Sample Pack Contest VI: ALBUM RELEASED

[Rocco]

LOLing so hard at AnthonyMorgan right now. SO UNAPOLOGETICALLY HARSH.

EDIT: I seriously regret not understanding WorldJ until just now. Bravo.

[AnthonyMorgan]

I'll do as blue.nocturne and give you the "guideline" to my scores:
0-10% = Irritating.
11-30% = Obvious lack of effort.
31-50% = Something is missing.
51-60% = Good song.
61-70% = Very good song.
71-80% = Remarkable song.
81-90% = Excellent song.
91-100% = Fascinating song.

It's important to note "good" begins at 51% in my scoring. This is because I wanted to use effectively the 0 to 100 range. I used the 50% mark as a "neutral" point. So if I rated your song higher than 50 that's actually a positive reaction from me.

[Magister ZZ]

I'll do as blue.nocturne and give you the "guideline" to my scores:
0-10% = Irritating.
11-30% = Obvious lack of effort.
31-50% = Something is missing.
51-60% = Good song.
61-70% = Very good song.
71-80% = Remarkable song.
81-90% = Excellent song.
91-100% = Fascinating song.

It's important to note "good" begins at 51% in my scoring. This is because I wanted to use effectively the 0 to 100 range. I used the 50% mark as a "neutral" point. So if I rated your song higher than 50 that's actually a positive reaction from me.

I don't think it's so much the scores as to how dismissive your comments were, heh.

But then again, you seem to be from France.

[MaliceX]

To think my voting skew was harsh, I'm kind of glad I'm not the harshest of the lot. xD

Congratulations to blue.nocturne, AnthonyMorgan and qualo, for placing on the top three.
Amazing results, I was actually aiming for bottom 10, but my entries get exactly the opposite of that. (What is wrong with your ears!?!?!! )

Regarding my entries, as much as the mixing is lacklustre, I would've thought people would hint on the sloppy compositional effort, but I suppose the sheer quantity of entries to go through was a bit much for votes. I found this sample pack quite hard to work with this time round, and it was also the first sample pack I've used REAPER with.

Reading commentary, to answer some assumptions with The Incredible Cat Mincer, yes the sloppiness was semi-deliberate. It was intended to be a happy piece, but I was running dry on ideas so the sloppiness kind of shows. I thought the sloppiness added to the "fun" so I left it as is.
I sneak up and hitcha in the crotch indeed reflects on the odd-time chaos. It was meant to be a follow-up to last year's entry, but I kind of ran out of ideas to keep the piece interesting.

I trust people weren't dismayed by my lack of high marks.

[HyperX]

Sorry about not submitting scores. I halfway wanted to, but there were a few too many reasons (school, work, lack of experience with sound editing/composition in general) not to do so. Maybe next time I'll actually have a handle of sound editing and be able to offer meaningful input on the entries.

Anyway, by and large an amazing entry set. Well done everyone!

My entry was initially born basically of two things:
1) wanting to do a piece in 7 time
2) wanting to use my mellotron string chords.
Up to about 1:30 was done in the first week of the contest and the rest in the last week; if it sounds a little disjointed there to you, that's probably why.

EDIT: With regards to volume level, I agree whole-heartedly with what most people said, and after hearing it next to the other entries I was kicking myself

[Bregalad]

Well what to say...
First I'm very glad my favourite song ended up 1st ! Congratulations blue-nocture, it's really amazing !
For some reason I throught the 3 "cat" songs were from the same author, and no they're not ! Because "a song for my cat" is almost just as good (my second favourite) ! I guess it's just many people had the idea to fast up voice samples to do meows, and then coincidence that multiple songs had "cat" in their title.

Then it's pretty incredible how scores differs form one voter to the other. "Way out - no way" one another I put in the top of my songs (at first I rated it lower, then I figured it had a good feeling to it and moved it up), but other people put really bad rating ot it. The other way arround is true, there is songs that I found irritating and put them a <20 scores, couldn't listen the

m without turning the volume down, and other people who scored them 80+ !

Then to be honnest I'm quite disappointed to be only 26th... well one could say I'm the best of the worst half. I read the comments about my song, and they were constructive to me. I'll read other people's comments to other people's song if I feel like doing it (this quickly makes a lot of stuff to read !).

Then a second thing I'll add is that I'm glad it's not the same guy or the same few guys who got the top 10 with multiple entries. When I figured out that people entered about 10 entries, I find that was cheating. If they were just way better than other people (which wasn't the case, but it might have been), then any guy could have the first 5 places to himself, and that would be really unfair ! Thanks god that didn't happen.

Anyway I had A LOT OF FUN with this contest, both when composing my song and when listening, and rating other people's.

Amazing results, I was actually aiming for bottom 10, but my entries get exactly the opposite of that. (What is wrong with your ears!?!?!! )

What are you talking about ? Your songs are great. And I love how you reproduced the "star" sound effect from the NES Game "Gimmick" in "I sneak up and and hitcha the crotch". Was it intentional ?

EDIT: I seriously regret not understanding WorldJ until just now. Bravo.

Well what is it ? I probably didn't understand, as I give that song the minimal note, as it sounded horrible to me. I thought it was recorded with a lagging computer or something.

To think my voting skew was harsh, I'm kind of glad I'm not the harshest of the lot. xD

Apparently the harshest is Anthony Morgan, followed by smh, and me. I too was afraid to be harsh at first, but then I told myself I had to put bad notes on songs I didnt' like to make the good notes of songs I liked shine better. Here is it how I rated them basically :
1-19 : Very bad songs, irritating to listen
20-29 : Iritating to listen but with a few merits here and there
30-39 : Annoying songs but that are ok
40-59 : Average songs that aren't horrible but aren't exiting either
60-79 : Songs that sounded ok but were abit lacking, or had a few annoying instruments
80-89 : Good songs
90-100 : Great/Amazing songs.

I did 3 pass to *all* songs, one in alphabetical order, one in best->worst order (order from the first pass) and one in worst -> best order (from the second pass). I significantly changed the rating of a few songs on both additional passes, so I guess it was worth it.

[wiseman]

I wanna make album art! ooh ooh! Pick me!

I'll start work on it and have it ready in a couple days?

[Blitz Lunar]

sure

i found some images you might like to use:
http://vgmusic.com/~lunar/temp/spc6

i have a track list/order prepared already too, although i just need to confirm some artist names...

[Roi de Janeiro]

Im not sure if the following thougths belong here but it feels right because all the relevant people are here at the moment and the thread has nearly reached its final destination anyway. If it doesn't belong here I would be perfectly fine if it was moved to a new topic.

I just browsed the forum a bit, used the search-funktion with the term "legal" and it seems to me, that nobody before had an interest to talk about the legal side of SPC. (If im wrong please don't be mad. Im new to VGmusic-Forums) I think samples for future contests should be recorded by the ones who submit them or at least confirmed to be royality free. Of course in most cases the chances are very small that somebody will get angry about the copyright violations but if somebody will its just not worth it.

For Example I used the mel_3chords in my submission and when HyperX revealed, that he took it from the Genesis song "Watcher of the Skies" I went to youtube to listen to the song. The sample was taken from the beginning of the song and I'm 100% sure that everybody familiar with "Watcher of the Skies" would instantly recognise the sample in my tune.

I'm sure most people here (including me) dont write music for a living, but I'm also sure, that most people here (including me) would grab any chance to do so. And thats the moment things like this can get tricky. If you are an successfull composer chances are much more likely that some evil major-record-attorneys analyze your songs to sue the hell out of you! (If theres cake everybody wants a piece).

What im trying to say is: Using free samples would give us the opportunity to use our songs when and where we want, cause they would be truely ours! (And hand crafted samples have a more creative flair anyways.)

[Charybdizs]

I highly doubt we could make any profit off of any music filled with meows, screams, and beatnick santas.

[KungFuFurby]

Believe it or not, eight of my tracks are real SNES music.

Bonus SPC 6 SPC set!

Other than that... I can see why making thirteen tracks was such a bad idea in the first place.

[Bregalad]

I highly doubt we could make any profit off of any music filled with meows, screams, and beatnick santas.

I sure hope so ! I hate legal stuff and discussing about it so...

WOW This is unbelivable
it's like you limited you more ! But that was a great idea.

Making so many track is a weird idea becuase you'd rather want to put more effort into a better track than making multiple mediocre track. That, or you might be a so good composeer that all your track would top the classement, and short circuits all other participants of the contest.

Just a question : what did you use to convert to BRR ? I would be proud if you used my program but if you used another then that's just fine as well.

[AnthonyMorgan]

How would we have any legal issue? We're not selling anything and the samples are very short.

Magister ZZ, I'm afraid this is not the place for such rhetoric.

Loved your songs MaliceX, didn't know you were that talented, good job.

And yeah, how about we stick to 3-4 max. number of entries for future contests?

[KungFuFurby]

@Bregalad:

I actually wanted to make a psuedo-SNES game soundtrack for SPC 6, hence the reason for the shocking number of tracks. It's true, folks, I have become somewhat of a SNES composer... and one day, I'm actually wishing I could find someone making a SNES game. I'd be glad to compose the music. ^_^

I actually didn't use your program... directly. I did back-port your application using Eclipse, and it runs perfectly fine. I could use that to extract the samples right out of the SPC files. I actually used mukunda's SNESMod (and I'll admit it, I had to go to a Windows computer... this to me is a limited-time offer.), which did the IT file conversions. I thought using a sample pack like this to make SNES music would be a good challenge... and ironically, one of my pieces of SNES music defeated my best-performing non-SNES tune. It took two conversions for a couple of the tunes because the samples would glitch out, which meant I had to redefine the loop points.

I've got a soundtrack under construction using only SPC 1 samples. I have a bit more defined genre for this one: something more along the lines of an RPG. However, I don't plan on making 30 tracks. I'm going for more like 15. ^_^

Oh, and I personally invented a possible way to fit more than one tune into an IT file for SNES music, and I know SNESMod supports more than just playing from order 0 (though I'll admit that I hack the SPC files to play songs that do not start at order 0). I've used this technique to make really large possible SNES soundtracks... in theory, I could make the biggest soundtrack for a new PD game (the biggest one that's been made later than 1998 has 22 tracks... and three of them aren't even used!)! No, it won't rival Earthbound (Even that would be going way too far!), but I have gotten a good 50-100 tracks in before.

[Blitz Lunar]

There will be a cap on entries per person if I am running it next time. Probably 3 per person.

I think samples for future contests should be recorded by the ones who submit them or at least confirmed to be royality free

We actually did this for sample pack contests II and III. With II, all samples had to be mic-recorded by the submitter, and for III, it was taken a step further and all of the samples had to be mic-recorded but also vocal. The songs made in those contests were interesting, though there were a lot of challenges to get anything sounding good, and all the contests would sound the same if we did that all the time (honestly, noisy low quality burps, beatboxing, whistling and etc. lose their novelty after some time, and you just want something different.) Anyway, it was done from the perspective of gathering an interesting palette of sounds rather than from anything regarding law.

as for that issue -- well, is it one? I'll admit I never really thought about it, I just haven't considered it to be an issue with amateur music. I think so long as the songs are not being used commercially there's no problem, no rights holder would pursue any of these songs as there is no incentive other than vanity - and there are much more obvious targets on youtube etc. that they could chase, which they won't. There is no cut of profits they can take. I sympathise with the idea that you want to be free to use your song where you like, but perhaps that's something to forego when entering these contests. As TUC says, anything made for these contests is probably limited use elsewhere anyway ;3

I don't have a definitive answer unfortunately. There is a possibility that minor sampling constitutes fair use in amateur works...though I do think it would be a shame if people were to avoid submitting certain sounds due to copyright concerns...