The Ultimate Hum: Exploration, starting on July 10th!

[TheUltimateHum]

Greetings, and welcome all to “The Ultimate Hum 2: Exploration”, an ode to chiptunes of all kinds that take inspiration from a plethora of musical genres, and to the absolute variety seen in other great compilations such as the late “Chiptunes = WIN!”. Originally a passion project hosted on Battleofthebits.org, we’ve decided to extend our hands onto the wonderful community of creators which is Newgrounds!

Now, two Rounds have already been completed on BotB, and thus 2 of 8 Gold Slots filled

But how will it go down on Newgrounds? Well... pretty much exactly the same way!

• Rounds Stage: There will be at least 6 more weekly, week-long Rounds going from Saturdays ~5PM ET to the next Friday 3PM, each week giving its own unique set of genres personally selected for you to make your own somewhat-or-fully chiptuney interpretation.

Entering: To enter in each Round, post the track on Newgrounds during the round, and do one of two things:

• Join the Discord and post a link to it in #submit_tracks_here
• Post a link to it on this here thread, and we'll put it on the Discord channel ourselves

Voting: Everyone can vote on each entry as they are posted until the results are tallied during the sync-listen streams. To do that, join the Discord and send Maximemoring, FunkyKarl or pumpuli a DM with your vote(s)!

Streams: At the end of each Round (Saturday 3PM ET), a sync-listening, voting and results stream will be hosted on Twitch, right as the Entry Period ends!

• Album Art Stage: After those 6 weeks have past, an extra pixel art Round will be hosted for us to make the album cover while the hosts begins work on the Selections and feedback for the Polish Stage. It will have the same features as the Rounds!

• Selections Stage: When all that is done, the polish team will select, considering directly your opinions, many extra tracks to make the album lineup. (last time, we ended up totalling 45 tracks with 10 rounds)

• Polish Stage: Hummers will then have 2 weeks, for the polish stage, to improve, collab, mix and overall elevate the musical power of the selected tracks to their max. Feedback from both an ear-trained pleb and a jazz-fusion genius will be available to everyone! The Polish Stage is optional for this project, but everyone who does make major changes, whether on their track or collabing with others, will be given “extra credits” in the descriptions.

• Mastering: Lossless stem renders will need to be rendered and sent to our dedicated mastering Expert, TheWing/pumpuli, and an open-ended mastering process will start.

• Release: When all is done, the selected tracks will be released as an album on the official Bandcamp! Visit our previous project on Bandcamp to hear what that sounds like!

For full ruleset, check the post below

[TheUltimateHum]

FULL RULES

• Participants have to upload their track on Newgrounds, then submit the link in the #submit_tracks_here channel within each round's time
• All voters must sent votes to Maximemoring directly.
• No covers allowed, only original works.
• Entries that have been previously publicly released are not allowed.
• No one is required to participate in multiple battles to have a chance to win a spot
• Unless otherwise stated under WINNING LIMIT rule, gold winner is automatically taken for the album

IMPORTANT THEMES: Genres

• Each week, a different set of genres will be put forward, with which you will also be given a (long) description and plenty of examples to work from. These descriptions and examples should give you an idea of how things work within these genres.
• These genres will generally be large and overarching, and so you can use your musical sense to make sense of it all, and work it into your styles without necessarily rigidly having to stick to its basics. Surprise us!

FORMAT: Wildchip

• Use whichever tool you want, but the end-product, the track must have at least some chippiness to it. That means a straight-forward chippy lead or bitcrushed drums, for example!(edited)

WINNING LIMIT: 2 Gold wins - Not including selection stage

• To promote fairness, if you win battles with gold more than twice, you will have to choose after the 10 battles which tracks you will want to "keep", in which case, the others will see the silver winner be chosen instead.
• This does not however limit the amount of total tracks selected for the album in the end, we may still select it during the selection stage.

SELECTION STAGE: After all battles

• Alike to last time, we will select many more tracks depending on multiple factors including how they distinguish themselves from the Gold Slot tracks, as well as the state at which the track is by the end of the main battle series, as well as your willingness to improve them.
• This means the 8 battles may, again, turn up to 40 tracks(.... or more oops >.>) if we simply cannot control ourselves out of pure recklessnessHYPE.

POLISH STAGE: After selections are made

• This time around, the polish stage is going to be shorter (2 weeks), and optional.
• Mastering will still be done with TheWing/pumpuli! :D
• You MUST however still be reasonably contactable though the work Discord server or my friends list on here. The reason that still has to be a thing is we will need at the very least stems/lossless renders for Mastering and Release.
• But I must be clear: NO COMPLETE OVERHAULS! That means don't just completely change all the melodies, all the backing tracks, etc. and make your track unrecognizable!

[TheUltimateHum]

Round 3, for July 10th to July 17th, is all about Drum & Bass, NeuroFunk & Breaks!

Here's the extensive text theme pack, which explains the genres and includes way too many examples! (Drive link)

[TheUltimateHum]

Round 3 has started! Click this for a little FAQ and the full Theme Pack (which is also just above this post on Drive)