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What about building a section (with downloads) here in SMS Power! about music (ripped / written / remixed) . I've made a cute mastering of GG's Sonic 2 sound tracks (for later releasing in Monotonik) but I would like to share them with you... Also music contests here would be bery bery nice !

Cheers

Such a section actually already exists: http://www.smspower.org/music/nonvgm/index.shtml. As it says on the site, you'll have to send your music to Maxim or Bock for it to be added to the site.

Jan Solrac wrote

What about building a section (with downloads) here in SMS Power! about music (ripped / written / remixed) . I've made a cute mastering of GG's Sonic 2 sound tracks (for later releasing in Monotonik) but I would like to share them with you... Also music contests here would be bery bery nice !

Cheers

We have that already, the correct URL is: http://www.smspower.org/music/nonvgm/index.shtml

And please, upload it! I'm really interested on Sonic 2 masterings! :)
It has such kickass songs

Hello,

I like the music contest idea. Someone should put this idea forward to Bock or Maxim just imageine.... "SMS Power! Annual Music Competition"

Cheers,

Jacko87

Actual competition prizes are unlikely to happen much since we're all doing this for fun and there's no money to pay for them.

The usual impetus for "competitions" is significant dates like the SMS Power anniversary. That's the 27th March so you might feel like making something for that day.

Maxim wrote

Actual competition prizes are unlikely to happen much since we're all doing this for fun and there's no money to pay for them.

The usual impetus for "competitions" is significant dates like the SMS Power anniversary. That's the 27th March so you might feel like making something for that day.

At some point, I would not mind offering stuff as contest prize.
I've been thinking about organising more contests (music & drawing contests, in addition to programming stuff) lately. That would be nice organising that.

Competitions yes, but as this site is fully "public domain", made up of people's free times, I suggest not to have prizes (or money based prizes, whatever). Maybe somethink like a semestral compo ?

Cheers

Maybe we could organize a first music contest pretty soon?
Would someone be motivated to prepare a competition introduction/rules text? I can make a page out of it and post a news, etc.
What about a drawing/art contest also ?

Hi Bock,

Jacko here,

I will type up a music competition text if you want me to just tell me what you roughly want and I can add to it. Imagine the fun people could have doing these competitions I think it is a cool idea. I agree with others don't do prizes but I believe competitions are a good idea as it makes peoples experience at SMS Power! more enjoyable than it has ever been!

Thanks,

Jacko87

Hi Everyone,

well Bock, heres the document sorry I know I got carried away it's for the music competition. If you don't like it you can bag me about it. As for a drawing competition I am no artist I am a musician

The doc is on my website below:

http://smidiforum.tripod.com/musicsmspower.html

Cheers,

Jacko

Thanks a lot for doing that, Jacko.
I'll tell you my opinion about what I think is suitable or not:

Quote

- All music must be related to a SEGA Master System software title (This includes GG's)

May rephrase mentionning "Sega 8-bit System" (this includes Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, SG-1000, etc.).

Quote

- No copying of any current material is permitted as this may be violating copyright laws and also may make the original author of the song very angry.

How does this apply to reusing samples? I overally agree that current material should not copied, but we may want to have a certain tolerance on that. Aren't remixes themselves a way of "copying current material" ? For exemple, I would not mind hearing in a song a short extract from the original game sound/music. If it's properly mixed around it can be good.
It's difficult to know where to draw the line here.

Quote

- If you are found copying any material of any sort you will be automatically disqualified from the competition

This may not be needed to mention, the above rules says it.

Quote

- If you are clever and think that you may be able to reverse engineer a vgm file and turn it to a mp3 or wav and have remixed the sounds contained in the track this definitely won't make a valid piece of music as this is not a SMSPower! programming competition.
- You are NOT allowed to use any software that converts a vgm file or similar to a MIDI file, this is not only cheating but takes the fun out of the competition.

I'm no musician but I'm not sure if this would really impact anything. The idea is to make an original music based on a game title. It is probable that if someone submit an automated not-arranged MIDI conversion with default MIDI samples, it won't appeal much and it won't sounds very good anyway.
As for turning a VGM into a MP3/WAV, WinAMP can do that for you by changing its Output Plugin to be the one called "Disk Writer", then it logs the output from the VGM to a file. But the same apply, if someone submit a converted VGM as-is, it will be obvious to everyone and won't be interesting or get any vote.
Now, the reason I'm suggesting not to restrict on those area is to avoid limiting creativity. Certain people may be great at remixing music in certain ways but not to find out scores by simply hearing the music, so they can use different ways to express their creativity. As mentionned above, usage of the original game music can also be great if it's done properly (along with your own innovation).
It's all about finding the right balance.

As for submission, we should be able to setup a dedicated web form for uploading the files along with name/comments/etc.

How would be judge anyway? Do we even need to judge if there's no prize, or is judging a kind of motivation factor? Can we setup a voting poll on the forums or would that be too "public"? Not that we have a billion users anyway.

Open to more suggestion!

Jacko wrote

The music can be in the following formats (.mp3, .mid, .wav)

What about .vgm and less obvious .xm, .it, .mod and so on. Of course, one could convert the music to .mp3 and it would be accepted, but keeping the music in its original format will save space and most likely improve interest by keeping downloading time short.

Also, this might be the time for Martin to release his PSG-tracker publically! :)

Bock wrote

Can we setup a voting poll on the forums or would that be too "public"?

I think this would be the best idea. It involves more people in the process. Also, it could be a great "standard procedure" to follow for possible future demo-contests.

Goodie, music competitions!

My humble opinions on the suggested rules:

Submissions should be related to SEGA 8 bit games, that goes without saying. No need to make any exact regulations; if a song is too OT it will not do well in the competition.

No need to list examples of tools that may be used. Composers should be free to use any methods they see fit. The end result is what counts. (but don't take that as an excuse to go killing little babies and raping the handicapped in the name of the Cause. You want the [insert least favourite world religion] forum across the street.)

The accepted formats should include att least ogg and mpeg. These are two very efficient music compression formats for which players are widely available on practically all platforms. Midi is probably not a very good idea, since it is not really a sound format and tends to sound different on different setups. A good replacement for midi would probably be mod formats, as Marc pointed out. VGM should probably also be accepted, in case anyone wants to program the Real Thing.

Copying of material should be allowed to some extent, as this is often used in the non-competition Art. If a song is just a ripp-off it won't do well in the competition and the author will have made a fool out of himself. That is enough incentive.

Naturally there should be a deadline. Not too much to say about that :-).

The next thing about reverse engineering is again a matter of copying other artists' material, which I think should be allowed to a reasonable extent. The methods of music making should be up to the artist, and we are after all looking for covers/remixes of SEGA tunes. Bock mentioned this as well.

The next thing about excluding specific pieces of software from legitimate use is just silly. It is entirely beside the point, it does not affect creativity, and there is no way to enforce that rule. Such a rule would only mean more attention to trivial technicalities and less time for Real Work.

The next part about file formats should probably be clarified, or omitted as it has already been mentioned. No need to allow pkzip, gzip archives and the like, and in these cases I don't think they will make much difference anyway. (it should perhaps be noted that, as a UN*X user, I have a natural aversion to pkzip archives - I can't express how annoying it is when some Windows weenie distributes a software package as a pkzip file that extracts into 11,000 files in the current directory, all named FOO697~1.OVL. But now I'm getting OT)

Next two points I agree with, especially the fun part :-).

And then setting up a page with a form for submissions, and from where the entries can be downloaded, is probably a good idea.

I for one agree completely with the suggestion to allow a public poll. Anyone interested can download the entries and grade them, and when the contest closes we have a winner by popular opinion. Perhaps parameters such as originality, musical quality, etc, could be graded separately; I don't think I have an opinion on that matter.

I hope this turns out well and we have a competition soon and get to hear some great tunes!

Bjarni

Hello All,

I have read everyones posts and I must say that peoples comments are fantastic. My text that I wrote and was only very sketchy. Bock, Maxim or someone else feel free to save my text and edit it in anyway you feel and I think that if we all work together we may be able to come up with some rules that suit everyone.

If you want I can edit my document and put some of those changes into effect.

I guess that some of my rules where a touch "restrictive" in some ways. As I think Bock said it is one of those things where people will have to find a balance as to how far they can go but people should use common sense anyway and go by their own judgement.

As for judging I have thought this over and I don't think their is any need for it as others have mentioned.

Anyway enough of the rant talk, lets have fun composing music!

Cheers,

Jacko

Hello Everyone,

Heres the revised document, once again it's on my website:

http://smidiforum.tripod.com/musicsmspower.html

Cheers,

Jacko

Here is another suggestion for rules, with a little bit of a demo website to go with it:

http://www.update.uu.se/~bjarni/smspower_compo/

Who wants to administrate the competition?

Bjarni

Bjarni wrote

Voting will go on while submissions are being accepted, until March 26th.

That sounds a bit unfair to me. That way your piece of music is more exposed if submitted early. I suggest, that the music are to be submitted before a certain date (e.g. a week before SMSPower Anniversary) and after that date, people can download and vote until the anniversary (or whatever date the compo ends).

Besides that, I think it looks just great!

Good work also Bjarni. You may want to fill in with some of the points Jacko wrote, such as:
Although it is not prefered that you copy other peoples music it may be possible for you to use small "snippets" of their music as a basis for inspiration.

As for the file format, I'd suggest leaving the possibility for people to ask if their file format is supported. There's always the possibility of dumping whatever format (eg: MOD, XM) to a MP3 for people who can't play those files.

Also expand Sega 8-bit to a list of the different systems. Knowing how everyone copy & paste news and how Google hate us, I don't mind adding explicit keywords =)

I'd put the rules on the same page as the "main".

Also, let's see... today is January 3rd. I don't mind doing a competition for the site anniversary, but nearly 3 months of duration is too long. A music competition should not take more than one month IHMO else people may either delay starting to work or either get demotivated because if the competition is too stretched, there will be less buzz/discussion about it.

I would suggest doing a competition with a deadline in, say, 3-4 weeks, and a voting session of 1 week. If it goes well, we can always do another one (this time both music & gfx) for the anniversary.

Once we're near-ok, you can e-mail me the files, I'll modify them to suit to our new look/CSS stuff and can have them hosted here. I can administrate the competition since I won't submit anything myself.

Bock wrote

Good work also Bjarni. You may want to fill in with some of the points Jacko wrote, such as:
Although it is not prefered that you copy other peoples music it may be possible for you to use small "snippets" of their music as a basis for inspiration.

Sure, I can add something. Although I think it should be clear that it is up to common sense and that if a song is an uncreative ripoff, it will either be discarded by the admins for not being serious or receive poor score.

Quote

As for the file format, I'd suggest leaving the possibility for people to ask if their file format is supported. There's always the possibility of dumping whatever format (eg: MOD, XM) to a MP3 for people who can't play those files.

Because of this possibility, I think we should not clutter the rules and submissions with such details. If a contester has problems with file formats, he can always ask an admin or in a forum for conversion software or for someone else to help convert the file.

Quote

Also expand Sega 8-bit to a list of the different systems. Knowing how everyone copy & paste news and how Google hate us, I don't mind adding explicit keywords =)

I'd put the rules on the same page as the "main".

Sure, these two I can do. What systems should I include?

Quote

Also, let's see... today is January 3rd. I don't mind doing a competition for the site anniversary, but nearly 3 months of duration is too long. A music competition should not take more than one month IHMO else people may either delay starting to work or either get demotivated because if the competition is too stretched, there will be less buzz/discussion about it.

I was thinking of starting the competition in a few weeks, but see below.

Quote

I would suggest doing a competition with a deadline in, say, 3-4 weeks, and a voting session of 1 week. If it goes well, we can always do another one (this time both music & gfx) for the anniversary.

This way we get a first test run before the real thing. Sounds great.

About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher. I think we should probably allow voting all along, but also keep voting after the submission deadline. So we set the submission deadline a few days before the anniversary, and then keep voting open until the 27th. Does that sound good?

Quote

Once we're near-ok, you can e-mail me the files, I'll modify them to suit to our new look/CSS stuff and can have them hosted here. I can administrate the competition since I won't submit anything myself.

Great, thanks! Will you take care of writing the scripts as well?

By the way, does someone want to make a better logo? Maybe the text could look more like the SMS Power! logo, and you could put in some graphics, like a singing Sonic the hedgehog from the ending scene or something. I could do it if no-one else wants to.

Bjarni

Bjarni wrote

About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher.

I don't understand this. Do you mean that the shorter time used to produce the music, the higher rating it should get? I disagree. Also, interest in the compo might de- or increase over time, making such compensations unpredictable.

EDIT: Oh, I think I understand what you mean now. I was thinking, that the poll would show a list of the entries, and one would vote for the piece of music he thought should win. You are probably thinking, that the voters will rate the entries, right? In that case, we might as well allow voting during the whole period and maybe even skip the extra days after no more submissions is allowed.

I must admit, I prefer that people vote on the one song, they think is best. But either way is fine with me. I'm looking forward to hear some great tunes :)

Marc Klemp wrote

Bjarni wrote

About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher.

I don't understand this. Do you mean that the shorter time used to produce the music, the higher rating it should get? I disagree. Also, interest in the compo might de- or increase over time, making such compensations unpredictable.

He is thinking about a voting system where each song has to be rated (say, on a 1-5 scale). So getting more "votes" doesn't mean you do better in the end.

Marc Klemp wrote

Bjarni wrote

About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher.

I don't understand this. Do you mean that the shorter time used to produce the music, the higher rating it should get? I disagree. Also, interest in the compo might de- or increase over time, making such compensations unpredictable.

EDIT: Oh, I think I understand what you mean now. I was thinking, that the poll would show a list of the entries, and one would vote for the piece of music he thought should win. You are probably thinking, that the voters will rate the entries, right?

Ah yes, to clarify: voters rate entries on some scale, say 0-10. They are allowed to vote on any number of entries they wish. The ratings are averaged, and the entry with the highest average wins. A threshold on the number of ratings should exist, so an entry only rated by one person, who gave it a 10, doesn't win.

So, this way, wether your entry has been public for a longer or shorter time makes no difference. I think allowing voting early makes the job easier for the judges and makes the competition more interesting. No reason not to allow it really.

Bjarni

Bjarni wrote

I think allowing voting early makes the job easier for the judges and makes the competition more interesting. No reason not to allow it really.

I'm sorry to be obstinate, but I actually think it will make the job more difficult. Ratings will have to be relative. I mean, if I thought the first tune released was very crappy, I would give it a low rating. If the rest of the tunes released appear to be as bad, low ratings would actually be wrong. Were the rest of the songs crappier, I would have to give them even lower ratings - just to keep song #1 at place #1 (I'm sorry if I'm unclear, I can explain it in danish;)

In my opinion rating is as good as voting-for-the-winner (actually rating might be more fun). But making rating/voting possible before all tunes are released, is not a good idea.

Marc Klemp wrote

In my opinion rating is as good as voting-for-the-winner (actually rating might be more fun). But making rating/voting possible before all tunes are released, is not a good idea.

I'm with Marc on this.

(Note however that we yet have to setup a way to actually rate the song, requiring custom code. If we want to link rating with the forums user accounts it has to be done as a phpbb modules or read user account from the database, etc. Not a simple task. But someone will do it :P)

Hello,

As with Bock, Mark and others

I think voting should only be done after the deadline and it should be stated that people will have to wait for about a week for the results. My brother has opted to do some gfx for the page if you want.

As for duration I reakon a month may not quite be long enough, I am a musician and it can take many hours to get a song the way you like it. Something more like two months may be good enough. As others have stated if this all turns out to be a shambles we can always try again next year.

Cheers,

Jacko

Very well, I shall concede :-). Let's do a few weeks of submissions, with continuous updates of the entries page, and then a few days of rating after the submission deadline. I'm not sure two months is such a good idea because, as has been pointed out, people might lose interest. Because the anniversary is pretty soon, though, I suggest we give it a try with a submission period of, say, February 1st until March 20th. That way we have time to prepare the contest, and we will find out if those are suitable lengths of time for submissions and ratings. I'm guessing, wildly, that both should probably be a little shorter.

Bjarni

Hi Bjarni,

Bjarni, I presume we enter the competiton from that website you created? (correct me if i'm wrong!) and yes as the anniversary of SMSPower is not far off that is a good length for the competiton. My MIDI file entry is nearly done!!

Anyway I got a picture, this was made for you by my brother hope you like it!

[img]http://smidiforum.tripod.com/smsmusic.png[/img]

incase you can't see the image here's the URL to it:

http://smidiforum.tripod.com/smsmusic.png

Thanks[/img]

jacko87 wrote

Hi Bjarni,

Bjarni, I presume we enter the competiton from that website you created? (correct me if i'm wrong!) and yes as the anniversary of SMSPower is not far off that is a good length for the competiton. My MIDI file entry is nearly done!!

Well, you obviously can't enter any contest from the dummy sketch page that I made if that's what you mean. Wasn't it Bock who said he'd take care of setting up the real site for us? I suppose if we all agree about the details, he can start doing that with my pages as a reference. It would be nice if those already registered for the forum didn't have to register again, but I don't know how much work that is. Then he'd want to write a couple of little scripts for the entries page to accept entries and to list accepted entries (preferably in random order).

Quote

Anyway I got a picture, this was made for you by my brother hope you like it!

incase you can't see the image here's the URL to it:

http://smidiforum.tripod.com/smsmusic.png

Nope, looks like tripod doesn't want us looking at their pictures. No, wait... now it works. The picture does look kinda sloppy, though, and the text can not be read because it is far too small.

Bjarni

Yeah. The text is unreadable. It's still quite nice though. Could your brother make it a bit bigger, or in some other way make the text more readable, Jacko?

I whipped up an image which is now on the page at http://www.update.uu.se/~bjarni/smspower_compo/

What do you think of it?

Damn! Have to catch the bus. Later, all!

Bjarni

Hello

Im Jackos brother Andrew. i was the one who created the image and i will try to improve the image by making it larger. I also have a couple of ideas for other pictures for the music comp.

Cheers Andrew

Nice to see this going...
Please, when the compo starts, make a warning at SMS Power! 's index page ( ie, www.smspower.org -> There is a compo going on!!! ).

Best regards[/list]

Thanks for your work, guys.
Don't worry too much about the page design.

Give me a few days and I'll try to work it out and have things setup and published on the site. At first we can make an announcement, and we'll setup the uploading/script stuff later on.

Probably a daft question, as I've just skimmed through the thread:

Is this contest all about programmable music, or are you allowing studio/8-track/live recordings that have been transferred onto computer as MP3s, etc?

It'd be class to hear some more 'organic' music, amongst the remixes, MIDIs and what have you. Looking forward to some imaginative arrangements =)

Also, should I register here if I want to download the entries and comment on them?
It might be useful if the artist gives a brief description of his work, so people can avoid 20-minute Euphoric Trance versions of Hang On.
But then again, that would ruin the surprise factor of the brilliantly inventive tracks, wouldn't it?

I'm not planning to enter anything, but might try and prepare something for a future contest if this is to become something.

Perhaps the next step is SMS-MTV.

transbot wrote

Probably a daft question, as I've just skimmed through the thread:

Is this contest all about programmable music, or are you allowing studio/8-track/live recordings that have been transferred onto computer as MP3s, etc?

It'd be class to hear some more 'organic' music, amongst the remixes, MIDIs and what have you. Looking forward to some imaginative arrangements =)

All genres of music will be eligible as long as the entries are related to 8 bit SEGA games and consoles. I'd like to hear some live entries too.

Quote

Also, should I register here if I want to download the entries and comment on them?

Information on whether registration in the forum will suffice to compete in or judge the competition will be presented at some later time by Bock, I suppose. But you should register here anyway if you are interested in this stuff and want to post in the forum.

Bjarni

Author	Message
Jan Solrac Guest	Music Contests (was: got an idea) Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2004 1:28 pm
Jan Solrac Guest	What about building a section (with downloads) here in SMS Power! about music (ripped / written / remixed) . I've made a cute mastering of GG's Sonic 2 sound tracks (for later releasing in Monotonik) but I would like to share them with you... Also music contests here would be bery bery nice ! Cheers

MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Re: got an idea Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2004 2:40 pm Last edited by MarcK on Wed Dec 29, 2004 9:52 am; edited 1 time in total
MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Such a section actually already exists: http://www.smspower.org/music/nonvgm/index.shtml. As it says on the site, you'll have to send your music to Maxim or Bock for it to be added to the site.

DukeNukem Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 114 Location: Brazil	Re: got an idea Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2004 2:35 am
	Jan Solrac wrote What about building a section (with downloads) here in SMS Power! about music (ripped / written / remixed) . I've made a cute mastering of GG's Sonic 2 sound tracks (for later releasing in Monotonik) but I would like to share them with you... Also music contests here would be bery bery nice ! Cheers We have that already, the correct URL is: http://www.smspower.org/music/nonvgm/index.shtml And please, upload it! I'm really interested on Sonic 2 masterings! :) It has such kickass songs

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	I like the music contest idea Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 7:13 am
	Hello, I like the music contest idea. Someone should put this idea forward to Bock or Maxim just imageine.... "SMS Power! Annual Music Competition" Cheers, Jacko87

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Competitions Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 9:39 pm
	Actual competition prizes are unlikely to happen much since we're all doing this for fun and there's no money to pay for them. The usual impetus for "competitions" is significant dates like the SMS Power anniversary. That's the 27th March so you might feel like making something for that day.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Re: Competitions Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 9:54 pm
	Maxim wrote Actual competition prizes are unlikely to happen much since we're all doing this for fun and there's no money to pay for them. The usual impetus for "competitions" is significant dates like the SMS Power anniversary. That's the 27th March so you might feel like making something for that day. At some point, I would not mind offering stuff as contest prize. I've been thinking about organising more contests (music & drawing contests, in addition to programming stuff) lately. That would be nice organising that.

jan solrac Guest	ha Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 9:42 pm
jan solrac Guest	Competitions yes, but as this site is fully "public domain", made up of people's free times, I suggest not to have prizes (or money based prizes, whatever). Maybe somethink like a semestral compo ? Cheers

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 11:12 pm
	Maybe we could organize a first music contest pretty soon? Would someone be motivated to prepare a competition introduction/rules text? I can make a page out of it and post a news, etc. What about a drawing/art contest also ?

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	I'll Do It!!!!!!!!!! Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 6:04 am
	Hi Bock, Jacko here, I will type up a music competition text if you want me to just tell me what you roughly want and I can add to it. Imagine the fun people could have doing these competitions I think it is a cool idea. I agree with others don't do prizes but I believe competitions are a good idea as it makes peoples experience at SMS Power! more enjoyable than it has ever been! Thanks, Jacko87

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Heres the document!!! Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:00 am
	Hi Everyone, well Bock, heres the document sorry I know I got carried away it's for the music competition. If you don't like it you can bag me about it. As for a drawing competition I am no artist I am a musician The doc is on my website below: http://smidiforum.tripod.com/musicsmspower.html Cheers, Jacko

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 11:43 am
	Thanks a lot for doing that, Jacko. I'll tell you my opinion about what I think is suitable or not: Quote - All music must be related to a SEGA Master System software title (This includes GG's) May rephrase mentionning "Sega 8-bit System" (this includes Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, SG-1000, etc.). Quote - No copying of any current material is permitted as this may be violating copyright laws and also may make the original author of the song very angry. How does this apply to reusing samples? I overally agree that current material should not copied, but we may want to have a certain tolerance on that. Aren't remixes themselves a way of "copying current material" ? For exemple, I would not mind hearing in a song a short extract from the original game sound/music. If it's properly mixed around it can be good. It's difficult to know where to draw the line here. Quote - If you are found copying any material of any sort you will be automatically disqualified from the competition This may not be needed to mention, the above rules says it. Quote - If you are clever and think that you may be able to reverse engineer a vgm file and turn it to a mp3 or wav and have remixed the sounds contained in the track this definitely won't make a valid piece of music as this is not a SMSPower! programming competition. - You are NOT allowed to use any software that converts a vgm file or similar to a MIDI file, this is not only cheating but takes the fun out of the competition. I'm no musician but I'm not sure if this would really impact anything. The idea is to make an original music based on a game title. It is probable that if someone submit an automated not-arranged MIDI conversion with default MIDI samples, it won't appeal much and it won't sounds very good anyway. As for turning a VGM into a MP3/WAV, WinAMP can do that for you by changing its Output Plugin to be the one called "Disk Writer", then it logs the output from the VGM to a file. But the same apply, if someone submit a converted VGM as-is, it will be obvious to everyone and won't be interesting or get any vote. Now, the reason I'm suggesting not to restrict on those area is to avoid limiting creativity. Certain people may be great at remixing music in certain ways but not to find out scores by simply hearing the music, so they can use different ways to express their creativity. As mentionned above, usage of the original game music can also be great if it's done properly (along with your own innovation). It's all about finding the right balance. As for submission, we should be able to setup a dedicated web form for uploading the files along with name/comments/etc. How would be judge anyway? Do we even need to judge if there's no prize, or is judging a kind of motivation factor? Can we setup a voting poll on the forums or would that be too "public"? Not that we have a billion users anyway. Open to more suggestion!

MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 11:58 am
MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Jacko wrote The music can be in the following formats (.mp3, .mid, .wav) What about .vgm and less obvious .xm, .it, .mod and so on. Of course, one could convert the music to .mp3 and it would be accepted, but keeping the music in its original format will save space and most likely improve interest by keeping downloading time short. Also, this might be the time for Martin to release his PSG-tracker publically! :) Bock wrote Can we setup a voting poll on the forums or would that be too "public"? I think this would be the best idea. It involves more people in the process. Also, it could be a great "standard procedure" to follow for possible future demo-contests.

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 9:54 pm
	Goodie, music competitions! My humble opinions on the suggested rules: Submissions should be related to SEGA 8 bit games, that goes without saying. No need to make any exact regulations; if a song is too OT it will not do well in the competition. No need to list examples of tools that may be used. Composers should be free to use any methods they see fit. The end result is what counts. (but don't take that as an excuse to go killing little babies and raping the handicapped in the name of the Cause. You want the [insert least favourite world religion] forum across the street.) The accepted formats should include att least ogg and mpeg. These are two very efficient music compression formats for which players are widely available on practically all platforms. Midi is probably not a very good idea, since it is not really a sound format and tends to sound different on different setups. A good replacement for midi would probably be mod formats, as Marc pointed out. VGM should probably also be accepted, in case anyone wants to program the Real Thing. Copying of material should be allowed to some extent, as this is often used in the non-competition Art. If a song is just a ripp-off it won't do well in the competition and the author will have made a fool out of himself. That is enough incentive. Naturally there should be a deadline. Not too much to say about that :-). The next thing about reverse engineering is again a matter of copying other artists' material, which I think should be allowed to a reasonable extent. The methods of music making should be up to the artist, and we are after all looking for covers/remixes of SEGA tunes. Bock mentioned this as well. The next thing about excluding specific pieces of software from legitimate use is just silly. It is entirely beside the point, it does not affect creativity, and there is no way to enforce that rule. Such a rule would only mean more attention to trivial technicalities and less time for Real Work. The next part about file formats should probably be clarified, or omitted as it has already been mentioned. No need to allow pkzip, gzip archives and the like, and in these cases I don't think they will make much difference anyway. (it should perhaps be noted that, as a UN*X user, I have a natural aversion to pkzip archives - I can't express how annoying it is when some Windows weenie distributes a software package as a pkzip file that extracts into 11,000 files in the current directory, all named FOO697~1.OVL. But now I'm getting OT) Next two points I agree with, especially the fun part :-). And then setting up a page with a form for submissions, and from where the entries can be downloaded, is probably a good idea. I for one agree completely with the suggestion to allow a public poll. Anyone interested can download the entries and grade them, and when the contest closes we have a winner by popular opinion. Perhaps parameters such as originality, musical quality, etc, could be graded separately; I don't think I have an opinion on that matter. I hope this turns out well and we have a competition soon and get to hear some great tunes! Bjarni

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Well, Some Good Suggestions Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 3:57 am
	Hello All, I have read everyones posts and I must say that peoples comments are fantastic. My text that I wrote and was only very sketchy. Bock, Maxim or someone else feel free to save my text and edit it in anyway you feel and I think that if we all work together we may be able to come up with some rules that suit everyone. If you want I can edit my document and put some of those changes into effect. I guess that some of my rules where a touch "restrictive" in some ways. As I think Bock said it is one of those things where people will have to find a balance as to how far they can go but people should use common sense anyway and go by their own judgement. As for judging I have thought this over and I don't think their is any need for it as others have mentioned. Anyway enough of the rant talk, lets have fun composing music! Cheers, Jacko

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Revised Document Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 7:36 am
	Hello Everyone, Heres the revised document, once again it's on my website: http://smidiforum.tripod.com/musicsmspower.html Cheers, Jacko

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 8:49 pm
	Here is another suggestion for rules, with a little bit of a demo website to go with it: http://www.update.uu.se/~bjarni/smspower_compo/ Who wants to administrate the competition? Bjarni

MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 9:17 pm
MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Bjarni wrote Voting will go on while submissions are being accepted, until March 26th. That sounds a bit unfair to me. That way your piece of music is more exposed if submitted early. I suggest, that the music are to be submitted before a certain date (e.g. a week before SMSPower Anniversary) and after that date, people can download and vote until the anniversary (or whatever date the compo ends). Besides that, I think it looks just great!

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 9:32 pm
	Good work also Bjarni. You may want to fill in with some of the points Jacko wrote, such as: Although it is not prefered that you copy other peoples music it may be possible for you to use small "snippets" of their music as a basis for inspiration. As for the file format, I'd suggest leaving the possibility for people to ask if their file format is supported. There's always the possibility of dumping whatever format (eg: MOD, XM) to a MP3 for people who can't play those files. Also expand Sega 8-bit to a list of the different systems. Knowing how everyone copy & paste news and how Google hate us, I don't mind adding explicit keywords =) I'd put the rules on the same page as the "main". Also, let's see... today is January 3rd. I don't mind doing a competition for the site anniversary, but nearly 3 months of duration is too long. A music competition should not take more than one month IHMO else people may either delay starting to work or either get demotivated because if the competition is too stretched, there will be less buzz/discussion about it. I would suggest doing a competition with a deadline in, say, 3-4 weeks, and a voting session of 1 week. If it goes well, we can always do another one (this time both music & gfx) for the anniversary. Once we're near-ok, you can e-mail me the files, I'll modify them to suit to our new look/CSS stuff and can have them hosted here. I can administrate the competition since I won't submit anything myself.

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:12 pm
	Bock wrote Good work also Bjarni. You may want to fill in with some of the points Jacko wrote, such as: Although it is not prefered that you copy other peoples music it may be possible for you to use small "snippets" of their music as a basis for inspiration. Sure, I can add something. Although I think it should be clear that it is up to common sense and that if a song is an uncreative ripoff, it will either be discarded by the admins for not being serious or receive poor score. Quote As for the file format, I'd suggest leaving the possibility for people to ask if their file format is supported. There's always the possibility of dumping whatever format (eg: MOD, XM) to a MP3 for people who can't play those files. Because of this possibility, I think we should not clutter the rules and submissions with such details. If a contester has problems with file formats, he can always ask an admin or in a forum for conversion software or for someone else to help convert the file. Quote Also expand Sega 8-bit to a list of the different systems. Knowing how everyone copy & paste news and how Google hate us, I don't mind adding explicit keywords =) I'd put the rules on the same page as the "main". Sure, these two I can do. What systems should I include? Quote Also, let's see... today is January 3rd. I don't mind doing a competition for the site anniversary, but nearly 3 months of duration is too long. A music competition should not take more than one month IHMO else people may either delay starting to work or either get demotivated because if the competition is too stretched, there will be less buzz/discussion about it. I was thinking of starting the competition in a few weeks, but see below. Quote I would suggest doing a competition with a deadline in, say, 3-4 weeks, and a voting session of 1 week. If it goes well, we can always do another one (this time both music & gfx) for the anniversary. This way we get a first test run before the real thing. Sounds great. About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher. I think we should probably allow voting all along, but also keep voting after the submission deadline. So we set the submission deadline a few days before the anniversary, and then keep voting open until the 27th. Does that sound good? Quote Once we're near-ok, you can e-mail me the files, I'll modify them to suit to our new look/CSS stuff and can have them hosted here. I can administrate the competition since I won't submit anything myself. Great, thanks! Will you take care of writing the scripts as well? By the way, does someone want to make a better logo? Maybe the text could look more like the SMS Power! logo, and you could put in some graphics, like a singing Sonic the hedgehog from the ending scene or something. I could do it if no-one else wants to. Bjarni

MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:29 pm Last edited by MarcK on Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:35 pm; edited 2 times in total
MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Bjarni wrote About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher. I don't understand this. Do you mean that the shorter time used to produce the music, the higher rating it should get? I disagree. Also, interest in the compo might de- or increase over time, making such compensations unpredictable. EDIT: Oh, I think I understand what you mean now. I was thinking, that the poll would show a list of the entries, and one would vote for the piece of music he thought should win. You are probably thinking, that the voters will rate the entries, right? In that case, we might as well allow voting during the whole period and maybe even skip the extra days after no more submissions is allowed. I must admit, I prefer that people vote on the one song, they think is best. But either way is fine with me. I'm looking forward to hear some great tunes :)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:31 pm
	Marc Klemp wrote Bjarni wrote About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher. I don't understand this. Do you mean that the shorter time used to produce the music, the higher rating it should get? I disagree. Also, interest in the compo might de- or increase over time, making such compensations unpredictable. He is thinking about a voting system where each song has to be rated (say, on a 1-5 scale). So getting more "votes" doesn't mean you do better in the end.

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:38 pm
	Marc Klemp wrote Bjarni wrote About the unfairness of allowing voting during the whole submission period: note that the only effect of submitting early would be that your score would be more precise compared to someone who submits just before the deadline, not higher. I don't understand this. Do you mean that the shorter time used to produce the music, the higher rating it should get? I disagree. Also, interest in the compo might de- or increase over time, making such compensations unpredictable. EDIT: Oh, I think I understand what you mean now. I was thinking, that the poll would show a list of the entries, and one would vote for the piece of music he thought should win. You are probably thinking, that the voters will rate the entries, right? Ah yes, to clarify: voters rate entries on some scale, say 0-10. They are allowed to vote on any number of entries they wish. The ratings are averaged, and the entry with the highest average wins. A threshold on the number of ratings should exist, so an entry only rated by one person, who gave it a 10, doesn't win. So, this way, wether your entry has been public for a longer or shorter time makes no difference. I think allowing voting early makes the job easier for the judges and makes the competition more interesting. No reason not to allow it really. Bjarni

MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 10:49 pm
MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Bjarni wrote I think allowing voting early makes the job easier for the judges and makes the competition more interesting. No reason not to allow it really. I'm sorry to be obstinate, but I actually think it will make the job more difficult. Ratings will have to be relative. I mean, if I thought the first tune released was very crappy, I would give it a low rating. If the rest of the tunes released appear to be as bad, low ratings would actually be wrong. Were the rest of the songs crappier, I would have to give them even lower ratings - just to keep song #1 at place #1 (I'm sorry if I'm unclear, I can explain it in danish;) In my opinion rating is as good as voting-for-the-winner (actually rating might be more fun). But making rating/voting possible before all tunes are released, is not a good idea.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 12:06 am
	Marc Klemp wrote In my opinion rating is as good as voting-for-the-winner (actually rating might be more fun). But making rating/voting possible before all tunes are released, is not a good idea. I'm with Marc on this. (Note however that we yet have to setup a way to actually rate the song, requiring custom code. If we want to link rating with the forums user accounts it has to be done as a phpbb modules or read user account from the database, etc. Not a simple task. But someone will do it :P)

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Voting Should Be Done After The Deadline!!!!! Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 4:04 am
	Hello, As with Bock, Mark and others I think voting should only be done after the deadline and it should be stated that people will have to wait for about a week for the results. My brother has opted to do some gfx for the page if you want. As for duration I reakon a month may not quite be long enough, I am a musician and it can take many hours to get a song the way you like it. Something more like two months may be good enough. As others have stated if this all turns out to be a shambles we can always try again next year. Cheers, Jacko

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 3:32 pm
	Very well, I shall concede :-). Let's do a few weeks of submissions, with continuous updates of the entries page, and then a few days of rating after the submission deadline. I'm not sure two months is such a good idea because, as has been pointed out, people might lose interest. Because the anniversary is pretty soon, though, I suggest we give it a try with a submission period of, say, February 1st until March 20th. That way we have time to prepare the contest, and we will find out if those are suitable lengths of time for submissions and ratings. I'm guessing, wildly, that both should probably be a little shorter. Bjarni

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	I Got A Music Contest Picture Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 10:45 pm
	Hi Bjarni, Bjarni, I presume we enter the competiton from that website you created? (correct me if i'm wrong!) and yes as the anniversary of SMSPower is not far off that is a good length for the competiton. My MIDI file entry is nearly done!! Anyway I got a picture, this was made for you by my brother hope you like it! [img]http://smidiforum.tripod.com/smsmusic.png[/img] incase you can't see the image here's the URL to it: http://smidiforum.tripod.com/smsmusic.png Thanks[/img]

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Re: I Got A Music Contest Picture Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:36 pm
	jacko87 wrote Hi Bjarni, Bjarni, I presume we enter the competiton from that website you created? (correct me if i'm wrong!) and yes as the anniversary of SMSPower is not far off that is a good length for the competiton. My MIDI file entry is nearly done!! Well, you obviously can't enter any contest from the dummy sketch page that I made if that's what you mean. Wasn't it Bock who said he'd take care of setting up the real site for us? I suppose if we all agree about the details, he can start doing that with my pages as a reference. It would be nice if those already registered for the forum didn't have to register again, but I don't know how much work that is. Then he'd want to write a couple of little scripts for the entries page to accept entries and to list accepted entries (preferably in random order). Quote Anyway I got a picture, this was made for you by my brother hope you like it! incase you can't see the image here's the URL to it: http://smidiforum.tripod.com/smsmusic.png Nope, looks like tripod doesn't want us looking at their pictures. No, wait... now it works. The picture does look kinda sloppy, though, and the text can not be read because it is far too small. Bjarni

MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Re: I Got A Music Contest Picture Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:47 pm
MarcK Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 212 Location: Denmark	Yeah. The text is unreadable. It's still quite nice though. Could your brother make it a bit bigger, or in some other way make the text more readable, Jacko?

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 11:09 pm
	I whipped up an image which is now on the page at http://www.update.uu.se/~bjarni/smspower_compo/ What do you think of it? Damn! Have to catch the bus. Later, all! Bjarni

Andrew Jacko Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 14 Location: Tamworth, NSW, Australia	Music Image Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 2:04 am
	Hello Im Jackos brother Andrew. i was the one who created the image and i will try to improve the image by making it larger. I also have a couple of ideas for other pictures for the music comp. Cheers Andrew

Jan Solrac Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 6 Location: Coimbra , Portugal	Nice to see this going... Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:28 pm
	Nice to see this going... Please, when the compo starts, make a warning at SMS Power! 's index page ( ie, www.smspower.org -> There is a compo going on!!! ). Best regards[/list]

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 12:28 am
	Thanks for your work, guys. Don't worry too much about the page design. Give me a few days and I'll try to work it out and have things setup and published on the site. At first we can make an announcement, and we'll setup the uploading/script stuff later on.

transbot Guest	Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 1:56 pm
transbot Guest	Probably a daft question, as I've just skimmed through the thread: Is this contest all about programmable music, or are you allowing studio/8-track/live recordings that have been transferred onto computer as MP3s, etc? It'd be class to hear some more 'organic' music, amongst the remixes, MIDIs and what have you. Looking forward to some imaginative arrangements =) Also, should I register here if I want to download the entries and comment on them? It might be useful if the artist gives a brief description of his work, so people can avoid 20-minute Euphoric Trance versions of Hang On. But then again, that would ruin the surprise factor of the brilliantly inventive tracks, wouldn't it? I'm not planning to enter anything, but might try and prepare something for a future contest if this is to become something. Perhaps the next step is SMS-MTV.

Bjarni Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Uppsala, Sweden	Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 9:41 pm
	transbot wrote Probably a daft question, as I've just skimmed through the thread: Is this contest all about programmable music, or are you allowing studio/8-track/live recordings that have been transferred onto computer as MP3s, etc? It'd be class to hear some more 'organic' music, amongst the remixes, MIDIs and what have you. Looking forward to some imaginative arrangements =) All genres of music will be eligible as long as the entries are related to 8 bit SEGA games and consoles. I'd like to hear some live entries too. Quote Also, should I register here if I want to download the entries and comment on them? Information on whether registration in the forum will suffice to compete in or judge the competition will be presented at some later time by Bock, I suppose. But you should register here anyway if you are interested in this stuff and want to post in the forum. Bjarni

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