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Frostbyte
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 174 |
Event id #3001 : 2020 Short Music Loop Competition
Let'em few seconds shine! Finally a compo to publish those sweet, sweet patterns that never evolved into complete tunes!
RULES:
1) Original, previously unreleased work. No covers, no remakes or parts of composer's own (released) tunes, or anyone's tunes, from C64 or other platforms.
2) No graphics or effects of any kind. I know this rule isn't going to be everyone's favourite, but this is a music competition, not a demo/graphics competition, and fx & gfx do affect people's ratings.
Black screen with the following static, undecorated single colour text (using standard unmodified PETSCII) in the upper left corner:
[Loop Name] by [Composer Name]
(C) 2020 [Group Name]
[SID type, e.g. 8580] / [Tune Speed, e.g. 4x]
For example:
'Short, thank Cthulhu' by Jojeli
(C) 2020 Artline Designs
8580 / 4x
No transition or screen wipe effects, replacing standard characters with PETSCII's graphical symbols, or other sneaky ways to add effects or to decorate the player.
3) Single SID at standard $D400. In other words, the loop must be playable on an unmodified C64 with either 6581 or 8580 SID.
4) No samples in any form. We don't want this to become a "best sample loop" competition. Otherwise, anything you can do with a SID goes, and you can use as little or as much rastertime as you want.
5) No lower limit for the length of the loop. Yes, even very short but interesting loops are allowed, even encouraged. :)
6) Upper limit for the length of the loop is around 15 seconds. However this is a flexible limit, depending on the tempo of the loop. For example 8 bars in 4/4 time signature @ 120BPM (16 seconds) is perfectly okay. So no, you don't have to cut your loop one bar short just to meet the length requirement. :) For arrhythmic loops, stick to the max 15 second limit.
7) Loop must be immutable: Every time the loop is played it should sound the same, and it shouldn't evolve in any way. No trickery or utilising SID's ADSR bugs etc. to add random note skippings or other variation to the loop. Think of a loop sampler playing the same loop over and over again - that's the goal here.
However, as an exception to this rule, a tiny overlap of the end and beginning of the loop is allowed. For example letting an instrument on a channel play from end of the loop until the first note in the beginning of the loop on that same channel. But this must be within reason, for up to 1-2 secs. Any longer than that is considered to be an evolvement of the loop, which again isn't allowed.
8) Up to three entries per composer, with permission to replace one of already submitted three entries with a fourth one. It is preferable to stick to the entries already submitted. However if you just made a fourth loop and it is an absolute killer, one of the three entries already submitted must be moved outside compo. This can be done only once.
9) Because many SID players would play the loop only once until progressing to the next tune, please lengthen the playtime by manually copying the loop until the length of the tune is at least a minute, and then jump back to the beginning (for infinite looping on C64 and such players). |
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Frostbyte
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 174 |
That'd be great! Something along the lines of "play a looping song with length of <X from beginning to the end for at least Y seconds" would add some flexibility to listening to short loops.
For example if X would be 25 and Y 30:
- A 17 sec loop would play twice (i.e. 34 secs)
- A 2.7 sec loop would play 12 times (i.e. 32.4 secs)
- A 28 sec loop would play only once (i.e. 28 secs)
Anyway, drifting away from the context of this competition now. :) |
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Frostbyte
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 174 |
Due to popular demand (and the rule being redundant now when I know how the song lengths in HVSC are determined), rule #9 is now dropped. No need to copy the loop over anymore to increase total song length, as this wouldn't work as I thought it would.
Just make sure your loop still loops. :) |
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Frostbyte
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 174 |
Would everyone be okay with a slight change to the visuals rule #2: Okay to change border colour to visualise rastertime used? (no trickery allowed with this one either to generate any rasterbar effects, of course - just alternating between black and a single colour of one's choice when out or in the music play routine).
EDIT: What the heck, let's allow this. Only three entries in the compo so far. Flotsam, JCH and The Syndrom are allowed to update their entries to show the rastertime used, if they really wish to do so. Not a big, game-ghanging rule change anyway. :) |
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Zyron
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 2381 |
I should roam my old work disks. |
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Frostbyte
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 174 |
Quote: I should roam my old work disks.
Please do! :)
Regarding visuals, rule #2 has been adjusted to allow choosing backround colour of one's choice (as some participants had already done so). So the choice is now free for single backround colour, single text colour, and single rasterline usage colour.
But that's it, no more adjustments to the rule. Plenty of visualisation options for a music compo. ;) |
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Count Zero
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 1830 |
There should be more limits - fearing the event leads to 1 zillion entries. Maybe 10 loops per composer or time limit the event to whenever the US votes are counted? :) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11154 |
"five entries per count zero"? |
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F7sus4
Registered: Apr 2013
Posts: 113 |
Quoting Jojeliif someone makes a 110bpm acid house loop, 8 bars would be 17.5 secs and be still a "natural" length for a loop without becoming a composition, i.e. in this case the length would be fine. But then for the loop to adhere to the rules, the hard limit would need to be set to 17.5 secs. If we'd do that, that would also enable longer loops with faster tempos, longer loops with time signatures other than 4/4, longer arrhythmic loops etc, again increasing the "risk" of them becoming short compositions rather than just loops.
It's pretty similar to 3-minute length rule at music compos. In most cases, the last 2-3 seconds exceeding the limit won't get cut out, but 20 seconds most likely will. |
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Frostbyte
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 174 |
Hey all, one thing I didn't think about when writing the rules: We have varying degrees of experience with C64, and not everyone has the skills to create a SID playing executable.
Unless someone has very compelling arguments against it (or better suggestions), I'm going to allow using PSID64 for the task: PSID64 V1.2
This OK with you all?
DISCLAIMER: I've never used PSID64 myself, but I'm assuming it can loop loops. :) |
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Mibri
Registered: Feb 2018
Posts: 209 |
Quote: Hey all, one thing I didn't think about when writing the rules: We have varying degrees of experience with C64, and not everyone has the skills to create a SID playing executable.
Unless someone has very compelling arguments against it (or better suggestions), I'm going to allow using PSID64 for the task: PSID64 V1.2
This OK with you all?
DISCLAIMER: I've never used PSID64 myself, but I'm assuming it can loop loops. :)
Yeah, I think it is sensible to allow this.
Here comes the deluge! :D |
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