Oh, look who the cat dragged in! Welcome to the Newgrounds Audio Underdogs Competition Knock-out Round Thread 2016! :D If you have yet to understand exactly why the NGAUC is so awesome, click HERE.
The remaining competitors have until Wednesday, July 27th at 23:59 (11:59 pm) EDT to submit a completely original track (i.e., made from scratch for the competition) to this thread. You couldn't have started working on this piece until NOW, as per the contest rules. If we find evidence of you having done so, you will be automatically disqualified. Please read all of the rules if you haven’t already - I really want to avoid having to disqualify anyone else. We’re going to be really suspicious if you post your track in this thread 2 hours after it opens.
There will be NO remixes, re-makes, mash-ups, covers, arrangements, or anything like that for this round. Your piece really has to be COMPLETELY original. If you use external samples, please cite their origins in the description of your track. It’s generally a good idea to clearly state what you used to make your track anyway - which sounds are from VSTs/plugins, which ones you recorded yourself, and which ones are from downloaded sample libraries. NO COPYRIGHTED SAMPLES ARE ALLOWED. If you don’t know where a sample originates from, please don’t use it. This copyright policy is also clarified in the NG Audio Portal guidelines, so (hopefully) this shouldn’t be an issue anyway…
About half of the competitors from each group were accepted into the Knock-out Round, rounded down according to group membership and then rounded up if there were ties (for example, the Professional Amateurs had 96 members, so 48 were originally selected to advance, but it was made 49 instead because of a tie). The new group membership totals may be unequal as a result of ties, rounding, and disqualifications.
Speaking of disqualifications, we’re officially dismissing @P3YOSHI, @RomanM, and @Error104 from the competition, as their tracks were removed from the site for various reasons. In all fairness, they were all warned of their impending dismissal reasonably far in advance.
The six strongest competitors from each group will be announced by Monday, August 1st. Then, those people will face each other in an epic finale! They’ll have 11 more days (until Friday, August 12th at 11:59 p.m. EDT) to submit their final pieces! :D The winner of the competition will be announced on Tuesday, August 16th.
The judges (@ZipZipper, @Trunotfals, @SkyeWint, @Samulis, @Phyrnna, @Phonometrologist, @Lockyn, @Johnfn, and myself) deserve an incredible volume of praise and gratitude. They each took a significant amount of time amidst their busy schedules this past week to score your submissions so that these results could get out on time. Some of them even left you rather detailed and helpful feedback.
Also, thanks to @Decky for agreeing to craft some fancy forum signatures for the top 3 finishers!
If you didn't make it into this round, please don't complain. Simply PM me or any of the other judges if you have any questions or concerns. Please keep in mind that it was truly a challenge to divide these competitors into those who were moving on and those who weren’t. Many talented and knowledgeable musicians didn't even make it to the next round! The judges have worked hard to score this competition, though, so please keep your PMs friendly and not accusing.
The results will be posted in a separate forum post in a couple of minutes. After that, the specific scores given by each judge will also be released publicly in the thread. PLEASE DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD UNTIL THE RESULTS ARE POSTED. Thank you in advance for complying.
"Time's fun when you're having flies." ~Kermit the Frog
