Sample Pack Contest VI: ALBUM RELEASED

[AnthonyMorgan]

Martian Lab At Midnight project file view.

I couldn't find Contest De la Rocco on the forum. Can anyone explain what it is?

Also, DHR, please start MMC #8! We need to find a theme already!

[Bregalad]

I don't even program using SPC700 assembly... I'm actually not that advanced in programming. Also, I don't even have a debugger to start with on either the SNES or the SPC700...

So true ! There is a total lack of tools for SNES development. The only compiler is WLA-DX SPC700, which has a lot of bugs, and the only debugger I found was an old modified version of SNES9x, which was quite glitched as well ! Talk about a nightmare to develop for. Thanks god I just "ported" another sound enigne to SPC700 assembly, so I didn't do much new development. The SPC itself is quite forgiving, it doesn't require you to do anything very tricky.... exept when doing stuff like initialising the echo buffer, when it can get very tricky.

Anyways, back on the subject, your submissions are more IT files designed with SNES limitations in mind rather than "true" SNES creations. I say that because the IT->SPC converter doesn't allow you to do things the SPC can do but IT can't. (note that I'm not familiar with IT so I'm not too sure about this).

[Blitz Lunar]

that's basically correct, IT being completely sample-based without DSP, whereas the SPC700 had a noise generator, reverb and echo DSP and possibly some other things too.

[Rocco]

AnthonyMorgan: That is a deceptively complicated track you churned out! I must say, you squeezed some really nifty instruments out of a very opaque set of samples.

The CdlR series was a (somewhat) bi-yearly event from 2003-2006. It's a composing contest I used to hold with a different theme and set of guidelines each time. There are still several forumers around here who participated back in the day. I'm working with MaliceX to get the old contest pages back up and running. You'll be able to peruse all 6 sets of entries in a matter of days. The contests are scored by a five-person panel instead of willy-nilly community votes. There might end up being a free spot on the panel, and if so, I'll advertise the opening(s) when I reveal more contest information.

And yeah, let's get on with MMC8, hmm? (I don't mind jumping in again if we don't hear back from DHR).

[CBlockDis]

I read quite a few of these posts concerning "legal isses" and copyrights and such, and want to clarify a few things for you all.

1: Just having a huge list of songs that are completely free and don't have any direct correlation with the original work(for example, using FF music in a FF fan game that's almost identical to FF), is not going to get anybody sued.

2: If you did decide to make a purchasable album out of this, you would need the express consent of all of the people that submitted their works to the contest, and in the small possibility that anything might have a significant relation to a copyrighted work(s), you'd need to get "rights" from the party/parties involed. Considering how much butchering and modification of the samples there was, I really doubt you have anything to worry about.

3: If you do get the rights from everybody on here to make such a release, you'd then have to arrange a compensation package to their liking(because I doubt everybody is going to sit back and watch you get all the money...whoever YOU happens to be in this case). Typically it would be an "everybody gets a piece" type deal, which would make the % each of you get drop considerably, depending on the % of the soundtrack you wrote(which would be based on length of the tracks, not the total number of tracks).

4: After all is said and done, if you happen to make money off of it, the person running the show would have to fill out 1099s for every single person they paid, who would all then afterwards have to file the 1099 on their taxes for the year. If this doesn't happen, and the IRS finds out, you're evading taxes and breaking the law.

So this is my advice, the aim of the album was to be free and for fun, so keep it that way. :p

[sci]

ahhh, I didn't want to register because I'd neglect these forums during not-SPC, but after reading all the comments, there's a few thing I want to toss out here:

wtf 6th place! I was not expecting that.

(about"Bad Tekno")

though what the heck was the end? I'm sure I've heard it before

I'm really not sure how many people caught the reference at the end. I've been really into the show recently. :3

(about"A Song for my Cat")

While there were some great ideas, done well, it felt a bit incomplete.

Good catch. I was having quite a hard time piecing my ideas together while making this song, and I thought it showed. So I went the "make it sound really nice and hope nobody complains about the structure" route. Seems to have worked in most cases.

As a sidenote, I don't actually have a cat. <_<

(about "Our Heliocentric Garden")

"Alias" sample all over the place. That's quite agressive.

That was actually inspired by smh's style. Compare to this.

why did you put the chopped up "what my music was keeping you from going to sleep"? That ruined the song! D:

haha, I was surprised at the mixed thoughts on that. The inspiration came from pogo this time. (see 4:06)
Admittedly, I could have chopped the voice up slightly better during the third/fourth bar, but oh well.

I can guess who. haha

ooo, was I that easily spotted? :3

[KungFuFurby]

Actually, if I really wanted to rig it, I could do pitch modulation. ^_^ The echo enable and disable cues were buggy... I never got a bug-fixed version of that, but I did assist with debugging with mukunda way back in 2009.

The support for us non-Intel Mac users with SNES-related programming is terrible... I'm lucky to have some sort of a debugger for the C64 via VICE's monitor system!

[sci]

I like Anthony's idea of uploading project views:
"Our Heliocentric Garden".
There are some interesting subtleties in there...

Also,

Martian Lab At Midnight

What. When I listened to that song during the judging period, I was so sure that it was done in a tracker. That bass is tighter than anything I've ever heard from Reason.

[wiseman]

ooo, was I that easily spotted? :3

I could guess, and I did within the secrecy of my mind.
Actually, I didn't guess correctly. I goofed.

Working on album art.

[KungFuFurby]

Hey, for those of us that can't use Fruity Loops... why not try SFXR to get some randomly generated samples?

http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/

I personally used this before. It works quite well. ^_^

[Charybdizs]

Hey, for those of us that can't use Fruity Loops... why not try SFXR to get some randomly generated samples?

http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/

I personally used this before. It works quite well. ^_^

Woah, nice. I just got a perfect shuttle take off sound when I clicked randomize. Cool stuff, I'll have to remember that.

[The Kroc]

A bit late now, but congrats blue.nocturne!! I loved "Mr. Huffletuff's"!

There were a few songs I thought would score higher, like "Akira Yamaoka vs Ken Ishii" which made me poo bricks when I first heard it. Considering this was a very complicated sample pack to use, you used it amazingly. I also thought "Cloudtrip" would be one of the top tracks too! I loved it, amazing use of the guitar sample! "A Song for my Cat" was incredible awesome, reminded me of Squarepusher, for some reason. In fact, it reminded me of Lawrence's entries in past SPCs, which I loved. I guess my personal favourite this time, though, was "Slick Venus". It's got almost offensively good vibes.

There were so many tracks I liked...something that amazes me each SPC is how most of the tracks have something unique and awesome to them. In my scores, for example, 50 was already a good score in my opinion, because I was considering giving 30s or 20, but I didn't, because all the tracks were worthy. :O Amazing stuff guys, everyone of you.

Anyway I had a lot of fun this time, each part of the contest is great: finding out that an SPC is being hosted, then recording the samples, making the songs, listening to them, rating them...long live SPC <3

I wasn't very happy with my entires this time sadly. Aya Hirano sounded horribly abrasive and flat. I just can't seem to get the hang of mixing and mastering. I enjoy the composing, but have no idea how to make things sound well. Which is a shame, because I consider mixing and "sound-good-ness" to be a very important part of music. I think the thing I'm most proud of is getting an old man to say "swallow, you respectful lady". I had to use little bits of speech from almost all the speech samples to get that. XD And yes, Deep Throat Tengoku was a joke entry, I did that in about two afternoons, whilst giggling manically.

[Blitz Lunar]

sigh. still haven't released the album. it's now down to me to make covers and i suck badly at that. really wanna get this released soon though... it's well over a week overdue. i have absolutely no ideas though.

[Blitz Lunar]

OK, cce got me some great album covers and now the album is finally released! Sorry it took so long everyone, please go and download and delete the entries you have. Album includes songs (numbered, tagged), covers, playlist, original samples, and info text file with results (i didn't include the scores though.) enjoy!

[Roi de Janeiro]

Oh I see .. I started a major legal talk here. Sorry for that. But now that I read all your thoughts I want to make clear what I had in mind:

I just wanted to say, that taking samples from big hit singles (like the genesis song i took as an example in my first post considering this topic) is not the best idea. I don't think anyone would be sued but its so easy to avoid such problems. And Im not talking about everyone using there own microphone. Just go to a local band, wich is not signed jet and ask them if you can use a sample of there music! Most of them will be pleased to give them away! (Its also the case with remixes).
Go to myspace and youll find plenty of bands that will fit in the sceme! Also I believe most of the people here have there own bands or other musicians among there friends that can provide them with pretty good samples! Thinking about it im pretty shure all our harddrives are full of interesting samples somehow created by ourselves.

But its just me thinking. As I said: technically its not perfectly legal but its very unlikely anyone will start sueing people for this.

Anyway im pretty happy that I found this Forum and Im looking foreward too future contests. (May they be legal or not )