The goal of our funs/works here

[Airmann]

Hello guys ,

I was wondering what actually your motivation is to monthly take part at sdcompo Competition.

I was asking this as a general question by myself, and thought about it.
At least many of us put a lot of time an efforts into this project month for month.

So what's the motivation, what are the reasons , what keeps it going ?
Is it just for fun of creating new things/art ? Ist it for learning ? Is it for the ego for fame and glory ?

Moreover, especially one questions that bugs me:

What impact has this compo with all its great creations in general or for the society ? Will it be a museum of the achievements of a freaky scene in 10 years ? Does there last more than this ? Do we really meet people, build up relationships and find friends here ?

Could we do something beyond that ?

In the last weeks, when I was scanning through the results, I often thought that we should make something bigger out of all those great songs here.

Maybe we could dedicate rounds to social projects, against aids, for political projects, for freedom of speech. Against child abuse and so on.

For example we could create slide shows or little movies which fit to
the music of such a round and release that on YouTube.

Maybe we could create an annual Music Disc with a little graphical frontend and release that on YouTube (was one of my favs).
An example is the BitArts Music Disk release at Evoke 2008 (Keith303 took part there). I

Or maybe we could didcate a round to Renoise Resources ?

The positive effect was: it was no more just a competition and learning plattform. It also was a common thing of a community where the
community creates something for the bigger worldwide community

Would be really great if we could make more out of it


So I invite you to discuss this here.

[organic io]

My introduction to sdcompo is funny... It was the day of the round 1 deadline, and I was thinking to myself "I really wish there was a regular tracking competition, competing in something like that would really motivate me".. So I checked the CTG forums and lo and behold, found out about SDcompo. Originally one of my goals was to prove to myself that I could do better than last place (LOL), because I used to get last place in a lot of OHC's on IRC back in the day
I started to be more confident in my abilities around round 4 (and also put more effort into my songs).

Now I consider the compo just another part of my life ... There are so many benefits to it -- motivation to track (I crave deadlines), getting feedback on your songs, having a bunch of great new songs to listen to every month, learning a lot by listening to and watching other peoples' songs and what they managed to do with the same samples. The general sense of community. And of course the friendships that are built. I consider me and Paul (ambtax) close friends now, and we never would have met if it weren't for the compo.
Doing co-ops is great as well, because you can get a completely different perspective on a song just by seeing what someone else brings to the table. Plus it helps you learn how to work on a team.

I don't think the compo will be in a museum of the scene in 10 years... Because I think the scene will still be very much alive by then. (and I hope SDcompo will still be too, although that's pretty far to predict for 1 website). Just think, we are participating in something that started nearly 20 years ago. Sure, its heyday was 15 years ago, but it all created a strong foundation that many people are still passionate about.

... more continued in the post after chunter for continuity sake because I actually typed this after he posted

[chunter]

What impact has this compo with all its great creations in general or for the society ? Will it be a museum of the achievements of a freaky scene in 10 years ? Does there last more than this ? Do we really meet people, build up relationships and find friends here ?

I don't think the tracker/sceners of the 90s knew they were doing anything that would be saved for extended posterity, though I suppose they at least thought the stuff was great. Will a bunch of teenagers that are now four year olds listen to this stuff and think it's cool? Maybe... maybe not. We won't know until the time passes, but I'm looking forward to it!

Maybe we could dedicate rounds to social projects, against aids, for political projects, for freedom of speech. Against child abuse and so on.

I like the intention, but how much is gained by singing about the particular subject? Nothing personal, but the reason I don't have nice gear is because I can't afford it, I don't think it is fair to make donation to a cause mandatory...

As far as singing about a political/social subject for awareness' sake, I'm not against it considering I was exposed to a lot of hippie music growing up and listened to the likes of U2 and Midnight Oil as a teenager, but it'd make for awkward "themes", because singing about a political subject requires an extreme amount of intensity and care to really get it right. Your idea has great intentions, though.

Maybe we could create an annual Music Disc with a little graphical frontend and release that on YouTube (was one of my favs).

I'm all for this. I was considering remixing/remastering/compiling a lot of my work of the last year into a kind of album for archive.org anyway (and even if I had the honor of appearing on the sdcompo disc, I would still want to try to compile things that I did not make here, like famicompo, some ohc's, stuff done on my own time, etc.)

Or maybe we could didcate a round to Renoise Resources ?

It'd make a great theme for one of the rounds: use only samples/xrni's from Renoise Resources...

[organic io]

Will a bunch of teenagers that are now four year olds listen to this stuff and think it's cool? Maybe... maybe not. We won't know until the time passes, but I'm looking forward to it!

I know of at least 2 kids who will be jamming to it and I think Airmann and Paul do as well

Airmann, I love the youtube idea. I think that all comes down to having someone coordinate the project and finding people to do all aspects of it, for example the art and video editing. Are you volunteering for this?

Also I like the idea about political, social rounds, etc, but I see chunter's point about it being a difficult object to convey, especially with tracker music. Perhaps this could be a subset of the competition (held in the forums?) for all those willing?
We've had "unofficial compo rounds" before that went pretty well - http://forums.sdcompo.com/viewtopic.php?t=297
and of course you know I'm all about some political songs
http://www.sdcompo.com/entry.php?e=398

So anyway, yeah. Bring on the big ideas

[chunter]

Actually, while it's fresh on my mind... I've put a button to sdcompo.com on my blog. I noticed that some bulletin boards used to have copies of our news and results... I wonder if we should be advertising for more participants (or not)?

[Airmann]

like the intention, but how much is gained by singing about the particular subject? Nothing personal, but the reason I don't have nice gear is because I can't afford it, I don't think it is fair to make donation to a cause mandatory...

Sorry for answering so late. When talking about "donation" I didn't mean financial aspects. More the support / the dedication itself. There shoudn't
be money involved.

As far as singing about a political/social subject for awareness' sake, I'm not against it considering I was exposed to a lot of hippie music growing up and listened to the likes of U2 and Midnight Oil as a teenager, but it'd make for awkward "themes", because singing about a political subject requires an extreme amount of intensity and care to really get it right. Your idea has great intentions, though

Of course this is not as easy as doing another funny round, but on the other hand it can be a great motivator.
Anyway. I understand what you mean: It's not everybody's focus.

[Airmann]

Airmann, I love the youtube idea. I think that all comes down to having someone coordinate the project and finding people to do all aspects of it, for example the art and video editing. Are you volunteering for this?

Yeah ... I'd like to do something like this. From time to time I make small videos. I also made an Trackmo/Demo on Amiga which was never released, but was finished.

I want to release a demo/music disc since I'm 15. At this time
I owned a lot of music discs from Red Sector, Dr. Awesome and so on.

The main problem: TIME. At the moment my focus lays on getting better in producing music. Sdcomp helpes me a lot thereby .

But maybe in 1-2 years I'll do such a music disc. I already have an Idea:

why not make a music disk using scalable 2D svg vector graphics.
I'Ve nether seen such a kind of demo so far.
There's is a Framework in C++ for drawing such gfx. UHE Products like Zebra VSTi uses this Framework for GUI drawing. I could write the code, but I'm no good graphician.

If I'll ever have some time I will post a public invitation at the forum/one liners.

Let's see ...

[Airmann]

I know of at least 2 kids who will be jamming to it Very Happy and I think Airmann and Paul do as well

Very true, especially for the songs of this round #34 ))

BTW:
The political and social thing is still burning in my heart.
I won't let those idea go. !

[Sonicade]

This is a great topic Airmann, I have thought a lot about how to expand and develop SDCompo more. I really like the idea of somehow putting together a YouTube project. Perhaps it could go together with the idea below. A series of interesting music videos to accompany the music.

One idea that is very close to happening is the Soundevotion Compolation (name credited to Drye). Aged even designed up a flyer for it.

The idea was to make a compilation of the top songs from SDCompo. Any song from 1st to 3rd place would be eligible to be included on the album. I would still like to make this happen, but to do it right requires a lot of logistics that I haven't worked out yet.

Specifically, how to orchestrate people remastering their own tracks and insure a consistent high quality level.

What and where would make the best distribution avenues to make the biggest/best impact.

Those are probably the two main challenges. If anyone has any input or ideas for either of those I'd love to hear them.

[chunter]

I like that idea, battleofthebits.com already do this (the compilations CD thing). They're considering expanding their radio player system so that you can have tunes from particular contest styles or certain players (playaz?) running constantly, like a Pandora or last.fm list.

I like that Remixta has been picking up and playing our winners, I wish we had our own podcast. On second thought, considering the level of quality that ends up on Remixta, it's very cool that our winners are played there.

It is not necessary to force artists to remaster their own work on the CD, nor is it wrong if somebody puts up a remix or complete remake, if you ask me, though I think the artist ought to consent to the final before it goes on.

It also needn't be a physical CD release, I'd feel pretty good if it ended up on an archive.org-style netlabel or maybe even became the pilot release of the SounDevotion label...