

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If you're new to songwriting, or you are in need for new helper tools, instruments, samples or presets -- please check out the following:

Songwriting Competition - Addendum: Tools to help with songwriting (outsourced megathread)

This mega thread also mentions companies that offer either free versions or demo versions of guitars, bass and drum instruments. Please have a closer look.

Additional tools worth a look for this month's special task...

► Show Spoiler

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UPDATED: 30-DEC-2024 22:30 UTC+1, updated 00-JAN-2025 00:00 UTC+1

Posted: **Wed Jan 01, 2025 16:38 CET**

@Mister Fox just for understanding: I can use any sample of the pack and also do "single cycle" like loops in the Bitwig sampler?

Posted: **Wed Jan 01, 2025 16:45 CET**

@Mister Fox ...And also allowed to use all the Bitwig modulators like sample accurate pitchbending, envs, etc?

Posted: **Wed Jan 01, 2025 17:33 CET**

drunk-ffx wrote: ↑
Wed Jan 01, 2025 16:38 CET
@Mister Fox just for understanding: I can use any sample of the pack and also do "single cycle" like loops in the Bitwig sampler?

If you only want to focus on a specific section of a sample, or just "one cycle" of it (single cycle) to turn this into a wavetable... that is within the parameters of this game.

ffx wrote: ↑
Wed Jan 01, 2025 16:45 CET
...And also allowed to use all the Bitwig modulators like sample accurate pitchbending, envs, etc?

This has been answered in post #002 as well.

Let me quote

you can use your synths and samplers to their full potential (layering of more samples and/or build in signal generators, spectral editing, granulation, built-in modulation like LFOs and/or ring-modulation, etc), as long as one/the main oscillator/"wavetable" is from the the provided content

If I assume that you are using Bitwig's sampler with a section or single cycle of any of the samples, you can still add a second OSC layer from a built-in synth engine, modulate them with LFO's, ENV's, etc, then run all that through an FX chain to create something new, and then you can still(!) use that new material to go from there.

The general idea is to use the provided sample content as "starting point", your main available building blocks. How coarse or fine detailed you get, is up to you.

Plot Twist...

Unlike the sample packages from the last years, there are no "clean" sine waves this time around. Doesn't mean you can not acquire one from the provided content regardless.

(hint: post #003, Synthesis Basics)

Posted: **Fri Jan 03, 2025 08:59 CET**

Hello,

here's my attempt, kind of abstract/ambient style.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-Dv0E ... sp=sharing

Samples used:
Shodanmind
Galaxy Kick
InfectedBreak_sn_125bpm
Finger Cymbals soft
PedalHH
C64 Pure Triangle
waveform-02
Smash Wine Bottle
Alton Towers Ride - Oblivion

Posted: **Fri Jan 03, 2025 17:20 CET**

Hi everyone,

Well... idk, just testing somethings...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nDv8i ... drive_link

Samples used

Sub Bass:
1. CeeTzar-Kick (used to generate sub bass sine wave from tail of the kick)
2. buzzerHarmonicRotation (used to generate mid-bass)
pre-eq -> Drumbus + eq

Mid Bass:
1. C64-Pure--Saw-decay-max (panned 15L, spread 26%)
2. C64-Pure--Saw-decay-max (panned 15R, spread 26%)
3. C64-Pure--Saw-decay-max (center, transp +12st)
SerumFx (hypersaw-3) + eq

Used Iris2 to generate bells:
1. Waveform-7
2. Waveform-1
3. Waveform-7
4. Waveform-7
SerumFx --> Transient master --> Delay --> Eq --> Supermassive

Pad:
1. C64-pure-pulse-and-tri-decay-max
2. (unused)
3. Waveform-3
4. C64-pure-pulse-decay-max
Lowpass Filtered with some resonance --> Eq -> Vocal Doubler -> VC 2A

Kick:
1. Electric-Kick (Kick body, Envelope automation for transpose to make downwards motion)
2. Lightswitch (Used to generate snap)
Both run to mono -> DrumBuss -> Eq -> Raum

Clap:
1. Wooden Sticks
Drum Buss -> Vocal Doubler -> Eq

Snare:
1. LinearBreak_sn_160bpm (sliced)
EQ --> VocalDoubler --> CamelCrusher

Hihat:
1. LinearBreak_sn_160bpm (sliced, and chopped very short)
no further processing

Crash:
1. Crash-01
reversed with timewarp double lenght, and used normally as well

Sweeps:
1. thudFade (Granulator 3 with transpose +12st, grainsize 2sec etc etc)
Filter automation --> Eq --> Vocal Doubler --> delay + supermassive

Posted: **Sun Jan 05, 2025 04:37 CET**

Hi again,

Many thanks to MisterFox for letting me know, that the link didn't work. Here is a new link, hopefully it works this time.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nDv8i ... sp=sharing

My producer skills is the weakest link here, I'm not very pleased of the music part (yet), so it definitely needs work. It tries to be Trance, but idk, kinda repetetive and I kinda lost the idea what to do for next. I have also piano prepared and i think was there one other sound, but I didn't end up using them at all. I'm uncertain should I go with this stub idea or try create something totally different. Sounds themselfs are pretty solid, I think...

Thanks for your time for listen

Mix Challenge

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC089 January 2025 - Submissions until 24-JAN-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET