Music Contest #2 - Theme Vote

[CoBrA b]

The time draws near for the Hive's second music contest! We've come up with a long and vaired list of themes, and now it's time to decide which will be the theme of the competition!

Possible Themes

1. Environmental: Write a piece of music depicting a specific environment.
This theme has several possible variations. A single environment could be listed, or contestants could choose from a list of environments.
Votes: 8
Score: 23

2. Starcraft: Write a piece of music that fits Starcraft II. Essentially, what does Starcraft sound like to you?
Votes: 1
Score: 3

3. Action Music: Write a piece of music which creates a sense of action, rush, and/or combat. This theme has two possible variations. One would require all submissions to be composed as background music, the other would not.
Votes: 3
Score: 3

4. Cinematic (Non-specific): Write a piece of music that could serve as background music for a cinematic.
Votes: 1
Score: 2

5. Cinematic (Specific): Write a piece of music to replace the background music of a Blizzard cinematic of your choosing. A possible variation would limit the choices to Warcraft 3 cinematics only.
Votes: 1
Score: 4

6. Self-Portrait: Portray yourself (or your image of yourself) in a piece of music. All submissions must have a written explanation of how the submission depicts its creator.
Votes: 6
Score: 21

7. Word: Take a single word and use music to convey any meaning it has to you. This theme has several possible variations. One variation would require all contestants to use the same word (which would be listed in the main post). Another variation would be to create a list for contestants to choose from.
Votes: 2
Score: 4

8. Poetry: Take a piece of poetry (this includes scenes from plays such as Faust and Shakespeare's plays) and write a piece of music to fit it. If you wish to include a vocal part, you are allowed to use the poem for the lyrics. All submissions must be accompanied by the poem you based your piece on. Poems in other languages are allowed so long as you provide a rough translation, and/or an explanation of the poem's meaning.
Votes: 1
Score: 3

9. Variations: Take a simple, non-copyrighted melody (preferrably a well known one, such as a folk song), and create as many variations of it as you can in a single piece. See how many different sounds you can get from using different rhythms, instruments, modes, keys, harmonies, and methods of ornamentation for this one melody, while still keeping your piece coherent and enjoyable.
Votes: 1
Score: 1

10. Character: Write a piece depicting a character from either Warcraft or Starcraft lore.
Votes: 4
Score: 11

11. Location: Write a piece depicting a place in the Warcraft universe.
Votes: 2
Score: 7

12. Lore: Write a piece depicting a specific event in the history of Warcraft or Starcraft.
Votes: 7
Score: 12

I'd like to clarify that this is not a poll. You will notice that there is no poll for this thread. We've decided to run this a little differently. Voters will be asked to make a post, containing, in bold text, their name, and their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choices for theme. Here's an example (and my own vote):

CoBra b
1st Choice: #6
2nd Choice: #8
3rd Choice: #12
4th Choice: #9

Below each theme, you might have noticed, there are two spaces marked "votes" and "score." "Votes" will show how many votes a theme has received, regardless of its placement within those votes. Score will show how many "points" a theme has received, based its placement in the votes it has received (1st Choice = 4 points, 2nd choice = 3 points, 3rd choice = 2 points, 4th choice = 1 point).

You are allowed to change your votes any time by editing your post. If you do so, please notify me, and I'll edit the score.

Voting will remain open until:
An adequate amount of people have voted.
One theme is significantly ahead of all others in both votes and score.

Optional Secondary Poll

Should we run the poll for the actual contest this way?

I've been thinking about this, and I think it might work out well. If we made it so that voters actually had to provide a post containing their vote and the reasoning behind it, then we could eliminate most (if not all) of the random people voting for pieces because of their style or genre. In addition, we could also just not count posts with reasons like "oh yeah, that one sounded the most like Blizzard music."

At any rate, I see three options for how to run the poll:
1. Simply have a poll and run it as usual.
2. Run the poll like this.
3. Have no poll.

Tell me which option you'd prefer.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

WherewolfTherewolf
1st Choice: 1: Environment
2nd Choice: 6: Self Portrait
3rd Choice: 7: Word
4th Choice: 3: Action Music (Non-Background music variation - limit no one's creativity)

Variations: Take a simple, non-copyrighted melody (preferrably a well known one, such as a folk song), and create as many variations of it as you can in a single piece. See how many different sounds you can get from using different rhythms, instruments, modes, keys, harmonies, and methods of ornamentation for this one melody, while still keeping your piece coherent and enjoyable.

This could be cool - but that's a different type of contest imo
I guess it's sort of like the difference between a Hero contest and a Spell contest

 

[Sephalo]

Teuncreemers
1st Choice: 1 Environment
2nd Choice: 11 Location
3rd Choice: 4 Cinematic (Non-specific)
4th Choice: 12 Lore

Would love to make some sort of a desert track for Environment so there goes my first choice.

 

[Devine]

#6
rest gets 0

 

[Jaret]

Jaret
1st Choice: 10 Character
2nd Choice: 6 Self-portrait
3rd Choice: 1 Enviromental
4th Choice: 12 Lore

I would love to hear more Character based themes, But also would love to hear how other users think of themselves (self-portrait). Enviromental, always liked the music of different dungeons and stages in the games, and of course Lore, which most of the times is really epic.

 

[Sephalo]

Teuncreemers
1st Choice: 10 Character
2nd Choice: 6 Self-portrait
3rd Choice: 1 Enviromental
4th Choice: 12 Lore

Edit my name to yours please.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

(for sake of keeping track of votes)

Devine:
1st Choice: 6 Self-portrait
2nd: N/a
3rd: N/a
4th: N/a

 

[JetFangInferno]

1st Choice: 6 Self-portrait
2nd Choice: 1 Environmental
3rd Choice: 7 Word
4th Choice: 3 Action-music

 

[EMPerror]

EMPerror

1st Choice : 11 - Location
2nd Choice : 1 - Environment
3rd Choice : 10 - Character
4th Choice : 12 - Lore

Looking forward to the contest

Optional Secondary Poll

I'd go with the 2nd option - Having the poll like this. Why i want a poll? Cause it encourages different genres. A techno song will never ever have the same musical value of a, say, good classical piece. But, not everyone has the same taste for music, so if you prefer techno, you can make such a song, and the majority that likes the genre can vote for you, and the judges will judge based on their perceptions - probably the musical value which techno lacks, hence they have the advantage in one part, and disadvantage in another.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Current Top picks:
1: 6. Self-Portrait: Portray yourself (or your image of yourself) in a piece of music. All submissions must have a written explanation of how the submission depicts its creator.
Votes: 5
Score: 18
2: 1. Environmental: Write a piece of music depicting a specific environment.
This theme has several possible variations. A single environment could be listed, or contestants could choose from a list of environments.
Votes: 5
Score: 16
3: 11. Location: Write a piece depicting a place in the Warcraft universe.
Votes: 2
Score: 7
4: 10. Character: Write a piece depicting a character from either Warcraft or Starcraft lore.
Votes: 2
Score: 6

 

[Waldbaer]

Waldbaer
#5 Cinematic (specific) - the more specific, the better. Maybe leave it 3 cinematics to choose from, that's enough. More options will soon kill the possibility to compare the scores.
#2 Starcraft - very free but I like Starcraft at the moment.
#12 Event in the "history" of Warcraft or Starcraft - Same as #5: Specify as much as possible.
#1 Environment - well this could be interesting, but at the moment I have problems to imagine what is meant by this theme, I think it could just match nearly all of the other themes if you want it to. Could you maybe give an example for an environment description that could be used?

Well, you may see I like program music.

...and just to affirm that again: Yes, let us keep the discussions about musical styles out of this thread. They are too big to fit into any thread, so they should go into a thread with another theme less than ever.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Take the debate out of the thread - this is a vote for the theme, not whether or not techno/classical is better.

 

[Disasterpiece512]

I just hope we can decide upon a theme soon so that the contest can start sooner.

 

[Krl70]

Krl70
1st choice: Enviromental (1)
2nd choice: Self-portrait (6)
3rd choice: Lore (12)
4th choice: Character (10)

Hmm... if i only had something to record with. My microphone is really,really,really bad, got one, but my PC can't use JAK, or whatever its called. And also, if i can come up with something...

 

[Disasterpiece512]

1st choice: 10
2nd choice: 12
3rd choice: 1
4th choice: 3
I think the Self-Portrait idea is to put it plain and simply stupid if we'd have that as a theme we'd have no theme at all because people could write just a random piece of music and say "that's now I look imo!". The theme has to limit people a bit.

 

[Krl70]

It says a written description, i don't think "that's how i look imo!" is going to seal the deal, i guess you would need a answer made up of full sentences. as "this music is how i look because..." what does imo mean anyways?

 

[Disasterpiece512]

In my opinion. Anyway I think that theme is too subjective. We need something that everyone is familiar with so that the judging can be accurate.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

IMO = In my opinion

Your judging the musical outcome and how well it relates to your explanation of yourself (all musical pieces will require a written explanation, just like the last contest). Even if your "persona" or whatever you want to call it that you used for the music is completely inaccurate to yourself, that's not whats being judged. This same argument came up during the Hero Contest that had a similar theme of self portrait, it went through fine and had judging without some huge clusterfuck in the process.

Really I would personally prefer to avoid completely Blizzard themes or things so specific as they often limit the creativity of the entrants, and also Blizzard themes lead to misunderstandings over what you can write (I DO NOT want to have to deal with the annoying people going on every page saying that you can't make any sort of music other then orchestral).

Also the self portrait theme is not specifically a portrait of what you look like, it's meant more to be a musical expression of your personality.


Edit:
Let's cut off this vote on Thursday so we can start the contest as soon as possible

 

[CoBrA b]

Let's cut off this vote on Thursday so we can start the contest as soon as possible

Sounds like a good idea.

On the subject of the whole self-portrait debate, I would argue that, for this particular type of contest, the less limited a theme is, the better.

We want to get musical diversity, something to appeal to everyone, not only in terms of style, but also in terms of mood, or general feeling. Open themes like this allow for people of all different styles and genres to write original music.

Self-portrait also has potential for truly emotional compositions. Even when you write a piece about someone or something other than yourself, the emotion you pour into it is your own. And when you hear an emotional piece of music, you relate to it through your own emotions, not those of the composer (though it may sometimes feel that way). Themes like this are an opportunity to explore the emotional power of your own music, whatever the style is.

As you can see, I'm pulling for self-portrait to win. I encourage any who are considering voting to think about the potential this theme has, and then vote now, whatever your opinion is. I also encourage those who have voted to consider their vote one last time, and, if any of their opinions have changed (highly unlikely, but still...) change their votes.

Can't wait to get this contest underway!

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Okay, that's it for this vote.

Now if Cobra's math is correct then it seems Environmental won the vote:

1. Environmental: Write a piece of music depicting a specific environment.
This theme has several possible variations. A single environment could be listed, or contestants could choose from a list of environments.
Votes: 8
Score: 23

Now for what environment it is...... for sake of time to get this contest hosted without more delay and argument how about something the theme of a Desert.
-Exactly what desert it is is unspecified, but you know the whole hot at day, cold at night and tons of sand affair:

Image

The music does not have to relate to wc3 or sc2, but of course that doesn't mean it can't - make one for the barrens if you want.

A single environment will probably work best for the sake of some consistency in the contest.


Also, being before the contest this is the time to get any rules you'd like changed changed if there is some degree of consensus on it (open to suggestions for the wip rule and any rule to prevent art theft).

 

[Sephalo]

Just came back from my one week holiday to Korfu (greece).
Now what happend here? I see Envorinement won.
What's the plan now?