Originality and uniqueness should be 10, everything else is 1. :P
Hi. I'm Andrew. Audio portal junkie since 2010, supporter since 2017. I always want to improve what I do! I make music, run the NGUAC, post poetry on BBS, and am the all-time #2 audio reviewer. I love this site, and I want to make it the best I can! ^_^
Andrew Mikula
@TaintedLogic
Age 26, Male
Policy Research
Bates College
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Joined on 8/16/12
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Comments
I just came back to read this again, and suddenly realized that you do what I do: kill off the underline when something drops down into it! Good heavens, I thought I was the only one who did that...
Some pretty elaborate guidelines here. :) If I ever get into judging this'd be a useful starting grid... good read. A lot of focus on the technical aspects though, not so much on what mood the music evokes (which I feel is the most important), build-up and atmosphere (though seems very interlinked to the 'Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety - Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture'). How you make a distinction between some of these - seems difficult! All submissions judged like this though: seems fairer than I'd expect from an NG panel.
Thanks for the response! Yeah, it can be difficult to make distinctions between, say, a structural problem or a transitional problem, but overall I think it’s not a bad thing to have some “wiggle room” when making these scoring decisions. Mood is usually encapsulated by the emotion/atmosphere category, but it’s totally a valid opinion that I’m not weighting it heavily enough. I suppose I have yet to hear any strong opposition to the way I weight these attributes, though. Thanks again for stopping by!
Sure thing. :) Well I'm sure everyone favors different aspects of a track, and probably more so the parts of production they're most involved with (if they are savvy with that stuff). Feeling or techniques required to build that feeling, maybe it's all the same, just two different sides of the picture.
Cool. Now I know what to expect lol
My methods have always centered on, "How does it sound? Do I want to listen to it?" My degree of wanting to listen is determined by most of the same factors, but music is such a vast sea of tonalities, techniques, etc., I find it hard to put a name on these things or even a number. Any one area, if sufficiently good/bad enough, could be a 5 point swing for me. I try to explain any pluses and detractors in the reviews thoroughly, so as to make clear why I chose my score. Imo, they're not writing for me, so they don't need a list to know how I operate -- just a review. :)
That said, this should help beginners understand a bit more how judges here think and I appreciate that.
Thanks for the comment, Adrean! I certainly wasn't trying to speak for any other judges - just myself - but I appreciate your perspective.
Nw, I gotcha loud and clear. Just dropping some thoughts. I think my only complaint would be no TLDR optimization. I'm a ridiculously bad skimmer!
On it immediately.
Nw, I gotcha loud and clear. Just dropping some thoughts. I think my only complaint would be no TLDR optimization. I'm a ridiculously bad skimmer!
Thanks so much for taking the time to go into such depth and detail, TL. I'm still fairly new to making music and so I've been trying to figure out myself how to improve as fast as I can (with limited success). This post has made me aware of several areas that I really need to focus on, areas which I've pretty much neglected until now. I think this will be a big help to speed my improvement as a music composer/producer. :)
That's great! Thanks for the comment. ^_^
I respect those standards, and I'll try to meet them as best as possible. I read something about you being criticized for your tough standards, but the tough standards are what make music better if you get what I'm trying to say. Maybe those standards pushes someone to get a good score and work on those things making their music better. So I respect that :)
There are things that I genuinely suck at that you mentioned but I feel like with enough thought and effort I could pull through. Looking forward to the next rounds - Sx71
Thanks for reading them! Glad that you're committed to improving your music, and I thoroughly hope that I can help. :^)
Originality? That's something I think I can achieve.
Mixing & Mastering? Not so much, although I'm still working towards it.
Wow, I wish I found these guidelines earlier. Brief but very helpful for someone without much knowledge of theory.
Glad you found them helpful! Let me know if you have any questions. ^_^
after reading this, i'm pretty sure the song i made is going to be slammed hard for lack of structure. i've made 50 songs and very few of them i would consider to sound coherently structured to the average listener.
Well, you're welcome to switch your submission if you think it'll be worth it. Also, you still have 8 days if you want to make a new song from scratch. :)
the song i was referring to was actually the one i made from scratch today and haven't uploaded yet, so there's no need for me to switch my submission. after posting this i went back and added more of an actual outro to the song i made, which probably isn't enough for it to score any better but i just felt that i had to do something to change it.
Tennon
If you organized this contest, then you are not gonna take part of it?
TaintedLogic
That's correct! I think that'd clearly be a conflict of interest. :)