As I wrote before, there were a couple of thoughts I had regarding the executable music compo at Breakpoint, although as a matter of fact, these thoughts can easily apply to any competition which introduces the “executable” bit into the rules. I’ll go straight to the point:
What are we judging in these compos?
Are we judging the composer’s ability to use a synthesiser and build a pleasant and/or skilled composition with it…
… or are we judging the features of the synthesiser?
The problem is that if we are to judge the entries by the musical abilities, and the entry is based on a synth not programmed by the composer, they could perfectly submit that very same song, rendered into an MP3 file, into the MP3 compo. And get done with it.
But we have reached a situation where 50% of entries for these competitions are running V2 or 4klang. This leaves everyone else in an unfair position, and not only that, but it also turns the competition into an uncompetitive parade of entries based on the same set of features, which in other words means that the majority of songs sound the same, which is booooring.
I think –and I’m not alone– that party organisers would do loads of good if clarifying the rules. Just add a little sentence like “Composers can only use their own or their group’s synth” and it will make this competition have sense again (or for the first time!). Otherwise, this is nothing else than a glorified Farbrausch vs Alcatraz compo, with the occasional outsider making it into the compo.
Here is the list of entries for this past Breakpoint’s exe music compo:
| Entry name / author | Synth |
|---|---|
| Wind me up / Aceman | MasterM |
| Goodbye Breakpoint / Blueflame | 4klang (?) |
| Monolith / Dalezy | V2 (?) |
| Commence/Collapse / Gargaj | Conspiracy’s |
| Guckandiewand / Map | own? |
| Auf wiederscene / Punqtured | Recursion |
| Bizarría sorollosa / Supersole | Sorollet |
| Sunbeam / Teo | V2 (?) |
| The last trip to Bingen / Quickyman | V2 |
| Breakpoint is undestructable / Xtrium | Excess3 |
Some of the entries do not state the name of synth they use in the .nfo file (although that information was shown in the big screen at the time the entries were played), so I write from what I can recall. Hopefully you’ll get the point.
Oh, and allow me to reiterate that I do not write this because my entry didn’t rank higher. I realistically knew I couldn’t compete with the rest of synths, if only because this version of my synth has only two months work on it, and most of the last month was dedicated to fighting with compilers and counter-productive crap like that, instead of working on getting a better song and nicer features.
Still, I’m quite happy because quite a few people got in touch with me and asked me about the synth and whether they could use it and all that after listening to my entry. Besides, I feel super-empowered by the simple fact that I built a synth by myself instead of relying on somebody else’s.
You don’t get this warm and fuzzy feeling when using V2 or 4klang :P
pera
Estoy muy de acuerdo con lo que decis Sole, imo deberia ser juzgado tanto la composición como el sinte. Dejar que esta compo quede en manos unicamente de V2 y 4klang la tornaría muy monotona.
Podrias postear al respecto en pouet..
saludos y felicitaciones por el track esta muy gracioso! :D
sole
Gracias por los elogios :-)
Pero prefiero no postear nada en pouet; existe una probabilidad del 99% de que la conversacion se torne en una oda a las imagenes aleatorias, ya sabes…
Gargaj
The majority of songs sound the same in a music compo anyway, which just makes it easier to do something different and win :P (As seen :)
sole
Well, that’s another personal gripe of mine; and although it doesn’t apply to exe music compos only, it tends to be a little exaggerated on this case because music coders don’t tend to be the composers and therefore just tend to implement what other well-known synths have (i.e. pads, delays and REVERB!! TONS OF REVERB!!!). Then the composer ends up doing the classic low-filter frequency up and down, stop, go up, continue and etc effect. With looooooots of reverb in the meantime :P
But I wasn’t thinking of that issue in this post :)
iq
it’s a difficult subject. Just like in demos the coder doesn’t necessarily need to be the one producing the content, but rather a tool developer, same is gonna happen in the exe mzk compo. As Gargaj says, there is something different when a coder produces the content himself (probably by other methods than the artist-oriented ones), and I think of Navis or CUrliBrace. Unfortunatelly you only have 4 or 5 such coders for mzk synths in the scene (and you are one).
Thankfully the 4k procedural exe compo still is dominated by coders, who have the chance to grow their artistic skills. That’s cool in a way. However it will not be long before somebody makes a public tool, perhaps using the curve+diffusion algorithm (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53509) and then everybody will be able to make gfx but they will all look the same, and ….
It’s always the same story. So don’t worry, go on with your synth cause you are in an excellent position to produce things that sound different. In fact you should be happy everyboody else uses V2 and 4klang but you can do your own. You have a priceless gift/advantage there!
winden
“Besides, I feel super-empowered by the simple fact that I built a synth by myself instead of relying on somebody else’s.”
sole++
@lx
Keep on working on your own synth… yep, the exe music compo is a bit unfair about only using maintream synths V2 or 4klang, It ends only in the talent of the music composer, where we would expect something around 40/60, 60/40 for the coding/music pair. And don’t overestimate current synths : V2 is quite old and although 4klang has a nice architecture it’s getting tricky to program a cool sound (the interface is more coder friendly than musician friendly), so there is probably plenty of room to produce cool sounds and music with new synth. Moreover above 16k, you have really lots of opportunities to produce something different, so go!
Concerning your synth, probably, there is a huge lack of delay/reverb (without, it sounds too flat) and fm synthesis… apart from that, for an exe compo, the modulation architecture is also critical.
and most important, have fun with your synth! ;)
sole
@iq: makes me wonder whether synths and musicians in general have become commodities. Or maybe they always were. And gfx/effects in general are what the demoscene is about :D
@@lx: great to see you around! I actually haven’t tested any of them (not running windows… you know). So I don’t know about their architecture… I’m just talking about the output. Regarding my synth, it intentionally hasn’t got delay/reverb. It was a bit of a challenge but I wanted to try if it’s possible to write a song with a rudimentary soft synth without resorting to delay/reverb :D
sergeeo
Es un tema en el que he pensado bastantes veces.
Si nos paramos a pensar realmente creo que pasa lo mismo en muchas otras compos: puedes hacer una demo con gráficos muy bonitos y guays sin necesidad de tener un super-engine… claro que también hacer una demo mediocre visualmente aunque tenga un código superoptimizado y tal.
En una compo de módulos de cuatro canales puedes hacer un temazo electrónico que suene genial… pero perder porque alguien haya hecho un módulo más original y no necesariamente mejor técnicamente (un reggae con letra se me ocurre por ejemplo).
Las partes tecnológicas, técnicas y artísticas cuentan… ¿pero en qué proporción? Y más allá: ¿acaso hay alguna compo en la que esté claro qué se valora? XD
Un saludo ;)
sole
Bueno, está claro (y lo sabemos por experiencia) que en la mayoría de compos “los factores a valorar” son algo muy difuso. Especialmente en las “combinadas”, (demos, intros…) donde se suele valorar más el resultado global que detalles concretos de implementación. No hay más que ver las compos de AMIGA donde el público enseguida aplaude escenas que no son “más que un cubemap” XD
En las compos de música –excepto la de exe music– si que se suele decir si se puede usar esto o lo otro. Así que más o menos sabes a qué atenerte.
Aunque vamos, en general las compos de música en una party, tienden a favorecer a las canciones más pegadizas-bailables-party style, si usted me entiende.
JosSs
Según mi humilde opinión, la clave está en sorprender e intentar llegar donde nadie ha llegado antes… bien con un sinte conocido (jugando con las mismas cartas teóricas con las que juegan los demás), bien con un sinte propio (tiene que ser una pasada ser capaz de programarte un sinte a medida).
La verdad es que pensar en ganar una compo haciendo lo que hace el resto se me hace complicado. Si todo lo que suenan son canciones supertechno demostyle con delays y reverbs perfectos con melodía pegadiza, y aparece alguien con una polka cachonda bien trabajada y con unos sonidos logrados y originales… ya la ha liado!
El ejemplo que ha puesto Sergeeo de los 4 canales me parece perfecto. Hay que dejar a la gente boquiabierta pensado… pero, y esto!?!?!?
Ánimo S0le, adelante con el sinte y aquí tienes un tester para cuando quieras ;)
sergeeo
Por cierto, lanzo una pregunta… ¿alguien ha hecho algo de síntesis por modelado físico en demoscene? Creo que sería lo que verdaderamente podría marcar la diferencia en este tipo de software “casero”, porque tanto FM como el modelado analógico virtual están ya más que trillados y tienden a sonar muy parecidos en todos los sintes.
Supongo que es viable técnicamente…
sole
No controlo mucho de tipos de sintesis (yet). Le echare un vistazo a ver si es factible y te dire :D
@lx
It’s indeed possible to compose a music without any delay/reverb and go in the raw chiptune way… but even with a talented chiptune composer, that would be really hard to compete with any v2 or 4klang’s like synth.
I don’t believe that removing the delay/reverb from your synth is going to give you a “sound advantage” or you are going to make any difference without it (or you’ll make the difference in the wrong way! :p ). The reverb is not necessary, but at least a delay (or better “cascaded” delay) is really worth to have it. Even a simple sawtooth/square bip with a delay sounds really cool… but without, it sounds so flat and so boring to listen!
The first thing that makes the difference in a synth is probably the versatility of the timbres that can be computed by your synth… often related to the way you can combine oscillator’s input/output with feedback, and their respective envelope… etc. Second thing are effects that can be applied on the original shape to sound it more natural/large/surround/deep… etc. And if I was forced to use a single effect for a synth, I would select the delay among all other effects without hesitating!
Ok, besides that, that could be considered as a “matter of taste”… but think about it! ;)
sole
Oh but you don’t know that I don’t want to complicate too much this synth (probably because I have never told anyone about the ‘roadmap’!). My aim is to keep it simple and as a ‘starters’ synth.
That way I can have a simple synth which sounds… simple. And I’ll work on more complicated synths later on. I prefer it this way rather than having THE SYNTH with 100′s of parameters :-)
I was thinking (still haven’t finished) of building a couple of effect ‘boxes’, like the famous reverb. And chaining things together. Those boxes could be used then by sorollet or by any other ‘generator’ I come up with. I just need to decide how to represent things and how to extract the data from Renoise. And time :-D
In any case there was an explicit aim of sounding ‘chiptuneish’ although that isn’t exactly the more appropriate label. I was inspired by Sun Ra and his early Moog experiments for this song but probably most people in the demoscene have only heard chiptunes and hardly Sun Ra’s music and therefore associate the sound of this song to chiptunes rather than to Moogs :-)
But rest assured, I really appreciate your advice!
Fabian "ryg" Giesen
The purpose of the executable music compos is to have a competition for pieces of music that are distributed in executable, self-running form and are smaller than a certain limit (in our case 32k). That’s it. And it *is* intended to be a music competition, not a synthesizer coding competition – you could indeed just write out a .WAV, encode it as MP3 and submit it to the Streaming music compo. In the same way, you can submit your 4k intro to a 64k (or demo) compo, or kkapture your demo and submit it as Animation, or submit your 4k Executable Graphics entry to the Freestyle Graphics competition. The categories have some amount of overlap, and I don’t see anything to be gained from forcing them to be strictly seperate. If your entry fits multiple categories, you get to choose who (or what) you want to compete against – I see nothing wrong with that.
That said, the rules are the way they are because a rule like “everyone must use their own synth” is unenforcable from our side. What we get is a small compressed executable, not the source code. If people want to continue using V2 or 4klang, they can, all they need to do is to stop mentioning that they use it in the infofile. We can hardly disqualify entries because “this synth sounds like 4klang and you’re not a member of Alcatraz”. In contrast, the rules we do have are easy to enforce, or even enforce themselves: all we need to do to enforce the “no extra Visual C++ runtime library DLLs installed” rule is to not install VC++ runtime packs on the compo machines. The “no external data files may be used” rule is enforced by deleting everything except the executable before running it. And so on.
I’d actually love to see a synth coding competition, but I don’t see it working as a “regular” competition at a demoparty; judging a synth from hearing a single tune made with it is just unrealistic.
sole
Re: the overlap. Yes there is overlap, but my question was more of a ‘moral’ one. I wasn’t thinking of organisers going after every entry author and asking them to show the source code in order to prove they are using synth X or synth Y, but more of a “moral code” of sorts which has to be followed when you enter a competition.
Truth is, all these matters are very fuzzy and as you say, it’s hard to enforce subjective/hidden stuff. So simple enforceable rules like yours at least set a decent background to begin with. The rest is up to the participants.
Sometimes thing aren’t entirely black or white, I guess! :D
quickyman
by the way: i like the V2-Softsynth ;) for me is important the fun with it and to realize better sounds what are included if u start the plugin the first time.
quickyman
Punqtured
I’m with you some of the way, but as ryg points out, I cannot see the issue with musicians all using the same synth more or less. Put a great synth in the hands of a mediocre musician and it will still be a mediocre entry. Put a poor synth in the hands of a great musician, and it will be a descent entry.
I find this to be much the same issue as when coders do rather simple effects in a 4k or 64k intro but it simply just works. Things need not be overly complicated to be good. Otherwise new and never seen before-effects can be implemented in a lousy way that despite it’s technical excellence, never manages to impress the ordience.
In fact – I think most of the problem is when synth-coders or musicians evaluate executable music entries or when coders evaluate intros, you tend to implement a completely different set of quality-gates than if a person lacking the technical insight evaluates it.
As Gargaj points out, it’s mainly up to the musician to create a piece of music that stands out from the rest in a positive maner. But it will always be a gamble – by aiming at standing out, you might end up being unique in exactly the same way everyone else attemps to be.
Just the two cents from a musician who is lucky enough to work on our groups own synth ;-)
sole
You’re right on that technical people look at ‘products’ in a different way (actually, reading the previous comments, some people hint at that too). But I thought this was the demoscene, where people look at things from the technical point of view too and not judge the final output only! Haha! :)
Yes, it’s a difficult matter. I appreciate your opinion, though.
Thanks for leaving a comment, I feel honoured at having all of you have your say about this issue in the very same page :)
BarZoule
I’ve got to say I agree that hearing 4klang and V2 over and over is depressing. And actually it puzzles me as to why we don’t see more synths!
From my own experience writing a synth is one of the most gratifying programming experience one can get. It’s super quick to output sounds, unlike most graphic API when you have to call and setup tons of device contexts, rendering methods and other shits. For sounds, you just need a buffer and fill it. Whatever is the garbage you hear the first time, you’ll be glad to hear it, cuz it’ll be your thing :)
And yeah, I should totally do something with my synth and enter some compo, then we’ll push the number of different synths to 4 or 5! :)
About reverb: as soon as you have delay you have reverb, and filtering it somehow will help shape it. The snare in Cubetro (my first real synth) is a good example of using reverb to build an instrument (IIRC it’s pretty much just reverb and noise).
sole
Yes, do it! :)
Punqtured
So – Revision 2011 32k executable music is now over. Some thoughts on it on my part. There were a few really cool tunes, but once again, it was mainly v2 and 4klang. Garaj’s winning tune ofcourse used the conspiracy-synth and my entry used our own. But we also saw an entry from Response / Darklite with Loonies’ 4k synth and Puryx used the TBC 4k synth.
That’s actually a strange development as I see it. While time passes – it seems people are stuck in time or even go backwards. I mean – it’s been a year since you started this thread, and really not much has happened. My own entry got screwed up because the synth is now too CPU-heavy and the size-restriction of 32k revival (who writes the synth and continues developing it) forced him to do some hacking here and there to squeeze the last few bytes. That, unfortunately resulted in a rather stupid problem on our part. The buffer should have been bigger, causing more precalc time but rendering the tune as it was supposed to sound. I’m not sure if the compo-machine wasn’t used for playing the entries, because that should have no problem keeping up with the synth.
Anyways – revival would like for some testers for the synth, which hopefully some day will be out as a genuine vst-pluing synth. So if anyone in here would care to give it a go, please drop him an email at quiver-notify at deadfeed dot net.
Also – I think it would be funny if someone generated a list like the one at the top on the different synths that came into play in the Revision 32k executable music compo.
Punqtured
Oh – just a sidenote on the lack of delay/reverb in your synth. I have to agree with lx on that part. Not having a built-in delay in your synth will simply lead to musicians having to create it themselves using lower velocities and other trickery to achieve what should be as easy as a walk in the park. Even the newest of newbie musicians would know how to handle a delay-knob on a synth, I’m sure, so I wouldn’t really “spare” the musician ;)
sole
But I developed the synth to have chiptune-sounds without having to use chiptune samples! :-P
It surprises me to hear there wasn’t anything “new” at the exe music compo at Revision. I still haven’t had time to check the entries though. But feel free to compile a list if you want ;)
Punqtured
#1 The Break Goes On by Gargaj / Conspiracy [Conspiracy 16k synth]
#2 Notlösung by tEiS / TRSi [4klang]
#3 Neutron Dreams by xtrium / FRequency [Krypton Software Synthesizer]
#4 3D Monstarz in da Pocketland by AceMan [.xm Chiptune]
#5 Kölnish Wasser by Puryx+Mentor / TBC [TBC 4k synth]
#6 Pouet Flamewar – The Music by Punqtured / Fnuque [Quiver]
#7 Reggae Muffin by Okeanos / Nuance [.xm chiptune]
#8 mayhem NOW by response / darklite [Loonies 4k synth]
#9 Kick the party by BeRo/Farbrausch [V2]
#10 Threshold by powlee [4klang]
#11 Speedway by teo [V2]
#12 sample & hold by weidemann feat marcello / gammel opland [? Could be V2] (edit: it’s hardcoded, see comments below–sole)
#13 fannkeybonn by tlm & bacter / apex [unknown name made by TLM / Momentum]
#14 TO-MA-TO by Dgazz & Map / Plush [V2]
So the variety in synths used was a bit wider at Revision than at Breakpoint.
However, there were at least 4 entries using a synth designed for 4k intros and two entries were chiptunes (AceMan’s was brilliant, though)
Qualitywise, not much has happened, though. The highest quality is still conspiracy’s synth, the V2 and (to my best judgement) Quiver.
Only four entries were close to the 32k size-limit, and of those, two were .xm chiptunes, Gargaj’s was the 16k synth but with a voice-sample (that got terribly screwed by the soundsystem, though) and my entry.
To be honest, I can’t quite figure out, what people were voting for. It seems some voted for composition, some for the artist and to a lesser degree for the quality of the entries. In my opinion, some entries scored high across all three, but wasn’t rated as high as others that didn’t. I don’t count my own entry in this matter, as it didn’t execute correct, resulting in deserved low score.
sole
Thanks for compiling the list! :-)
Marcello H
The entry by Weidemann(and me) were hardcoded, no “alien” synth used :)
sole
Oh! Thank you! I’ll update the post accordingly :-)
Next time you might want to include info in a readme.txt or something ;-)