Things I like: 

- DARNELL IS BACK! Holy shit, yes. Cuz sometimes submissions are perfectly described as "butterscotch," y'know?

- Track time is featured again. This change wasn't exactly one of the big ones that got implemented yesterday (I think they put it back in a few weeks ago), but I can't stress enough how important it is for reviewers. Having the time there just makes it so much easier to make both criticism and praise as specific and helpful as possible.

- The suggested songs list has authors and the CD logo thing now. I approve. I think this a great way of making people more likely to click on these, myself included.

Things I don't:

- Maybe I was just confused, but the songs have a lot of trouble loading on my phone for whatever reason.

- The stars are a little out of whack right now. It seems like they rounded everything down to the nearest star...which isn't a huge problem, I guess, because the actual number is still there.

- THE BIG ONE: you can't see the listens and downloads each submission has. As a total stat geek myself, I find this morbidly depressing. And no, I don't just care about my own submissions. I'm genuinely interested in how many people listen to and download the songs I listen to. 

What do you guys think?

Newgrounds just SoundCloud-ified the audio portal visualizer.

I have mixed feelings. Personally, I loved the indie vibe of the OLD old visuals, complete with @TheWeebl's timeless badger short, the bubbling soda thing, meandering tunnel animation, etc.  But I also get that this is practical and modern and stuff, and few people who joined this site after 2011 care about my wistful bullshit. If Newgrounds is only defined by its past and not its future, it's doomed to fail, etc etc. 

Thoughts? 

Hi everyone! A lot of people have requested that I make my judging standards for the NGADM and NGUAC known ahead of time, and I agree that it's only fair I do so. My judging rubric has 7 categories weighted with point values that add up to 10, as follows:

Max points - Criteria - TLDR description

2 - Mixing, mastering, and balance - I want to be able to hear all instruments clearly throughout

1.5 - Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety - Your track needs to be cohesive/repetitive enough to keep the listener grounded structurally, but variational enough to give your piece an overarching sense of direction

2 - Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture - Full, rich textures are usually better, and melodic content is a must

1 - Instrumentation and sound design - Avoid cliched, inauthentic, and overly harsh sounds 

1.5 - Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness - I want to FEEL something when I listen to your piece

1 - Originality and uniqueness - Aim for creativity with your chord progressions, sound design, and arrangement

1 - Overall (how do the above elements interact?) - I reward cool nuances and rhythmic components here

10 - Composite score 

Here's some more explicit details on each category:

Mixing, mastering, and balance

I want to be able to hear all instruments clearly throughout. This usually entails that you use equalizers, compressors, and/or panning to limit distortion between instruments with similar frequency ranges, especially in the bass range. More advanced tools include stereo widening and sidechaining. Quiet or indistinct drums are usually a big indication that your mixing and mastering isn't as polished as it could be. Your instruments should blend well together - reverb may be a good way of accomplishing this, although excessive reverb can also detract from the quality of the mix. I'll also take off points in this category if I think certain instruments are too loud - common offenders are mid-range basses (use headphones when you master your track!) and harsh leads that have too much treble. Mastering that emphasizes loudness and clarity too much over balance and blending can make your piece sound harsh and artificial.

Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety

I've often been criticized for my tough standards regarding structure, but structuring your piece well can maximize the emotional impact of your piece, which is crucial. I highly encourage you to offer the listener some kind of intro and outro. Throwing your listener into the middle of the action, especially if your piece doesn't develop much beyond that, is dangerous, as is abruptly ending your piece. Most of the time, pieces should probably have some kind of refrain that occurs 2-3 times throughout the piece, although certain stylistic considerations may exempt you from this standard (for example, fugues and contrapuntal pieces often have major thematic ideas woven into the texture throughout without really having a single, distinct refrain).

Definitely make sure your piece is structurally complete. A single verse and chorus probably won't get you many points in this category - you need to show me that you have the composition skills to write a full-length, well-varied track. I think one of the hardest things to do in music composition is to find a balance between variety and coherence. You need to keep your listener grounded in some core riffs, chord structure, or melodic content, but there’s a thin line between cohesive and overly repetitive for me.

There are a ton of parameters along which you can create variety - melodic development, dynamics, energy level, texture, emotion, chord progression, etc. I particularly like to hear dynamic contrast (changes in volume levels) and phrasing (little build-ups and breakdowns that control energy level between phrases). Solely relying on changing the instrumentation as a means of variety is not very advanced, and can be quite jarring during transitory moments. Speaking of transitions, they should be really smooth. Extended pauses and stop-start breaks should be used sparingly.  

I know this is a lot, and I’m sorry. I’m always challenging myself to be more lenient with structural components, and this is definitely the hardest category in which to earn full credit from me.

Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture

Your piece needs to have melodic content. Melody is often considered the most important parameter of music (not harmony, not rhythm, not lyrics, etc.). There are plenty of contexts in which it’s totally acceptable to not have melodies in music, but the NGUAC and NGADM are not among them. It’s hard to define what makes a good melody, but @Johnfn did a pretty damn good job when he wrote this. I also want to see that you have a good sense of harmony and tonality. Be careful not to overuse dissonance. This can be tough if you don’t have a strong music theory background, but until you get accustomed to using dissonance, it’s a good idea to make sure that all the moving notes in your piece are in the chords you’re using during a given measure/section. Pentatonic (5-tone) scales make this easier to accomplish. I also want to see the texture of your piece be full and rich, with a broad range of frequencies for most of the piece. Intros, outros, and breakdowns are good places for minimalism, but otherwise you should use it sparingly. Also, minimalism is a lot more engaging when it’s a beautiful melody rather than a rhythmic club beat.

Instrumentation and sound design

Using stock samples and loops is dangerous. There are a lot of cliched sounds in music, especially in the world of synths. If you’re going to use a preset from a DAW, please at least modify it to best fit the mood and atmosphere of your piece. Playing an angry bass riff and graceful piano melody at the same time (for example) can come across as jarring. Also, using inauthentic string, guitar, or brass samples will lose you some points. Humanizing these instruments can help, but sometimes you’re better off replacing these instruments with something that’s meant to sound synthetic anyway. 

Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness

I say “and,” but I really mean “or.” If you’re going to make a thrilling cinematic track, you don’t need a ton of catchiness. Likewise, if you’re going to make a gritty house track, you don't need much atmosphere (although a little reverb is probably advisable). That said, emotion - whether you make me want to dance or cry - is a must. The mood of your piece gives it a lot of character, and the stronger the “flavor” of your piece, the better. Phrasing and variety is a great way of accomplishing this. The only reason I have this as a separate category than “structure/transitions/phrasing/variety” is that you can have a really catchy tune - or an ambient beauty - without much variety at all. But let me assure you: both emotion and variety are necessary, and often go hand-in-hand. The bottom line is that I want to FEEL something when I listen to your music.

Originality and uniqueness

Although somewhat self-explanatory, this is another tough category in which to get full credit. When evaluating originality, I often pay attention to the instrumentation, chord progression, and arrangement. Experimental pieces often get full credit here, but also be careful not to take too many compositional risks. If you want full credit on one of these categories, you’re better off prioritizing “melody, tonality, harmony, and texture” rather than originality.

Overall (how do the above elements interact?)

I often consider this category a “flex category.” If there’s some cool nuance or rhythmic component of your piece that I feel I didn’t sufficiently reward in another category, it’ll be rewarded here. If your sound design does an especially good job of enhancing the piece’s atmosphere or mood (for example), I’ll probably give you full credit here. I consider how the piece comes together as a sum of its parts, so-to-speak. 

And now for some general guidelines...

1. I'm going to judge what I actually hear, not your intentions behind the piece. "Obviously the piece is meant to be in a videogame, therefore it doesn't need much variety" is not a valid excuse.

2. NEVER use the genre of the piece as an excuse for not fulfilling the criteria above. Neurofunk pieces still need melodies. Orchestral music still needs good mixing.

3. You also can't use your DAW as an excuse for not fulfilling the criteria above. I fully understand that having fancier production tools or better sound libraries than the next guy will give some users an advantage under my point system, but I can't keep track of that stuff for every single user I judge. There's a reason why compositional attributes (structure, tonality, emotion) are much more heavily weighted than production and sound design. Musicianship is more important than the tools you have, and I strive to make my point system reflect that. That said, I'm not going to give you a perfect score for mixing just because mixing in Garageband is tough.

4. I will treat your piece as a stand-alone track. If your piece sounds like two or more completely different works, you’re not getting many points in the “structure and variety” category. Classical composers are usually better off focusing on perfecting one movement rather than submitting a track with several movements. Everyone is almost always better off looping a track than using fade-out or abrupt endings.

5. There are no formal length requirements for either the NGUAC or the NGADM. BUT usually pieces between 2 and 6 minutes are advisable. Shorter pieces risk being structurally incomplete or just having very fast pacing. Longer pieces are often either overly repetitive or incoherent.

6. Submitting solely comedic or non-musical content is unacceptable. Voice acting, sound effects, and meme compilations to a beat have no place in these contests. That said, using vocal samples and other 3rd-party content is fine, as long as they comply with NG audio guidelines. ALWAYS check the rules of a music contest on Newgrounds before submitting anything to it. See the appropriate forum thread for details.   

A note:

I don’t expect my fellow judges in the NGUAC to adopt these standards, but I do highly encourage you to make your scoring methods public.

An additional note:

If you think any of my criteria are unfair or biased in any way, please let me know as soon as possible! My job isn't to find a reason to give everyone a 3 or lower. My job is to help you improve your music in every way I can, and if you think my standards are ridiculous, odds are you won't find my critiques very helpful at all. :)

Thank you for taking the time to read through my judging standards, and good luck in whatever contest you entered!

The following is a list of rules and structural details regarding the NGUAC 2017, my annual audio contest here on NG.

SECTION I: General track requirements

1.If you are entering as a solo artist (i.e., not part of a team), YOU CANNOT HAVE A COLLABORATION AS YOUR TRYOUT PIECE or as any other piece for the competition. If you are entering as a team, you cannot collaborate with anyone besides your teammate. The only exception to these rules is when you have someone sing or play an instrument for you, but you must still compose the music and lyrics yourself AND mix/master the piece.

2. You may only submit one song per round, regardless of whether you are on a team or not.

3. The pieces you make for the competition should be full-length songs of the musical variety (of any genre). We won’t accept audio that has the sole purpose of being comedic, not to mention sound effects, voice acting, or parodies.

4. You may use pre-packaged loops and samples in your piece, but be aware that after a certain point abusing presets compromises your track’s originality.

5. For tryouts, it's okay to submit covers, arrangements, remixes, remakes, mash-ups, and pieces with samples downloaded from the internet.

6. In the Knock-out and Final rounds, no participant may submit covers, arrangements, mash-ups, remakes, or remixes.

7. No participant may create samples for the purpose of using them in a Knock-out or Final round piece before that corresponding round begins.

8. You must be able to submit your song to Newgrounds in order to enter the competition. This mandates compliance with all general NG Audio Portal regulations, as well as that you need a Newgrounds account. No submissions from Soundcloud, Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, Audiojungle, etc. will be accepted!  

9. You may submit a song to the NGUAC that you had previously submitted to another contest on NG, like the NGADM, AIM, or NCHIPS, but please make sure that it's okay to use the song for both contests in the rules for the other contest as well.

10. In order to submit a track, simply link the piece you want the judges to consider in the corresponding forum thread. You can also change the piece you’d like us to judge by CLEARLY stating in the thread you’d like to change it, but only while the submission phase is still going on.

SECTION II: Schedule-related rules

1. PARTICIPANTS MAY NOT start working on their Knock-out or Final Round tracks until the corresponding forum thread is posted. Anything you do to prepare for your piece ahead of time needs to be something you could do if you were blind, deaf, dumb, and wearing a straightjacket.

2. No one is allowed to update their track (i.e., replace or delete the audio file in Newgrounds' Project System) during the judging phases until results are released for the following round.

3. All submission phases close at 23:59 (11:59 p.m.) Eastern Daylight Time on the indicated dates (below). Submission phases open as soon as the forum thread for that round is up.

4. Immediately after the tryout submission phase, the participants will be grouped evenly based on their fan totals. This ensures that the best of the “Underdogs” advance as far as possible without directly competing with more experienced and knowledgeable musicians. It’s kinda the premise of the entire competition.

SECTION III: Regarding teams

1. Participants are allowed to enter the competition as a team of two.

2. If the members of your team would otherwise be placed in different groups as solo artists, the team will be placed in the group corresponding to the highest fan total among its members (e.x., if one member has 20 fans and the other has 60, and the All Stars each have 50 fans or more, the team will compete in the All Stars group).

3. Both members of a team don’t necessarily have to contribute to all of the pieces submitted as part of the contest.

4. Teams of more than 2 are not permitted.

SECTION IV: Code of conduct

1. If you have any complaints about judges’ scores or the contest in general, please PM THEM instead of embarrassing yourself by whining about how great you thought your piece was in the thread. Standard BBS and Audio Portal rules ALWAYS apply.

2. The judges are not obligated to review any of the pieces you submit to the competition, but you may request reviews from your judges or simply PM them with questions. I’ll make it clear who is judging a given group during a given round, as each individual judge doesn’t always score everyone.

3. The judges should give participants a score out of 10 and be able to thoroughly explain how they arrived at that score by considering a variety of parameters. These parameters may vary by judge, however. Scores are averaged among the judges to determine who advances to future rounds.

4. If you change your username at any point in the competition, please let me know. Keeping track of username changes is time consuming and confusing. 

SECTION V: Prizes

1. Prizes will include forum signatures for the top 3 finishers boasting of their success in the competition, as well as spots on the front page of the Audio Portal the week after the competition.

Contest Schedule:

Phase - Start date - End date

Tryout submission - 6/14 - 7/2

Tryout judging - 7/3 - 7/9

K-O submission - 7/9 - 7/25

K-O judging - 7/26 - 7/30

Final submission - 7/30 - 8/13

Final judging - 8/14 - 8/16

Thank you in advance for following the rules. Good luck and (most importantly) have fun! :D

The following is a list of rules and structural details regarding the NGAUC 2016, my annual audio contest here on NG.

RULES

1. Participants can enter the competition as a team of two. If the members of your “team” would otherwise be placed in different groups as solo artists, the team will be placed in the group corresponding to the highest fan total among its members (e.x., if one member has 20 fans and the other has 60, and the All Stars each have 50 fans or more, the team will compete in the All Stars group). Teams of more than 2 are not permitted. Also, if you are entering as a team of 1, YOU CANNOT HAVE A COLLABORATION AS YOUR TRYOUT PIECE or as any other piece for the competition. The only exception is when you have someone sing or play an instrument for you, but you must still compose the music and lyrics yourself AND mix/master the piece. Both members of a team don’t necessarily have to contribute to all of the pieces submitted as part of the contest. Also, you may only submit one song per round, regardless of whether you are on a team or not.

2. The pieces you make for the competition should be full-length songs of the musical variety (of any genre). We won’t accept audio that has the sole purpose of being comedic, not to mention sound effects, voice acting, or parodies. You may use pre-packaged loops and samples in your piece, but be aware that after a certain point abusing presets compromises your track’s originality. For tryouts, it's okay to submit covers, arrangements, remixes, remakes, mash-ups, and pieces with samples downloaded from the internet. In the Knock-out and Final rounds, no participant may submit covers, arrangements, mash-ups, remakes, or remixes. No participant may create samples for the purpose of using them in a Knock-out or Final round piece before that corresponding round begins.

3. You must be able to submit your song to Newgrounds in order to enter the competition. This mandates compliance with all general NG Audio Portal regulations, as well as that you need a Newgrounds account. No submissions from Soundcloud, Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, Audiojungle, etc. will be accepted!  

4. You can post commentary in the threads dedicated to the competition, but please keep it friendly! If you have any complaints about judges’ scores or the contest in general, PM THEM instead of embarrassing yourself by whining about how great you thought your piece was. Just because this is a special contest doesn’t mean regular BBS and Audio Portal rules don’t apply. The mods will be watching this contest with their fangs already bared, and rumor has it that if you get bitten you become one of them (and no one wants that!). Therefore, please use common sense and THINK BEFORE YOU POST, because no one wants to have to avoid even more vampiric mods. Also, you’re encouraged to support and review the pieces of your competitors.

5. The judges are not obligated to review any of the pieces you submit to the competition, but you may request reviews from your judges or simply PM them with questions. I’ll make it clear who is judging a given group during a given round, as each individual judge doesn’t score everyone, especially early on when there are dozens of participants per group. The judges should give participants a score out of 10 and be able to thoroughly explain how they arrived at that score by considering a variety of parameters. These parameters may vary by judge, however, and judges are highly encouraged to make their scoring methods public. Scores are averaged among the judges to determine who advances to future rounds.

6. PARTICIPANTS MAY NOT start working on their Knock-out or Final Round tracks until the corresponding forum thread is posted. A general rule-of-thumb is that anything you do to prepare for your piece ahead of time needs to be something you could do if you were blind, deaf, dumb, and wearing a straightjacket. In addition, no one is allowed to update their track (i.e., replace or delete the audio file in Newgrounds' Project System) during the judging phases until results are released for the following round.

SCHEDULING TIDBITS:

1. The tryout submission phase closes at 23:59 (11:59 p.m.) Eastern Daylight Time on July 8th, 2016. Before then, you must link to the piece you want the judges to consider in this thread. The piece can be something you wrote years ago, or you can make it from scratch specifically for the competition. You can also change the piece you’d like us to judge by CLEARLY stating in the thread you’d like to change it as well as providing a link to your new piece. Starting July 5th at noon (EDT), we will no longer allow participants to change or update their tryout pieces in any way. This is so that the judges can have more time to score submissions in a year when we have many more competitors than expected.

2. Immediately after the tryout submission phase, the participants will be grouped evenly based on their fan totals. This ensures that the true “Underdogs” of the competition advance as far as possible without directly competing with more experienced and knowledgeable musicians. In the past, there have been 3 groups (the Underdogs, Professional Amateurs, and All Stars), but there may or may not be more this year, depending on how many participants there are.

3. After tryouts comes the Knock-out Round, which starts on July 16th! Another thread will be posted in the BBS tagging all of the competitors who have advanced, who will have until July 30th at 23:59 (11:59 pm) EDT to submit their made-from-scratch, original new tracks.

4. The judges will accept certain competitors into a Final Round by August 4th. Last year, the final round consisted of 4 people from each group. The walls of the groups are then torn down and it’s a free-for-all bloodbath (through music!) to see who gets a spot in the legendary top 3. The deadline for final round submissions is August 18th at 23:59 EDT., and the winners will be announced on August 22th. For the Final Round, all judges score every single participant.

Prizes will include forum signatures for the top 3 finishers boasting of their success in the competition, as well as spots on the front page of the Audio Portal the week after the competition.

Thank you in advance for following the rules. Good luck and (most importantly) have fun! :D

I've got to admit, the Trumpgrounds shenanigans probably constitute my personal favorite NG April Fools Day prank. 

But it's no longer April Fools Day and I'm still seeing the Trumpgrounds paraphernalia. 

This is concerning. 

Greetings, fellow Newgrounders! 

I don't usually make news posts like this, but I recently submitted my 50th track to the audio portal. I know that this might not seem like many, especially since I've been a member of NG for 3.5 years now, but to me it means a lot, serving as a marker of my progress and consistency in the face of struggle (i.e., junior year of high school). 

Anyway, since I'm a complete dork, I've also compiled a list of fun facts about my first 50 audio submissions, updated as of today, 2/19/16. Enjoy!

Digital Audio Workstation used:

FL Studio 10 - 21

FL Studio 11 - 15

Garageband 6 - 9

Garageband 10 - 3

Logic Pro X - 2

Total listens: 24,840

Average listens per song: 497

Most listens: 3,374 (Embedded)

Fewest listens: 115 (Broken Toys)

Total downloads: 895

Average downloads per song: 18

Most downloads: 109 (Embedded)

Fewest downloads: 3 (Terrified)

Average time between starting project and uploading project: 7.7 months

Maximum time between starting and uploading project: 25 months (Construction)

Minimum time between starting and uploading project: <1 week (Broken Toys)

Average reviews per song: 3.6

Most reviews on a song: 9 (Tied - Rising & Embedded)

Fewest reviews on a song: 0 (Broken Toys)

Songs uploaded as TheDoor6: 32

Songs uploaded as TaintedLogic: 18

Collaborations: 2

Solo projects: 48

Remixes: 1

Originals: 49

Genre:

Ambient - 11

House - 7

Techno - 7

Trance - 6

Jazz - 5

Classic Rock - 2

Dance - 2

Drum and Bass - 2

Experimental - 1

Hip Hop - 1

Miscellaneous - 1

Voice Acting - 1

World - 1

Frequency of uploads: 1 every 25.6 days

Number of songs by year:

2012 - 4

2013 - 16

2014 - 14

2015 - 12

2016 (so far) - 3

Yeah, you don't want to know how long it took me to compile those fun facts. But....have a good day!

~TaintedLogic: the right sort of logic.™

Hello everyone! I just thought I'd take a few minutes to reflect on what I've been up to over the past year or so. 

First of all, I've been consistently uploading content to the Writing Forum, including the "A Haiku a Day" thread, which I seem to have a monopoly on at the moment. Please join!

Unfortunately, I didn't have as consistent of an upload schedule in 2015 as I had in previous years, but I hope that'll change in 2016. I thoroughly enjoy making and sharing my music with you all! I also take pride in my ability to help others improve their work, so if you want me to review something, just ask. :) 

I was lucky enough this past year to once again have the opportunity to host the Newgrounds Audio Underdogs Contest, which I thought was a fairly big success. Congratulations again to @TruNotFals for seizing the Underdog crown! Please check out his music if you get the chance. I also was incredibly honored to judge the Newgrounds Audio Death Match, hosted by @Step and @Echo, and the Newgrounds Deserted Island Contest, hosted by @Samulis.

Most recently, I earned a silver whistle status, reasserting my tattletale reputation amongst my childhood bullies. XD

On a more personal level, I completed my first semester at Bates College, including a course on introductory music theory. Now, instead of simply blindly creating dissonant harmonies and key-less trainwrecks, I can knowingly create dissonant harmonies and key-less trainwrecks. ^^  I'm also currently looking for an internship for this summer while finalizing my schedule for my second semester of college, which so far includes courses on Macroeconomics, prose-writing, evolutionary biology, and music technology.

I also recently took the liberty of compiling a top-10 list of my favorite NG songs of 2015. While you're reading/listening to it, please keep in mind that I didn't consider all 60,000+ songs uploaded to Newgrounds in 2015, but only the 453 I had reviewed during that year. Also, don't be too bummed if you didn't make it. I assure you there were MANY songs I really wanted to put onto the list that didn't survive certain cuts. 10 is not a large number, after all.

1. @Lockyn - Lucid

2. @JacobCadmus - Running Free 

3. @Geoplex - Duality

4. @Midimachine - Acceptance & Commitment*

5. @Samulis - Stormy Evening

6. @LucidShadowDreamer & @Dem0lecule - Fantasiamaailma

7. @Ceevro et. al. - Africa Singalong 

8. @Waterflame - Grind District

9. @Johnfn - Light Up 

10. @Kor-Rune - Jewel

*Unfortunately no longer on Newgrounds. :(

Well, that about does it for 2015, I suppose. I'm looking forward to 2016 a lot, though, and all the haikus, reviews, contests, and, of course, amazing user-uploaded content that'll come with it! Have a nice year, everyone! ^_^

~#UrBoiTaint, Duke of Yankeedom and Earl of Dukes

I was recently affected by a bit of a freak accident.

Yesterday, I was hanging out with a couple of friends at one of their houses, and I had driven my car there and parked it on the street. A moving truck came along and struck some low-hanging telephone wires, dragging down 2 telephone poles, one of which landed on my car. No one was in the car at the time, and I'm not hurt, but my car is in desperate need of repair.

I'm not actually that angry or anything, though. The moving truck drivers were really apologetic, and one of them actually cried. It was my grandparents' old car, and I'm not allowed to take it to college with me when I leave in a couple of weeks anyway. I didn't think I'd ever see so many police cars, fire engines, and city maintenance guys at a time in my quiet, suburban hometown, but looking back it's just another bizarre story to tell my grandkids in 60 years or so. Again, no one got hurt.

Kind of made me realize how much I take for granted being able to drive myself around town.

Hmm...this is kind of awkward. Don't have much else to add, guys. You ever been involved in any weird accidents? 

Below is a complete list of rules and formatting guildelines for my competition. Please read them carefully if you plan on participating. Thank you in advance.

1. You may have someone sing or play an instrument for you as long as you write the music and lyrics AND mix/master the piece.

2. You can enter the competition as a team of two. If the members of your “team” would otherwise be placed in different groups (Underdog, Professional Amateur, or All Star) as solo artists, the team will be placed in the group  corresponding to the highest fan total among its members (e.x., if one member has 20 fans and the other has 60, and the All Stars each have 50 fans or more, the team will compete in the All Stars group). Teams of more than 2 are not permitted. Also, if you are entering as a team of 1, you cannot have a collaboration as your audition piece or as any other piece for the competition.

3. The pieces you make for the competition should be full-length (2-8 minute) songs of the musical variety. Under no circumstances will we accept parodies, skits/sketches, sound effects, voice acting, or anything with non-copyrighted pre-packaged loops in it (Garageband’s Apple loops come to mind). For tryouts, it's okay to submit covers, arrangements, remixes, and have samples in your piece. In the Knock-out Round, we're going to be stricter about this (details to follow).

4. Remember when I said you couldn’t have HTML when posting your songs? Well, part of the reason for that is you usually HAVE to have HTML if you’re posting your songs from a site besides Newgrounds. You must be able to submit your song to Newgrounds in order to enter the competition. No submissions from Soundcloud, Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, Audiojungle, etc. will be accepted!  

5. You can post commentary in the threads dedicated to the competition, but please keep it friendly! Sportsmanship, people, sportsmanship! If you have any complaints about judges’ scores or the contest in general, PM THEM instead of embarrassing yourself by acting like a sore loser in the thread. Also, just because this is a special contest doesn’t mean regular BBS and Audio Portal rules don’t apply. The mods will be watching this contest with their fingers already on the trigger, not hesitating to shoot down rogue competitors (or, well, ex-competitors). Please use common sense and THINK BEFORE YOU POST, because no one wants to have to clean up your guts off of the train tracks (metaphorically speaking). Also, you’re encouraged to support and review the pieces of your competitors.

6. The judges are not obligated to review any of the pieces you submit to the competition until you make it to the Knock-out Round (i.e., the round after tryouts). During the Knock-out Round, you should receive at least THREE rather detailed reviews from three of the different judges. They should each give you a score out of 10 and state clearly what that is in the review itself. These scores will be averaged to determine who advances to future rounds. Btw, we use the same scoring system for tryouts, just without the reviews. Last year, we had issues with judges posting their reviews on time, so if you haven't received any reviews by the time we've annouced who is advancing onto the final round, you have every right to PM me (or any of the other judges) requesting those reviews.

7. After tryouts comes the Knock-out Round! Another thread will be posted in the BBS, setting the time limit for Friday, July 31st at 11:59 P.M. EDT for the remaining competitors to submit their completely-from-scratch and original new tracks. The judges and I have yet to decide how many people we're going to accept into the final round (or the contest in general, for that matter). Last year, the final round consisted of 3 people from each group. These remaining competitors will be announced on Monday, August 3rd. The deadline for the final round is Friday, August 14th at 11:59 P.M. EDT., and the winners will be announced on Monday, August 17th. For the Final Round, all the judges will be scoring all the participants.
 

Thank you all for following the rules. It really makes it a lot easier for the judges, the mods, and myself. If you have any questions about the rules, please don't hesitate to PM me. Good luck in the competition, my friends! ;D

~Andrew