At 11/6/14 09:03 PM, samulis wrote:

At 11/6/14 08:58 PM, Phonometrologist wrote:

At 11/6/14 08:49 PM, Back-From-Purgatory wrote: People complaining about scoring... And I didn't even judge this year.

Nor did Skye

rofl

I used Skye's judging system, more or less. ;)

OH... well.. now it all makes sense! lol
You shouldn't really have been all that surprised. No offense to Skye

At 11/6/14 09:06 PM, Phonometrologist wrote:

At 11/6/14 09:03 PM, samulis wrote: rofl

I used Skye's judging system, more or less. ;)

OH... well.. now it all makes sense! lol
You shouldn't really have been all that surprised. No offense to Skye

Well, I didn't use Skye's judging technique, just the way of breaking down the score. XD

At 11/6/14 09:12 PM, samulis wrote:

At 11/6/14 09:06 PM, Phonometrologist wrote:

At 11/6/14 09:03 PM, samulis wrote: rofl

I used Skye's judging system, more or less. ;)

OH... well.. now it all makes sense! lol
You shouldn't really have been all that surprised. No offense to Skye

Well, I didn't use Skye's judging technique, just the way of breaking down the score. XD

This is still one of my favorite interactions:
Upon reviewing King's Quest by Bosa...

SkyeWint
Rated 3 / 5 stars July 24, 2012
"Alright, well, I've recieved a message asking me to review this, and therefore. A review shall be born.
Also, this review will be rather harsher this time, not scaling it on the normal one I do. I will be giving this the same kind of review that I would give in the NGADM. So in case any of the other contestants see this, or if you get in, Bosa, they and/or you will know what kind of thing to expect from me."
etc.........................................................

Bosa responds:
"I just read this again from last year and I was reminded of how angry this made me, especially since I consider this my best classical song to date.
I will try to erase this from my memory now."

First off, I think it's fine to keep using this thread. It won't be used for anything else, and it's good to get feedback. Speaking of which, what did you all think of the idea of the new additions this year? i.e. group stages (groups of 4 in Round 1 rather than pairings of 2) and predetermined bracketing. We introduced the former to shorten the competition as it was turning out to be extremely long, and the latter was simply an experiment.

Anyway, as far as public voting goes, I have considered it before but I think it's not suitable for the NGADM precisely for the reasons samulis stated. On top of that, I think that for a competition as large as this, it won't be easy at all to get a substantial amount of votes. It might have worked well for Skye's NGMT contest, but that had a maximum of around 15 submissions per round. The NGADM has up to 64.

Think about it - how many people are ACTUALLY going to listen to 64 submissions and give their votes? And when we get to the later rounds, we'll be getting even less votes. As competitors leave the contest, their interest in it also often leaves too. We might end up having the final, which can be considered the most important round, judged on maybe ten votes at the most. To help fix this we can of course allow anyone to vote (not just participants) but that opens a whole new can of worms (such as competitors getting their friends to vote for them). Essentially, having to rely on an entirely voluntary system to get a good judgement doesn't sit well with me.

Getting a dedicated voting/judging panel which has a large amount of people might be an ideal solution, except it's far too infeasible. I have a lot of trouble finding five judges, let alone twenty, and I always make sure the judges I find are considerably experienced at both reviewing and making music. I also try and find people who are established members of the Newgrounds community, so that they have a reputation here on Newgrounds to back up their being a judge. If I had to find more than just five judges, then my standards for choosing judges might have to be lowered too, and I don't really want that. This isn't even considering how insane it would be to manage a team of twenty judges!

What I CAN consider is doing some math magic to re-weight each judge's score with the same mean and standard deviation, which is what @gadogry did last year for his Round 1 statistics. This means that judges who give very polarising scores will have less of an impact on the final scores and judges like me who stick within a smaller range of scores will have more of an impact on the final scores. I'm not sure how I feel about that as it's a system that seems to "punish" judges for having strong opinions, but if this is seen as a legitimately worrying issue then I can certainly consider it.

Regarding making the competition based on genres to give people a challenge, it's something I've also considered. It's a cool idea but I'm worried it might make the contest less accessible. I'm proud of the fact that in the NGADM, you can choose whether to stick with what you know or try something new, and in both cases you'd be judged in, for the most part, an objective and fair manner, and I don't think I'd want that to change. However, introducing titles such as "most versatile artist" is an awesome idea, and would definitely give incentive towards trying new things, especially if a prize forum signature is attached to each award. Something to consider.

Ultimately, as MetalRenard said, this contest is and has always been for the experience. I know I sound dumb saying that when we've got nearly 300 dollars in prize money, among other prizes, but I still feel like the focus of an NGADM participant should be to use the feedback of his/her peers to improve, meet new people, make a name for himself/herself in the community and ultimately have fun in a competitive but friendly environment.

Perhaps the judging system isn't ideal, but does it need to be? Should we go for a potentially fairer and more objective judging system which might make sacrifices such as losing transparency, increasing anonymity, doing away with judge reviews, increasing workload for me and Echo, etc? For a professional competition with thousands of dollars at stake, it might be worth looking into, but this is a competition by the community and for the community, so a judging system which is entirely transparent, with a more tightly-knit and focused judging team, and judge reviews on each submission, is more suitable, I think. We're definitely still open to more suggestions though!

Thanks for the feedback!

Well I wrote a massive reply, and then figured it was getting out of hand. My original post included you, Sam but was not to single you out.

But to be honest Sam, after reading how you were scoring people and the fact you don't know the difference between being analytical and just listening to music shows poor judgement.

Some of your other comments were fine, even though I didn't agree with them. I know you think your own experience is part of judging. But knowing people scores are determined through the experience of a judge is enough to not want to participate. Because in the end to progress you would tailor music for the judges - and then what's the point?

Its meant to be for fun as MetalRenard said. But with this year and last, we've seen..."hiccups" shall i say that people are getting upset. And if these things can be ironed out, it may encourage people to participate, if not. You'll see people drop off.

At 11/7/14 04:58 AM, Step wrote: What I CAN consider is doing some math magic to re-weight each judge's score with the same mean and standard deviation, which is what @gadogry did last year for his Round 1 statistics...

I personally think reweighting scores to align their standard deviations so each judge has the same impact on the outcome does increase the fairness of the competition. Of course, that requires the judges being open to having their scores "doctored" before releasing.

But is the extra effort worth it, and most importantly does it MATTER? I reweighted all scores from Round 1, 2 and 3 last year (total of 32+16+8 = 56 head-to-head matches) and the Round 1 scores this year (that's 16 group matches). Of those 72 outcomes, only 1 changed after reweighting. That's Steampianist vs ZipZipper in Round 1 last year... which was basically a coin flip both before and after reweighting. The trend I have been seeing is that most often judges agree on what's good and what's not, and hence the outcomes don't change if you give some of them a bigger say and others less.

Overall, I think the current system works, as long as the judges are carefully selected and they do their judging work seriously. I think people will be upset no matter what system we use -- people take pride in and are emotionally attached to their work, and there can be only 1 winner.

As mentioned above already, I think it'd be better if we all try to enjoy and learn from the process rather than focusing too much on the outcome!

The only thing I would comment on how the NGADM went was my observation in the first round. The grouping into 4 was a good idea, but it didn't seem as far for some (I'm pretty sure that isn't the right wording). Some groups were decided by a matter of tenths of points which I would expect later in the contest and cuts out some people that could have had a very good chance making it later in the contest. It's fine if you look at it as a Newgrounds Deathmatch competition, but what if only having one winner out of the group, there were two winners. Then the second round could be another group of fours or threes and there would be one winner from that round. After that it would be back to the dueling format.

I don't know how much strain that would put on the judges but I would feel better if the first round or so would be a little more forgiving. Just my thoughts though. I really enjoyed the contest and I hope I'll be able to compete in the next one and get into the semi-finals.

At 11/6/14 09:16 PM, Phonometrologist wrote:

At 11/6/14 09:12 PM, samulis wrote:

At 11/6/14 09:06 PM, Phonometrologist wrote:

At 11/6/14 09:03 PM, samulis wrote: rofl

I used Skye's judging system, more or less. ;)

OH... well.. now it all makes sense! lol
You shouldn't really have been all that surprised. No offense to Skye

Well, I didn't use Skye's judging technique, just the way of breaking down the score. XD

This is still one of my favorite interactions:
Upon reviewing King's Quest by Bosa...

SkyeWint
Rated 3 / 5 stars July 24, 2012
"Alright, well, I've recieved a message asking me to review this, and therefore. A review shall be born.
Also, this review will be rather harsher this time, not scaling it on the normal one I do. I will be giving this the same kind of review that I would give in the NGADM. So in case any of the other contestants see this, or if you get in, Bosa, they and/or you will know what kind of thing to expect from me."
etc.........................................................

Bosa responds:
"I just read this again from last year and I was reminded of how angry this made me, especially since I consider this my best classical song to date.
I will try to erase this from my memory now."

lol that review. I would hold to it as a fully hyper-critical review, but immediately afterwards in that year of the NGADM I went straight back to the way I normally review since it would have been batshit insane to try and review every single piece like that. ...and I'd prefer to review every single piece each round.

At 11/7/14 08:52 AM, gadogry wrote:

At 11/7/14 04:58 AM, Step wrote: What I CAN consider is doing some math magic to re-weight each judge's score with the same mean and standard deviation, which is what @gadogry did last year for his Round 1 statistics...

As mentioned above already, I think it'd be better if we all try to enjoy and learn from the process rather than focusing too much on the outcome!

Yeah, Ive not got a problem with the outcome. Im happy with it. Although we always love to see our fav's go far it was a great pairing all the way up. Not one pair that I was bored of. I do like the idea of making the weight of each judge identical. That would solve quite a lot I think!. :)

As Steps been saying, it's quite hard the juggle the type of judging methods. It was just a thought I was having because of the deviation between judges. But ultimately it should be for fun to get a bit of feedback and to encourage people to make music. Maybe the calculation used is fine. :)

At 11/9/14 11:56 AM, SkyeWint wrote: lol that review. I would hold to it as a fully hyper-critical review, but immediately afterwards in that year of the NGADM I went straight back to the way I normally review since it would have been batshit insane to try and review every single piece like that. ...and I'd prefer to review every single piece each round.

Edit time ran out. :( So here's the rest of the intended post.

1. HEY are you saying people complain about my scoring? Because you're absolutely right, some people did complain about my scoring. And most of them complained about the scores for reasons which basically summed up to "u dont UNDERSTAND muh music" (despite that I've been working with music of almost all genres for quite literally the significant majority of my entire life). The ones that complained about the harshness turned into being entirely positive (or in one case where I was being a bit of a shit, just accepting. @headphoamz y/n?)

2. No, the voting system won't work for the NGADM - not because it has 64 submissions (people who really like a contest and realize the point of the voting system are going to listen to the pieces and vote. Remember, this is even a contest where people look forward to it because all the musicians are selected right at the outset to be good), but because of the dwindling number of people participating each round. Step brought up a great point:

As competitors leave the contest, their interest in it also often leaves too.

This (kinda) happened to me. After I dropped out, my interest in discussing the contest dwindled. I probably wouldn't have voted either if that were the judging system, though that's saying more about my personally not liking to vote than the system of voting itself, in this context.

It is also obvious that plenty of other people don't come back to even say "hi" or discuss anything - while some are almost definitely the same as me, since the contest *does* end up getting people to make a lot of good music within a short period of time, many are also definitely disinterested. I can't say it with certainty, since they're simply not posting rather than declaring a lack of further interest, but there it is regardless.

I also want to note that the NGMT had to be done by putting all the submitted tracks on soundcloud in order to make the creators anonymous. That would be a tad bit difficult to pull off with the NGADM, though props to you if you can do it. It would also once again force the tracks to be off newgrounds for each round during the judging phase.

Sam makes a lot of good points in this post.

3. IT'S FUCKING HARD TO FIND GOOD OR EVEN DECENT JUDGES. Step even asked me this year and last year (I think last year too.) to help him find judges. I couldn't find anyone, but still - have you ever tried finding qualified judges on newgrounds for a contest this big, especially when 99% of qualified people are either doing their own thing and completely ignoring the contest, or are participating? It's hard, man. Be happy Step could get the amount of judges he did get.

Suggestion: Some compensation for the judges. They do a lot of work, they have a lot of really difficult decisions to make, and since it's unlikely that people will magically like the judges more because I'm saying this (I mean, their work is being critiqued by the judges), it might be good to get some compensation as a way to entice some good judge people who would otherwise be competing.

4. Reweighting the scores makes sense. It's not punishing the judges with stronger opinions, either. Their scores already have a greater weight than the other judges, and reweighting the scores *can* end up changing outcomes, even if it's only 1/72 of them. Even that is still a change, and anyone who knows much about statistics at all will understand that it's a fairer way of scoring. Taking away power from some individuals to control the contest more strongly so that all judges have an equal part isn't punishment. It's taking away unfair advantage. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

5. Having two winners in the group rounds at first would be cool. Definitely something to try. I do like the contest being shorter, it makes it much more manageable.

6. Not calling anyone out, not trying to poke drama, just something I've noticed. The people who have complained the most, (by a huge margin as well, in terms of amount of complaints and extremity of the way the complaints are stated) in all three contests I've seen or taken part in, have been the cinematic composers. I saw a few smaller complaints from other people, but the vast majority of complaints (again, that I've seen) have been the cinematic composers. I can name at least six separate people who've complained about specific scores or about the overall contest, going everywhere from "you don't understand my music" to "you don't understand judging" to "lol but we're the ones making all the money skrub" (paraphrase).

I don't know why this is happening, and I won't speculate about any particular reasons why. All I can say is that from what I've seen, people who make cinematic music complain a lot more, where other people have been much more likely to just say "oh, okay, I understand what you're saying -move on-".

Oh, and just as a heads-up to everyone who disliked @samulis' scores - I'm including @samulis as a cinematic composer, take a look at the last two years of contests. ;)

7. By the way, regardless of whether my suggestion in point 3 is taken, at the moment I'm totally open to judging the next year. <3

Public voting also becomes a popularity contest. It's just terrible.

At 11/9/14 12:33 PM, SkyeWint wrote: 6. Not calling anyone out, not trying to poke drama, just something I've noticed. The people who have complained the most, (by a huge margin as well, in terms of amount of complaints and extremity of the way the complaints are stated) in all three contests I've seen or taken part in, have been the cinematic composers. I saw a few smaller complaints from other people, but the vast majority of complaints (again, that I've seen) have been the cinematic composers. I can name at least six separate people who've complained about specific scores or about the overall contest, going everywhere from "you don't understand my music" to "you don't understand judging" to "lol but we're the ones making all the money skrub" (paraphrase).

I don't know why this is happening, and I won't speculate about any particular reasons why. All I can say is that from what I've seen, people who make cinematic music complain a lot more, where other people have been much more likely to just say "oh, okay, I understand what you're saying -move on-".

I dunno. If you look at the percentage of continuous active users on the forums "cinematic composers" tend to remain active a bit more in these competitions. Look at this thread alone with a brief look out of 22 people who have replied 8 of them do cinematic stuff, and some names in this thread aren't usually active in the forums. I have never seen a cinematic composer say to paraphrase "but we're the ones making money" before. Not publicly anyway.

In all fairness to my "complaint" I waited for the competitions completion so all people could be equally judged and not be influenced by any comments. Especially when scoring methods are questioned, and look. If nobody is up for change for more fairness then so be it, I said that I was accepting that it should be about fun as MetalRenard said and maybe I was over thinking it. The way I see it, if these small things are sorted then people have less to be upset about.

At 11/9/14 01:20 PM, PeterSatera wrote: I dunno. If you look at the percentage of continuous active users on the forums "cinematic composers" tend to remain active a bit more in these competitions.

This is certainly a point, though I've seen plenty of non-cinematic people - I'm simply saying that the proportion is higher. Not a huge amount, but it's higher.

I have never seen a cinematic composer say to paraphrase "but we're the ones making money" before. Not publicly anyway.

I have. The post was deleted later after they were called out on it. I've also gotten this (once) from a person making dance music.

look. If nobody is up for change for more fairness then so be it

Good on you for waiting until after the competition - that's a great idea, and that's awesome. The part I just quoted, though, doesn't really look like you're making the comments to increase actual fairness. The way it's phrased looks a *lot* more like it's a personal dislike, as well as being somewhat accusatory. Best way to incite positive lasting change is to go fully reasonable without appealing to emotions. :)

At 11/9/14 12:33 PM, SkyeWint wrote: [Much stuff]

1. I should elaborate more on reweighting... it works well for the first couple rounds when the number of contestants are large, but not so much during the final 2 or final 4. In particular, when each judge is submitting only 2 scores in the final round, reweighting would be equivalent to deciding the winner by a simple head count of how many judges prefered his/her entry over the other (which is actually kind of reasonable). This is the main reason why I stopped doing the stats posts after round 3 last year.

2. I do like the idea of judges being compensated and have statues built for them for all the work they put in, especially those who leave many detailed reviews. I'm not a musician but I find myself enjoying reading the reviews almost as much as listening to the tracks. This may sound creepy but I actually have Step's audio reviews page bookmarked, and check it from time to time to look for new reviews to read. And then maybe actually listen to the track he reviewed.

One suggestion is to put, say, 15 of the highest scoring entries of the whole contest in an album on bandcamp, set a modest minimum price (e.g. $5), so we can pool together some funds towards subsequent NGADMs. I don't know if there are enough thankful contestants / generous listeners out there who will toss in a few bucks for music that's already freely available... but it might be something that's worth considering.

3. One idea for future NGADM: reseed contestants after each round. E.g. after round 1 where 16 winners emerge, order their scores from 1 to 16 and pair them up as 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, 3 vs 14 and so forth. Then the 8 winners from round 2 will be seeded again this way for round 3 (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, etc). This way a contestant who makes a particularly great track in a certain round will get the reward of having a (on average) more favourable matchup the next round. I think this actually takes less effort than coming up with a pre-determined bracket / handpicking pairs after each round.

At 11/9/14 01:33 PM, SkyeWint wrote: The part I just quoted, though, doesn't really look like you're making the comments to increase actual fairness. The way it's phrased looks a *lot* more like it's a personal dislike, as well as being somewhat accusatory. Best way to incite positive lasting change is to go fully reasonable without appealing to emotions. :)

I don't see how "so be it" can be skewed to be about someone. If anything it shows I'm willing to accept a majority voice.

At 11/9/14 01:48 PM, gadogry wrote:

At 11/9/14 12:33 PM, SkyeWint wrote: [Much stuff]

1. I should elaborate more on reweighting...

Still seems like it would be a good idea IMO, but I'm clearly out of my depth with this math here. Given your great suggestions so far, I'll 100% support your position on the reweighting.

2. I do like the idea of judges being compensated and have statues built for them for all the work they put in, especially those who leave many detailed reviews. I'm not a musician but I find myself enjoying reading the reviews almost as much as listening to the tracks.

I want a statue built for me. Maybe it could be made of fabric. And have a big S on the front. And be wearable. And be a shirt. Oh also yes, I agree with the review-reading being almost as enjoyable as the tracks (in a few cases, more enjoyable. But hey, that's just because I'm an opinionated arse when it comes to music I like. Thank goodness I don't review the same way. ^____^)

This may sound creepy

It is creepy.

One suggestion is to put, say, 15 of the highest scoring entries of the whole contest in an album on bandcamp

I like this idea. Hell, I even brought it up months ago for the NGMT. Speaking of which, I need to get around to starting that... Hey @samulis, let's have a bit more of a chat, shall we?

3. One idea for future NGADM: reseed contestants after each round.

+100. Hey @step plz consider. That said, some points against it: People who make consistently good tracks will have an easy ride without the challenge and drama that the manual seeding brings. There's also the fact that the way it is gives more of a chance for people with serious talent to improve - they can work against people that are about on their level, and that keeps people from being demoralized. There's the idea of "I can win this!"

That said, reseeding the people after each round is what the system was before. The brackets made it so that people knew who they were going to be up against each round. ...though that does make it so the judges can't make cruelly ironic pairings, which can end up being quite entertaining sometimes.

At 11/9/14 03:02 PM, PeterSatera wrote: I don't see how "so be it" can be skewed to be about someone. If anything it shows I'm willing to accept a majority voice.

No offense, but that's a complete misrepresentation of the point I was making there. I'll zero in on the exact statement that I'm talking about, though: "If nobody is up for change for more fairness" - that, along with the context, indicates (to me) that you don't think people want change for more fairness. It seems to me like you're disregarding the suggestions other people have made for that purpose. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that along with the previous complaints you've brought up (and my personal experience with people making statements like that - trust me, I've done a lot of moderating even aside from judging in contests) does indicate what I've said here.

Again. I could be wrong. I'll fully admit that - I don't know what you're thinking. That's just how it appears to me. Regardless of whether what I just said is actually correct, can you see how it appears that way?

idea:

judges score using "standard deviations", with ±4 as a maximum for instance

so a song they think is just average is 0 (like a 7 in the current system), a song which is very bad (like a 2 or 3 currently) is -4 and a song which is absolutely amazing (9.9/10) is +4

advantages: no ceiling effect, better chance for normally distributed scores, strong positive and negative opinions weigh equally (in theory)

disadvantages: still subject to individual differences between how judges interpret the new metric. either that, or everyone needs to be briefed on how to "correctly" use the new scoring system which is a pain in the ass.

discuss.

p.s. strong opinions will always skew the average, especially if they disagree with the rest of the judges. tbh i don't know why people are complaining about weighting tho, like do you want all the judges to have the same opinion or something?

I decided to wait until the contest was over to bring up this point, since bringing it up mid-competition would have disrupted its running by quite a bit, at least I think it would have... My point of contention has nothing to do with weighing and how judges score, since I feel that each stands by his own way of scoring. There is a degree of subjectivity that is inevitably going to be there, no matter how objective music competitions are made to be.

I'd like us to go back to the spirit of things. The spirit of why the NGADM was created in the first place.

Is the Deathmatch a free-for-all, or a contest where each opponent is treated like an equal?

I do not doubt that the latter would have been the intention when the Deathmatch started. In every one-to-one pairing, the same still applies.

However, I have a massive problem with two-against-one. Especially when in a pairing or group of composers, one gets to do the work for one round while the other rests, and then vice versa for the next round, you get what I mean.

The contest would no longer be about one musician's skill against another's... it'll just be a free-for-all, with its original purpose taken out of the contest.

If teams and pairings are absolutely necessary, I'd have preferred to see two categories in this contest: Individuals, Groups. Each would have their own set of rewards, and the groups and pairings that make it past the auditions would have to stand the ultimate test of being able to work together on every piece, no exceptions. If you hold one participant to a particular standard, you hold everyone to said standard. I didn't see this standard being upheld here in some cases.

An individual has to cope with pressure. Groups that work together and show an ultimate display of teamwork have to cope with pressure. Why is it, then, that people in groups are allowed to shift the pressure between one person and another between rounds, each only taking a FRACTION of the pressure, and therefore not working in the same circumstances as the other opponents?

EDIT: To clarify my impassioned rant... this is a question of having every individual, whether competing by himself or in a team or group, facing the same amount of pressure, and therefore putting himself at an equal footing with his opponent. Because in some groups, I do not see that happening. I'm trying to make a comparison here with 'bargaining power' when it comes to buying and selling... it's a bit of a remote comparison, but you may perhaps understand the sense of it.

At 11/10/14 06:02 AM, Troisnyx wrote:

However, I have a massive problem with two-against-one. Especially when in a pairing or group of composers, one gets to do the work for one round while the other rests, and then vice versa for the next round, you get what I mean.

The contest would no longer be about one musician's skill against another's...

Dont think so. No matter if there are advantages - composing in a team also has got a lot of disadvantages, too. There were some really strong teams in the contest and most of them struggled to finally submit anything. Without an option to enter as a team many of the really good composers here would never have been able to participate: The NGADM is taking very much time over all these months and in the end this time is missing in other parts of your life. In our case hitokirito is a fulltime musician who has to make a living with music. I am studying + working + had to move to munich and care for lots of other things during the whole contest. So if there wouldn´t have been the team option i could never have entered this year (last year i participated alone. Composing was not a problem and i also had more time in 2013). Without the team option zipzipper, steampianist, bosa, kor-rune, me, hitokirito, camo, skye and many other active NG members would probably not have been able to be part of this :(

If teams and pairings are absolutely necessary, I'd have preferred to see two categories in this contest: Individuals, Groups.

The problem here is that in the end you will only have 5-10 teams ... not enough for a contest.

An individual has to cope with pressure. Groups that work together and show an ultimate display of teamwork have to cope with pressure. Why is it, then, that people in groups are allowed to shift the pressure between one person and another between rounds, each only taking a FRACTION of the pressure, and therefore not working in the same circumstances as the other opponents?

The pressure is not THAT high (everything that can happen if you dont submit is that you will loose. NGADM mainly is a contest to check out your limits and to have fun. You dont have to take the responsibility to a client or anything. THAT is pressure :D ). It just takes 1-2 days to compose a piece - at least for me. If you enter as a team you have other problems: You argue which genres to do, how the mix shall be, single passages in a piece are discussed heavily since 2 people have 2 totally different opinions about music and performance. Dont underestimate these things. Also i wanted to have a rematch against kor-rune this year very much while (off course) hitokirito wanted a guitar battle against him, too :D So you see things are not easy even for teams. Best examples: skye and camo didnt manage it to totally finish their piece, bosa wasnt able to submit in time, zipper and steam also didnt make it to just submit anything. All of those are good musicians who entered as teams and stil didnt make it to survive in the contest. For me that is the proof that teamwork isnt THAT easy to organize. The only advantage you have got if you only have an individual as your oponent is that you can better predict what he will be coming up with. Thats something you also cant do in my case when i am entering alone since my philosophy is to be surprising and unexpected :D

EDIT: To clarify my impassioned rant... this is a question of having every individual, whether competing by himself or in a team or group, facing the same amount of pressure, and therefore putting himself at an equal footing with his opponent.

I dont really see the problem. I had massive time problems during the whole contest and i also didnt make it a secret. You probably had 2 weeks to compose against me. Even we were a team pedro had zero time - same as me. So i had to compose alone. 30 hours before the deadline i had 10 percent of my composition / structure done. What i try to say with this: You will never have the same situation as your oponent - even you compete alone and in the same time. What makes the pressure is the real life (working, day-by-day stuff, personal matters, system problems, relationship etc.). And since that will never be equal i dont see any possibility to ever have the same frame conditions.

At 11/10/14 05:44 AM, midimachine wrote: p.s. strong opinions will always skew the average, especially if they disagree with the rest of the judges. tbh i don't know why people are complaining about weighting tho, like do you want all the judges to have the same opinion or something?

No, that's not the idea. It's to be able to define the judges scores themselves equally.

At 11/10/14 02:41 AM, SkyeWint wrote: No offense, but that's a complete misrepresentation of the point I was making there. I'll zero in on the exact statement that I'm talking about, though: "If nobody is up for change for more fairness" - that, along with the context, indicates (to me) that you don't think people want change for more fairness. It seems to me like you're disregarding the suggestions other people have made for that purpose. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that along with the previous complaints you've brought up (and my personal experience with people making statements like that - trust me, I've done a lot of moderating even aside from judging in contests) does indicate what I've said here.

Again. I could be wrong. I'll fully admit that - I don't know what you're thinking. That's just how it appears to me. Regardless of whether what I just said is actually correct, can you see how it appears that way?

It's a simple statement that points out currently what we all know, the weight between judges differ. Which we all discussed would be fairer. However if no solution is made then so be it. *Shrugs.

As for the "complaints" you are pointing out. It's interesting you see them as complaints, and imply through your context that it's just the cinematic composers possibly going off on one. So basically, if we stay quiet we're seen as a good contestant. Voice concerns and we're seen as a problem. It seems we can't actually contest a critique or their methods from a judge at all. And when we do, some foresee us as Butthurt and looking for fangirl comments. We would do well to see that appeals in any matter against judge or methods are made due to doubt alleviated, and should not just be wrapped up as a group of troublemakers, as they most likely hold meaning.

Anyway. It doesn't matter much to me. I doubt I'll be joining again under the current circumstances, as the PM's I've received recently we're very...entertaining to say the least.

At 11/10/14 07:02 AM, SoundChris wrote: Dont think so. No matter if there are advantages - composing in a team also has got a lot of disadvantages, too. There were some really strong teams in the contest and most of them struggled to finally submit anything. Without an option to enter as a team many of the really good composers here would never have been able to participate: The NGADM is taking very much time over all these months and in the end this time is missing in other parts of your life. In our case hitokirito is a fulltime musician who has to make a living with music. I am studying + working + had to move to munich and care for lots of other things during the whole contest. So if there wouldn´t have been the team option i could never have entered this year (last year i participated alone. Composing was not a problem and i also had more time in 2013). Without the team option zipzipper, steampianist, bosa, kor-rune, me, hitokirito, camo, skye and many other active NG members would probably not have been able to be part of this :(

I think they would have. Mind, in 2012, I:
1) had to move house (around the time of finishing Supplication),
2) was starting a new postgraduate course after having finished undergrad law,
3) was HOMELESS FOR A WEEK (around the time I composed Asperges Me),
4) had other things to take care of.

And I took part alone and still got third. I call this a non-argument. Sure, some take pressure and the events in their lives differently. But that doesn't mean that if you can't handle things around you, you don't participate. And surely, I'm not the only one who did all of the above alone -- there would have been other solo participants who have had the same lot of luck. It boils to one's preference, at the end of the day, or what one feels to be the better method of participating in a contest.

If teams and pairings are absolutely necessary, I'd have preferred to see two categories in this contest: Individuals, Groups.

The problem here is that in the end you will only have 5-10 teams ... not enough for a contest.

It would work if, like the Game Jams, there were no seedings. One good example would be like the Pixel Jam we had earlier this year. I think just a few more than 10 participated. There were no divisions into rounds; the contest was held just like that and the top 3 scorers were given prizes.

Now granted, it wouldn't be to the same magnitude as in previous contests, but that's one way I can see it working. Of course, the tradeoff is to come up with the best darned piece you could ever do *as a team effort*.

The pressure is not THAT high (everything that can happen if you dont submit is that you will loose. NGADM mainly is a contest to check out your limits and to have fun. You dont have to take the responsibility to a client or anything. THAT is pressure :D ). It just takes 1-2 days to compose a piece - at least for me. If you enter as a team you have other problems: You argue which genres to do, how the mix shall be, single passages in a piece are discussed heavily since 2 people have 2 totally different opinions about music and performance. Dont underestimate these things. Also i wanted to have a rematch against kor-rune this year very much while (off course) hitokirito wanted a guitar battle against him, too :D So you see things are not easy even for teams. Best examples: skye and camo didnt manage it to totally finish their piece, bosa wasnt able to submit in time, zipper and steam also didnt make it to just submit anything. All of those are good musicians who entered as teams and stil didnt make it to survive in the contest. For me that is the proof that teamwork isnt THAT easy to organize. The only advantage you have got if you only have an individual as your oponent is that you can better predict what he will be coming up with. Thats something you also cant do in my case when i am entering alone since my philosophy is to be surprising and unexpected :D

Which is *precisely* why I advocated teamwork to be in a different category. Precisely because it's not meant to be easy to organise perfect teamwork. Want to compete as a team? Organise yourselves as an actual team working in every piece of the contest.

Many people, when they submitted pieces into auditions, understood that the point of this contest was to come up with an earth-shaking piece in a two-week period, something that not everyone finds easy to do. This is the pressure behind the competition, and I do not say so for my own sake: others have said so before me in past years.

I dont really see the problem. I had massive time problems during the whole contest and i also didnt make it a secret. You probably had 2 weeks to compose against me. Even we were a team pedro had zero time - same as me. So i had to compose alone. 30 hours before the deadline i had 10 percent of my composition / structure done. What i try to say with this: You will never have the same situation as your oponent - even you compete alone and in the same time. What makes the pressure is the real life (working, day-by-day stuff, personal matters, system problems, relationship etc.). And since that will never be equal i dont see any possibility to ever have the same frame conditions.

Circumstances will never be equal, but we can surely equalise the conditions to the best of our ability.

I understood long ago that you never know what the opponent is going through, and that you compose *as you can*. But I don't think I'm alone in saying that competing as an individual gives different pros and cons to competing as a team -- remember when @PirateCrab called the judges "tight-hearted gits" for putting him against a series of teams?

At 11/10/14 07:02 AM, SoundChris wrote: It just takes 1-2 days to compose a piece - at least for me.

And yer a damn lucky git, man. :v

@Troisnyx I see what you're saying, I have to say that I agree. It makes sense to me. The only thing that I don't think would work is splitting up the contest. If you're really concerned with the team vs individual thing, I think the best thing for it is just to stop allowing teams to participate, and simply allow others to supply instruments.

I had another point about "but what about people who suck at mixing/composing and want to work with someone who's better at it", then realized that it was a stupid point. The reviews are for helping them get better at it. Duh. >_<

At 11/10/14 09:00 AM, PeterSatera wrote: As for the "complaints" you are pointing out. It's interesting you see them as complaints

Just want to emphasize this. It is not the points themselves that annoy me about this. (not yet, anyway. They haven't been unreasonable) It's the phrasing. It's the way they're stated. That, more than anything, makes me see them more as "complaints" than as "suggestions".

If you want to be technical, literally every suggestion where someone didn't like something about the contest is a complaint. The difference here is that one group tends to make more of these, and be more aggressive about it, often attacking the judge's opinion where others wait or make more reasoned and less outwardly emotional complaints. This isn't to devalue them. I know that I haven't written off the points as just being something "a group of troublemakers" said. If you read back, I (and other people) actually made more reasoned points against it. Hell, (and this is without reading the entire thread again) Step and I even agreed that it would be fairer - just that it would be really difficult to implement. If you can figure out a way to practically implement it, then that is awesome, and I actually have no doubt that it would be used. So, no. It's not that you're being written off. It's just that the phrasing *is* annoying, the passive-aggressive "well, if nobody wants to make things more fair" (paraphrase) as if nobody is actually trying to do that, and even the continued passive aggression (or, if you must, "butthurt") that is displayed even in your last post... it's frustrating. It makes it difficult to engage with you. I have dealt with this kind of thing *many* times while moderating. I *do* know what it looks like.

tl;dr, Peter: It's not about the points you're making. It's about the way you're making them.

If you do decide to sit out of the next contest, then all I can say is that you'll be missed. Hell, I respect you as a composer as an artist. This is completely irrelevant with regard to your capability as a creative mind. I hope that this doesn't further turn you off from participating - all I want is to help you see why you're getting the reaction that you are.

It wasn't my intent, Skye. If you think I'm too harsh in my comments then that's a fair point. I have been known to be quite argumentative and defensive. But I do stick to my points and try not let them stray from the topic at hand. I didn't mean that nobody was trying to fix or come up with ideas to make things more fair to reweight the judging process. I was more meaning if its too much hassle for it's worth them so be it. I do refer back to MetalRenard, because as soon as he said "You're over thinking it" then it helped me step back. And think yeah. I was. Which is why I was so complacent from that point on going forward with what other people want.

Thank you for the comments of respect. I appreciate that. I just found that this wound me up (and more so other things), and unfortunately has put me right off. I'll reevaluate if it comes around next year. But my mind is pretty much set right now.

At 11/10/14 12:41 PM, PeterSatera wrote: It wasn't my intent, Skye.

Understood. It's fine. It happens. Of the people who I've seen do it before, a lot of them didn't fully intend it (or didn't intend it at all). Regardless, it was said. It was explained. Let's move on and try to work together to improve things, ne?

...though from what I've heard of the PMs you mentioned as well, I can't say I blame you for wanting to step out next year either. We should skype about this if you want to talk about it more, though. Don't want to clutter up the thread anymore.

At 11/10/14 12:53 PM, SkyeWint wrote:

At 11/10/14 12:41 PM, PeterSatera wrote: It wasn't my intent, Skye.

Understood. It's fine. It happens. Of the people who I've seen do it before, a lot of them didn't fully intend it (or didn't intend it at all). Regardless, it was said. It was explained. Let's move on and try to work together to improve things, ne?

...though from what I've heard of the PMs you mentioned as well, I can't say I blame you for wanting to step out next year either. We should skype about this if you want to talk about it more, though. Don't want to clutter up the thread anymore.

Agreed. I still hold the person whos been messaging with respect though. And think it would be wrong to discuss any conversations we've had in private. However, yeah. Move onto other things, which are more on topic.

At 11/10/14 10:53 AM, Troisnyx wrote:

But I don't think I'm alone in saying that competing as an individual gives different pros and cons to competing as a team -- remember when @PirateCrab called the judges "tight-hearted gits" for putting him against a series of teams?

Heh. They still are. ;)

And that is my useful input for this thread. /end

At 11/10/14 02:10 PM, PirateCrab wrote:

At 11/10/14 10:53 AM, Troisnyx wrote:

But I don't think I'm alone in saying that competing as an individual gives different pros and cons to competing as a team -- remember when @PirateCrab called the judges "tight-hearted gits" for putting him against a series of teams?

Heh. They still are. ;)

And that is my useful input for this thread. /end

Pffffffffft, I suppose.

But the way I see it is this: discussing rules and suggestions to be implemented in a contest to make it as fair as possible. It's not new, and not meant to be shot down or raised on a pedestal -- it's just there, with a bit of a remote comparison to making law (kinda has the same principle *in theory*; let's not go down that route either).

To everyone else: I hope that in suggesting what I am suggesting, I'm not being too detached from the needs of other participants and judges.

This, really. To put it simply, all these complaints and digs that I'm reading at each other feel totally pointless. People complain, but they really don't have a reason to. This contest is for a bit of fun and that's it really. Sure, there's pressure involved, sometimes it can seem a little unfair, but the fact I took down multiple teams of 2 before I got knocked out only makes me feel better about my musical capabilities.

Not once have I complained either. Having lost a very close friend half way through the competition had completely thrown me off (I was surprised to have even submitted that round, let alone won) and then to lose the majority of my VST's and my project file and still have something to submit somehow? Hell, I'm proud of myself.

It's fair that everyone has their thoughts about how the contest should be run and everyone is of course, going to have dithering opinions from each other. But don't turn it into a slander match for christ sake, keep it civil.

Also shit happens.

Now I'm hungry.

At 11/10/14 02:14 PM, Troisnyx wrote:

But the way I see it is this: discussing rules and suggestions to be implemented in a contest to make it as fair as possible. It's not new, and not meant to be shot down or raised on a pedestal -- it's just there, with a bit of a remote comparison to making law (kinda has the same principle *in theory*; let's not go down that route either).

To everyone else: I hope that in suggesting what I am suggesting, I'm not being too detached from the needs of other participants and judges.

At 11/10/14 02:21 PM, PirateCrab wrote: Sure, there's pressure involved, sometimes it can seem a little unfair, but the fact I took down multiple teams of 2 before I got knocked out only makes me feel better about my musical capabilities.

I just looked and it appears that you actually had to go up against 2 people every single round...

At 11/11/14 12:08 AM, Phonometrologist wrote:

I just looked and it appears that you actually had to go up against 2 people every single round...

@PirateCrab is a cheeky cherub.