:D

soo exciting
I can't wait!

Damn...I didn't even realize how loud my song was till now lol. I'm gonna probably re-release a slightly quieter version after this round.

So, therefore I could use the same song for next round, just like when everyone advanced to the second round by default? Or are you handling this differently?

At 2/11/10 01:33 AM, Gravey wrote: So, therefore I could use the same song for next round, just like when everyone advanced to the second round by default? Or are you handling this differently?

Well, unfortunately I didn't allow this in Group 1, so I don't think it would be fair to allow it in Group 2 :(. Sorry man, I know it's a bummer.

At 2/10/10 06:13 PM, InvisibleObserver wrote: I think the 3 of us would still enjoy very much having a breif review/critique on our pieces, even if less in depth (due to no need to be).

I don't know about Darklight17 and SBB, but I used to review (with a huge review) the song using the 'Write a Review' method (if you look through some of my Page 2 audio reviews or so, you can see that I reviewed all the submissions whose opponent forfeited/couldn't make it, and each one reached the character limit :P), just to make the author not feel like he made the song for nothing. Still, I'm afraid I can't do so right now. I have exams at school at it'd be too hard to keep up. Don't worry though, once the exams are over, I'll be able to review them if I don't forget. Sorry for the inconvenience :(.

At 2/11/10 09:54 AM, Supersteph54 wrote: I'll be able to review them if I don't forget. Sorry for the inconvenience :(.

No problem.

here's my jank

• 

  Awake - Supernova

  by Rawrthaas

  Awake - Supernova. Melodical / VG style DNB.

  Song

  Drum N Bass

  69,534 Views

  PLAY

forgot to repost earlier

Dude, Gravey, congrats on the best of the week!

At 2/12/10 02:37 PM, Rawrthaas wrote: here's my jank
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/2 96234
forgot to repost earlier

Sorry man, you were 2 days late :(. Nothing left to do except let your opponent go through :(.
--
Umm... I've been judging lately, and I've come to Bosa's submission.
I've never played Zelda before, but I know who Ganondorf is, and I also know the main theme of Zelda. When I heard the first part of the song directly after he submitted it, the melody wasn't familiar to me, so I thought that it was some sort of tribute to Zelda because of the name and because of the fact that there isn't 'remix' written down anywhere, but now that I'm judging it and hearing the whole song, I found out that towards the end, the main Zelda theme played, which had me doubting if the whole thing was a remix or not, Gravey's review made me doubt even more, and as you all know, remixes aren't allowed in this contest. So I'm asking, is Bosa's submission a remix of some Zelda melody or not?

Also, KrazeyOne's submission wasn't submitted specifically for the contest, but he just grabbed one of his older submissions, which is also against the rules ("You can't submit songs you already made. They must all be new and made specifically for the contest."). :(

So yeah, aocrkid passes automatically, and if Bosa's submission is indeed a remix, then mr-jazzman passes too.

At 2/13/10 09:25 AM, Supersteph54 wrote:

At 2/12/10 02:37 PM, Rawrthaas wrote: here's my jank
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/2 96234
forgot to repost earlier

Sorry man, you were 2 days late :(. Nothing left to do except let your opponent go through :(.

ah well, no problem :)

At 2/13/10 09:25 AM, Supersteph54 wrote: Umm... I've been judging lately, and I've come to Bosa's submission.
I've never played Zelda before, but I know who Ganondorf is, and I also know the main theme of Zelda. When I heard the first part of the song directly after he submitted it, the melody wasn't familiar to me, so I thought that it was some sort of tribute to Zelda because of the name and because of the fact that there isn't 'remix' written down anywhere, but now that I'm judging it and hearing the whole song, I found out that towards the end, the main Zelda theme played, which had me doubting if the whole thing was a remix or not, Gravey's review made me doubt even more, and as you all know, remixes aren't allowed in this contest. So I'm asking, is Bosa's submission a remix of some Zelda melody or not?

My song is inspired by Zelda, and is not a "remix." I added the main theme in there so you could imagine it being played in a Zelda game. If Ganondorf's War is unacceptable for some reason, I made another track for this round besides Ganondorf's War. I could easily post it here -- since I was not informed about my song being considered a remix before the deadline was up (and I, myself, did not think of it as a remix at all).

At 2/13/10 12:28 PM, Bosa wrote: My song is inspired by Zelda, and is not a "remix." I added the main theme in there so you could imagine it being played in a Zelda game. If Ganondorf's War is unacceptable for some reason, I made another track for this round besides Ganondorf's War. I could easily post it here -- since I was not informed about my song being considered a remix before the deadline was up (and I, myself, did not think of it as a remix at all).

Alright, sorry for any misunderstandings. It's true that I didn't mention that it's unacceptable, so I'll let it pass, although I'd prefer if you use that other track instead of Ganondorf's War, since that uses the main theme from Zelda which does slightly go against the rules of the competition.

At 2/13/10 12:40 PM, Supersteph54 wrote: Alright, sorry for any misunderstandings. It's true that I didn't mention that it's unacceptable, so I'll let it pass, although I'd prefer if you use that other track instead of Ganondorf's War, since that uses the main theme from Zelda which does slightly go against the rules of the competition.

Alright, here it is, my actual submission:

• 

  From Love to War

  by Bosa

  Celtic style with other instrumentals

  Song

  Classical

  5,228 Views

  PLAY

Alright, alright, alright. I want to argue in favor of my opponent, seeing as this would be the second time I'm being jibbed in the competition, but we really have to look at what exactly qualifies as a "remix." In other words, it doesn't matter what Supersteph qualifies as a remix, nor what Bosa thinks is a remix, but rather what the DEFINITION of a remix is. This is only to make it fair across the board, and to prevent any bias (except, by the very virtue of me typing this, there is a bias, I suppose, on my part; I believe that this competition should stick to traditional senses of the term "remix" as opposed to what the judges consider to be a remix - in essence, my bias is fairness). In order to clear up this conflict in understanding, I think it's necessary to bring up evidence -- not only for Bosa's sake, but also for the benefit of all the other competitors.

Now, I decided to take the liberty of finding a few definitions for the word "remix," because this is important to take into account. You can find some of the definitions here (as you can see, not all of them are clear, and not all of them can necessarily be supported completely because they come from online, and the Internet is about 99% bullshit, as we all know, so I tried to find some concurrence between them all in order to get the definition straight):
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionar y/remix
http://www.yourdictionary.com/remix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix

Okay, so from these sites, what I can gather is that the term "remix" refers not only to the changing and alteration of a song in order to fit the purposes of a new song, like rap artists tend to do, but also to provide a change to the arrangement of the song -- which is, in effect, changing the theme.

I tried looking around in a few different dictionaries for the term (including a music dictionary with all sorts of definitions for things that aren't in a typical dictionary), but alas, I could not find the term. This means that the only true definition for "remix" that I could find was online -- and, I realize this detracts from my credibility, but it is the only true source where I could find the word, because the word is used freely all over the Internet, but not in formal English.

Here's what I think: The song may not necessarily be a "remix" per se, but it is definitely a "rearrangement." (If you want a definition for what an arrangement is, here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrangement ; and "arrangement" I could find in the musical dictionary defined as: "An adaptation of a composition for a medium other than that which it was originally written" (Harnsberger 14).) The reason that I believe it is a rearrangement is because the song was originally produced for a video game, but is now being adapted in orchestral form; this differs from orchestration, because an orchestration is defined as "[designating] what instruments play which parts of a composition" (Harnsberger 92). Essentially, then, what we have here is not a remix in the traditional sense, which works with something pre-recorded and is being modified, but a rearrangement.

Now, this leads to this question: Was there a misunderstanding about the rules of the competition? Bosa got it right: It isn't a remix, as was thought. However, it almost seemed implied in the rules that the compositions should have been completely original, without any outside influences from other themes, etc., and the purpose of this was to see just how good of a composer each person was. Then again, it also seemed implied that the quality of the audio would be taken into account, so it wasn't just the composer's ability to make a song, but it was also to see just how good that song sounded.

Bosa's song is not completely original (I found two different arrangements of it online: A crappy, dissonant midi file that takes a while to hear the Ganondorf theme in, and another orchestral arrangement that plays off of the same dissonance; Bosa, in his arrangement, changed these dissonant chords into major and minor ones in order to make the ARRANGEMENT unique; the arrangements are below:
http://www.unlimitedgamer.net/coverage/o ot/music/z64-ganondorf.mid
http://208.53.138.111/soundtracks/legend -of-zelda-hyrule-symphony/jywmfzryqg/10-
ganondorf.mp3
And, of course, everybody could recognize the main Zelda theme, which isn't an original part);
however, you gotta give Bosa credit for the QUALITY of his audio. I don't think there's anyone involved in this competition that can match the powerful sounds he produces. I admit, this even includes me, even though I spent countless hours trying to get my song to sound top-notch, but still sounds shitty and unbalanced (I was going off of creative notions, and also the fact that the music was live audio, but it can't even infinitesimally compare to Bosa's EQing job and mastering). Even if you think the song itself absolutely sucks, you gotta admit, for being such a "sucky" song (scare-quotes because not everyone agrees that it sucks), the mastering sounds pretty damn good.

So, this raises the final question: What are you as judges going off of more: The ability to create a really good, original song in two weeks; or, the ability to produce a really good-SOUNDING song in two weeks, regardless of whether or not it is completely original? Either way, at this point, somebody is going to be upset, because this doesn't seem like it was outlined specifically in the eyes of the judges.

And, this isn't up to the biased competitors; it's up to the judges, who should already know what they're looking for in this competition.

Oh, wow. Dang. Problem resolved.

Well, I'm going to add a works cited for all of that stuff I typed up anyway:

Harnsberger, Lindsey C. Essential Dictionary of Music. Alfred Publishing Company, Inc. Los Angeles 1997: 14, 92. Print.

So are we gonna be posting round three's submissions in this thread? Or are we going to a different thread now like you did with group one?

At 2/13/10 12:51 AM, mr-jazzman wrote: Dude, Gravey, congrats on the best of the week!

Thanks yas muches! ;-)

At 2/14/10 02:42 PM, Gravey wrote: So are we gonna be posting round three's submissions in this thread? Or are we going to a different thread now like you did with group one?

Same procedures as with Group 1 :).

I'll take this opportunity to apologize for the long long delay. I have exams, so does Darklight, and it's really awkward, but when we get it done, we'll be making a new thread with the results and you can post your Round 3 submissions over there. We'll also configure the deadlines so that the delay won't interfere and shorten your deadlines.

Again, we're very sorry. We hope we can finish off the reviews as quickly as possible.

• 

  by <deleted>

  4 Views

At 2/14/10 03:06 PM, Supersteph54 wrote: we'll be making a new thread with the results and you can post your Round 3 submissions over there. We'll also configure the deadlines so that the delay won't interfere and shorten your deadlines.

Again, we're very sorry. We hope we can finish off the reviews as quickly as possible.

Not a big issue, I would hope / imagine others participating have already begun next rounds pieces - I have.

At 2/14/10 03:53 PM, A-New-Decade wrote: http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/3 11648

Wrong thread. Stick to audio advertisements.

I'll take this opportunity to apologize for the long long delay. I have exams, so does Darklight, and it's really awkward, but when we get it done, we'll be making a new thread with the results and you can post your Round 3 submissions over there. We'll also configure the deadlines so that the delay won't interfere and shorten your deadlines.

Woo! A little extra time is actually quite welcome. So take your time. ;-)

Well, crap, man. I must've missed that one. Oh, well. Good luck, aocrkid. :D

Hey guys, sorry for the huge delay so far. I can assure you we're trying really hard to get those songs done. Already found some awesome talent ^^. SBB is finished, and Darklight and I are trying to finish, but with exams in our way it's going to be hard.

Also, I know I've been frequenting the Audio Forum quite a bit, posting, but that doesn't mean I'm lazing out or anything. That time that I would spend posting in the forums would just be some small breaks from studying. I find it more comfortable to listen to your songs whilst doing something else, so I hear the songs as I post, and once I find all of the mistakes it has (hehe) I make the review.

It's pretty awkward to get them done at this time, but just to assure you that we're working on it, and sorry for the huge delay we're having so far! For now, forget about this and get on with whatever you want to do. You don't even need to check the forum everyday to see if the new thread is out. When the results are out, we'll PM every contestant, and we'll obviously change the deadlines to give you the right amounts of time. So yeah, sorry for the delay, we'll try and get the reviews done as soon as possible!

Also, to DemonSlayer12, your song is a cover, and I meant to tell you before that it's not allowed (it has to be your own original work) but I didn't make myself clear enough in my opening post and I also didn't tell you beforehand, so we'll review it anyway pretending it's an original song. Next time try and post an original song though :).

Damn, those tests must be difficult! I know what you mean; I was an AP test nut in high school, it left me with no life for weeks lol. Thanks for giving us the heads up though about deadlines, it lets us know you're alive, I was getting a little worried there for a moment! =P

At 2/18/10 10:58 AM, Supersteph54 wrote: Hey guys, sorry for the huge delay so far. I can assure you we're trying really hard to get those songs done. Already found some awesome talent ^^. SBB is finished, and Darklight and I are trying to finish, but with exams in our way it's going to be hard.

It's pretty awkward to get them done at this time, but just to assure you that we're working on it, and sorry for the huge delay we're having so far! For now, forget about this and get on with whatever you want to do. You don't even need to check the forum everyday to see if the new thread is out. When the results are out, we'll PM every contestant, and we'll obviously change the deadlines to give you the right amounts of time. So yeah, sorry for the delay, we'll try and get the reviews done as soon as possible!

I'm doing this. here is my fight song.

• 

  by <deleted>

  4 Views

At 2/19/10 06:04 PM, DXsamurai wrote: I'm doing this. here is my fight song.
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/3 04730

Round two is already over. When you post in a thread with 17 pages worth of replies you should read a couple of them first. You are literally over a month and a half late in entering this contest.

At 2/19/10 06:10 PM, Gravey wrote:

At 2/19/10 06:04 PM, DXsamurai wrote: I'm doing this. here is my fight song.
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/3 04730

Round two is already over. When you post in a thread with 17 pages worth of replies you should read a couple of them first. You are literally over a month and a half late in entering this contest.

yay I Just now reread the thing Sorry. Well I'm so late. Disregard the post

Sorry to say that the results will have to be delayed till Saturday or possible Sunday because Darklight17 prefers to play games instead of get that darn judging ready.

At 2/25/10 07:37 AM, Supersteph54 wrote: Sorry to say that the results will have to be delayed till Saturday or possible Sunday because Darklight17 prefers to play games instead of get that darn judging ready.

At least we have some idea of when the competition will get rolling again now. that is the biggest pain in the ass. Just knowing when the next round will be starting up is a lot better than it being up in the air like its been. So thanks for the update.

Goddammit! Tell him to get his ass in gear! Tell him to listen to the songs WHILE he plays games! Geez! We've only been hangin loose for like a month now (2 months if you count the fact that most of us resubmitted our old songs from Round 1 and didn't get judged on them because 16 people dropped out)! Lol I'm not angry though; those exclamations are just there to make a point. Just whenever it's done is good lol.

At 2/25/10 07:37 AM, Supersteph54 wrote: Sorry to say that the results will have to be delayed till Saturday or possible Sunday because Darklight17 prefers to play games instead of get that darn judging ready.

At 2/27/10 12:14 PM, mr-jazzman wrote: Goddammit! Tell him to get his ass in gear! Tell him to listen to the songs WHILE he plays games! Geez! We've only been hangin loose for like a month now (2 months if you count the fact that most of us resubmitted our old songs from Round 1 and didn't get judged on them because 16 people dropped out)! Lol I'm not angry though; those exclamations are just there to make a point. Just whenever it's done is good lol.

Our latest conversation at school, as far as I remember it (I overheard him asking a friend of his if he can go online to play some game with him):

Me: "Hey, why are you asking him if he'll go online today so you can play that stupid soccer game with him? I thought you were 'packed with studying and can't take a break'..."

D17: "Oh come on, I don't judge when we have a hard exam the next day. I mean come on, FRENCH!"

Me: "We've kept them waiting for like a month because you haven't finished yet, or as a matter of fact, barely started. The game can wait, but the NGADM can't."

D17: "When the exams are over, I'll try and finish them."

Me: "Gah, get them done by Saturday, will you?"

D17: "Saturday?? Sunday!"

Me: "Sunday? But if you planned on finishing when you were supposed to finish judging, you would've only had 2 days to finish because that's the length of a judging period, and if you didn't lie to me you said that you had already finished 3 before the exams started, so by giving yourself 3 days, you're giving yourself 1 more day than you should, and considering you did 3 reviews already, you're being pretty unfair."

D17: "Yes, but technically it's 2 days, since I'll spend Friday celebrating because I finished the exams."

Me: "..."

D17: "..."

Me: "Pfft, alright then, but Sunday morning at the latest. Get that judging done!"

D17: "Of course."

And 'Of course' was said in a rather sarcastic manner, plus the fact that he hasn't been on MSN for ages doesn't help either...

I have good news and bad news. What do you guys want to hear first?

Wait, what do I care...

Good news is Darklight FINALLY finished the reviews.

Bad news is he sent them to me too late, and he didn't know about Bosa's new submission so he has to review that too... and you guys have to wait till tomorrow :(.

Sorry, we suck so much. Well, technically Darklight does, but whatever. We'll make sure next year won't suck as much as this year :(.