Shall we make a patching competition?

#1

You know, a new year is beginning and the community is almost 1 year old! And therefore is obviously time for a patching competition!

I was thinking about something like this: a competition "theme" is decided with a public poll (something like kick drum synthesis or evolving soundscapes or granular synthesis) and anyone who wants to partecipate has to keep his work "secret" (not sharing it with the community) until the competition ends, in order not to bias other partecipants or the jury.

Patches are submitted to a jury (it could be like 3-4 users) that has to rate several factors, such as (for example)
-relevancy with the theme
-sound goodness
-patch tidyness
-creativity award

In the end an average vote is calculated and the winner wins something (prize is yet to be decided)

Patches can then be published and displayed to the community.

What do you think?

#2

I like the idea of something to get us all more into making shareable patches. I like the "theme" idea.
I never quite like the "competition, voting, prize" aspect of it, but maybe "the winner gets to chose the next theme" monthly competition, with participating public voting for the winner, could be an idea to start. With 20 days for patch creation, 3 days to submit, and a week of voting. That way the prize is that the community works on something that you want during the next month.
I'm just trying to find ways to make it easy, free and the less biased possible

#3

yes why not? I can see here a lot of posts about connections, programming, sysex, etc. but very few good and playable synth patches...

#4

I like it. I I think I would just make it a straight public vote at first, as its easy and doesn't require the community to come up with curators. Over time we could identify folks, but (and this is my real world life coming in) curating even 20 individual works would be pretty time consuming, if you make the vote community driven, folks could put in as much time (or as little) as they like without the pressure of being 1/4 of the final vote.

Start simple and easy and expand from there. I do love the theme idea though as the constraints will help focus. In fact you could do stipulation themes (can only use one OSC, No user input, etc). Joannes could even use it to test bug fixes or features.

#5

I get what you're saying, but having a jury means a more consistent voting (say everybody wants to test A's patch, because he is a very active and well known user, while nobody wants to test B's patch, because he is a noob, the resoult would be biased)

In my experience, in a small community (about videogame making, but the number of active users was comparable) competitions would end with 7-8 entries and 3-4 judges and the review process would end in approx. 2 weeks.

#6

I like the idea!

my preference would be for a competition with community voting, no prizes just for fun... and people just vote how they see fit, say top 3. or even better just comment on what they like about submissions (feedback is the most valuable reward I think)

I agree with others, no jury, and keep it simple/lightweight .... just a theme and a 'deadline' and then a voting window.
(the community is relatively small, and for many time is precious, so have to keep barriers to minimum)

btw: I think perhaps if submissions contained a video/soundcloud as well as patch might promote browsing a bit more.
similarly patches should be self contained, so use patch/patcher as the new UI allows direct loading from a URL.

one thing we might need to be careful of is 'samples' given potential copyright issues, and also 'storage' requirements on the server. I guess if submissions contained links to (free) downloads thats works.

#7

Yeah that makes a lot of sense for sure. I will support whatever the organizer is willing to do, to be honest. Just throwing out my 2 cents.

#8

The prize can be something symbolic, "the winner gets to chose the next theme" is actually a really great idea (also because a physical prize has a cost, and since members are all around the world it could become very costly just to ship a t-shirt)
However, i feel there should be a reward of some kind, in order to keep the interest alive.

OK for self contained patches, and therefore no to samples (unless specifically required by the subject) or external code (except maybe for script objects inside the patch)

As for the jury i can see it's not very popular. We can try a test run without it and see what happens.

We should decide a starting theme then. What if we let our president choose? :grin: @johannes

#9

I think 1st of February to start the 1st competition seems a good date to start off.

If every participant gets to openly vote for the top 3 (with 5 points for the 1st, 3 points for the 2nd and 2 points for the 3rd, or something like that) on a forum thread, I think we can work out the winner. I'm sure we're only talking about 10-20 people maximum for the moment, and finding just 4 people to vote (so that means they cannot participate) won't be easy (at least for the moment)

I wouldn't ban samples, because it would stop us having fun with wavetables. So why not just limit all samples to a certain size (5Mb max) and oblige them to be open source (so making one's own is the best idea).

Otherwise self contained patches of course, and maybe encourage a certain amount of description in the patch too.

I like the idea that our dear president [sic] choses the first theme. If he doesn't want to, we've always got time to do a "proposition -> poll" function before starting

#10

I wouldn't ban samples. They are fun and one of the area that needs more improvement in my opinion. Good idea to limit samples to 5Mb though.

#11

no issue with samples, just wanted to highlight 'potential' issue...

the poll plugin is already installed, so you can create polls like this

  • Fred's awesome patch
  • Jack's fantastic patch
  • Bob's creative patch
  • somebody else patch
  • you get the idea

0voters

You may choose up to 3 options.

Vote now!Show results

doesn't allow weighting..., though I suppose we could do 3 polls (in the same post), for first, second and third choice (one vote) then its trivial, to calculate the points

e.g.
First Choice

  • Fred's awesome patch
  • Jack's fantastic patch
  • Bob's creative patch
  • somebody else patch
  • you get the idea

0voters

Show results


Second Choice

  • Fred's awesome patch
  • Jack's fantastic patch
  • Bob's creative patch
  • somebody else patch
  • you get the idea

0voters

Show results


Third Choice

  • Fred's awesome patch
  • Jack's fantastic patch
  • Bob's creative patch
  • somebody else patch
  • you get the idea

0voters

Show results

alternative, we could vote for one in each 'category' e.g. Best Sound, Most Creative, Most Interesting

#12

I'm also all about sharing patches, use all "scattered" nice tricks and tips from passed months.

1 patch - 1 theme per month ala KVR OSC One Synth Challenge...

#13

Alright, then!
Ok to samples, provided that:
1) they're royalty free
2) they're smaller than a limit size (that will depend on the theme)
3) they're provided as RAW files, in the same folder ( *.zip) of the patch
3b) in order to save server space, bulky files should be uploaded on a separate hosting site that does not require registration to download (and that does not delete files until competition ends)

I think we should define some standards for patches to be presented in, for example a master volume control ( *c or vca could do the trick) that's well visible (and possibly set to 0 by default) should exist in every competitor patch, in order to protect ears and speakers.

Also i'd say to limit "end user control" to a maximum of N parameters, well visible and commented at the top of the patch. (The number of parameters depends clearly on the theme)

See below

example.jpg831x567 97.9 KB

#14

For the samples/bulky files: mega.nz offers 50 GIGABYTE cloud space for free....

And you can make more than one account if you like. When one is full we make a new one :smile: Mega doesnt require any registrations to download. And you can make links for all files/folders in the cloud and send links with or with out key. And it can zip files directly from the cloud if it is not zipped before added.

And not that it really matters in this situation, it is end to end encrypted :smile:

About the rules:
Maybe if the one who won the last competition get to choose the next theme, maybe that person also set the rules?

#15

yeah, whilst I think we shouldn't be prescriptive about how patches have to be constructed etc...

and I suspect it will to some extend be 'self policing' if people submit patches which are difficult to install, or difficult to use... i suspect many will just not bother, so will get lower votes....
(e.g. I for one will not be downloading GB's of samples, and messing about with external hosts. so thats a hint for getting my vote :wink: )

perhaps we should have a 'tips n tricks' section for patches, that make them 'easier' for people to install...

Id add to yours...
- use patch/patcher rather than sub-patches, so its all in one patch file
- ensure everything uses relative paths
- a preset or two which show the patch in different 'states'
- YT/soundclound mp3 link so voters can hear patch example in advance.

winner chooses theme and constraints sounds good to me, with an 'exception' ... if they win their own competition, then the runner up chooses.

#16

I think a bit of restraining is necessary for a competition. There's a lot of space in the forum for publishing patches without a volume limiter before the output, or with hundreds of subpatches to download (and a lot of users do this). But for a competition, especially because there is not a jury, constraints are necessary in order to make the review process the most quick and safe possible.

A limit on end-user control means that as a reviewer i won't start from a bass patch and tweak 1000 parameters until i can review a pad. Unless that's the theme of the competition.

#17

Yes sure, but I guess there is a natural limit of how much Axoloti will play at the same time. One competition cold be; Create a whole song/loop of this sample: X.wav. That is possible :smile:

My prefered use of axoloti is for samples, so no samples would be a turn off for me :smile:

Anyway, we could have a few test runs and se how it goes and sets some rules if it gets too abstract :smile: I think it is "dangerous" setting general rules for creative processes as music is. But that doessnt mean that each competition can have specific rules. That would be better imo than general rules.

Cool with me about the runner up chooses if the winner also won last competition.

#18

Anyway, with or without rules, count me in...

When do we get started? :smile:

EDIT: I could agree to the rule that only one axoloti is allowed for the contests. or else it is unfair for those who only have one...

#19

Yeah, I think we can all agree, that given Axolotl's wide spectrum of uses, each month could (should?) be very different, be in synthesis, sampling, granular... sequencing midi? etc etc.
Id guess some will enter for themes that interest them, and others might enter all (time permitting) to 'grow' in different areas.

Id say, lets just 'give it a go' and see what works (and doesnt) as we go along.

so @mtyas said 20 days? + 3 days to submit + 1 week voting...
how do we want to do this? fixed dates, so easy to remember ?
e.g. 1st-3rd = submission, 4th-10th voting, 11th = competition set, 11th-month end =patching?
any other suggestions?

I can create a new category, so we have it all in one place.

Id suggest the competition 'setter' opens a new topic on the 11th, opening post contains the themes/constraints... and later (on the 4th) contains the 'vote' poll
I think it would be good if the 'competition setter' can do the 'admin' for the competition that month, by that i mean, create the poll form the submissions, and also clarify theme/constraints during the month.

(in the competition category, we can also keep discussions about theme/constraints suggestions, tip n tricks and any 'rule' proposals)

I think we can give it a crack this month, perhaps with an 'easier challenge' to start, don't want to frighten anybody away... participation is the most important part.

I agree, that it would be great if @johannes would be willing to kick us off with an opening challenge :smile:

#20

Those dates seem good, and that way, as you say, let's start this month
@Sputnki just observed the lower part of your illustration patch and started laughing out loud, great example !