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i wish the fast music compo was like a one hour or three hour compo with given samples, instead of chord progressions(*puke*)

The chord combination rule is not very limiting at all. The way I see it, you could even place the required chords in the first five seconds of the tune, and then have whatever stuff you want for the rest of the song. And there are many ways to interpret the roles of the given chords, as to where they are relative to the key, and where they are relative to "barlines". And apparently you won't get disqualified even if you add extra tensions or whatever. And does the given bass note have to be clearly the lowest pitch in the whole arrangement or is it enough if one instrument plays the given inversions? For example, play C/E on a synth sound but then have a loud bass instrument play D?

Which makes the thing completely pointless. I personally strongly prefer given samples too in OHC/similar compos, unless some wittier thing is invented.

I understand what you're saying.

That still doesn't change the fact that One Hour Compos OHC / Fast music compos with given samples are a real test to see who is the quickest / most skilled at tracking, under duress, with given samples, etc.

It's more of a challenge. I hope you get what I mean, even if you might not agree.

What serpent said.

What aspect do you think would be better with a sample-set based instead of chord progression based compo? More challenging to do, and therefore more fun for the composer? Or is the musical diversity of the entries too large or too small with the current way, or technical quality too low or high or something?

I like the chords based compo for two reasons: I see changing, interpreting/mis-interpreting and mutilating chord progressions as one of the most interesting and fun challenges in music making and arranging, and I also like the way the chords give a very loose starting point for just about any wild stuff, including acoustic instruments, lyrics, anything. Listening to the compo entries feels like somehow getting closer to the composers as people, than if they had all been using just the same samples.

I also think that very technically restricted compos don't get many entries. The days of getting 700 tracker songs in a compo are over. All kinds of musical challenges are fun though.

Btw, I just realized that I probably should have released my fast music entries under some fake alias, because it feels just incredibly stupid seeing these quickly made joke crap songs next to something I spent a week on, without any explanation or distinction.

You spent a week on fast music entries?

No.

Ok, pardon me, but that last part is easily misinterpreted that way.

The one where you can't just add "required chords in the first five seconds of the tune" and use your old tune after that. Could of course work in ideal world but i don't believe in one :) It could as well be listening or dance compo then. In fast compo it IMHO needs to be somehow ensured the tune is at least "physically" made in 1 hour (or whatever the limit is) or otherwise it doesnt make any sense to have the compo.

Nah, there's just no way to make it physically impossible to be an idiot. If someone sets out to circumvent rules and not play fair, it can be done. Even if there's a sample set, why not make most of the tune before the compo, and then replace the samples with the given ones. I'm sure there are ways to obey any set of rules without respecting the spirit of the competition.

I don't feel that the current fast music compos have been very problematic. Everyone knows the rules, and the entries are very diverse in quality and musical content. I know there's going to be people who have made lots of preparations, even though I'm usually lazy and start by opening a totally empty Ableton. And then I don't have time to mix it and it sounds like crap. This year I used the first 30 minutes or so by trying to find a working audio interface and MIDI keyboard, searching for cables etc, and for some reason decided to answer a phone call about a friend's birthday party arrangements. It would have been better to even have everything in working order and load a set of plugins, not to mention setting track balances, before the compo started. But so what, it's just a fun thing anyway.

"perhaps abyss can shed some light on how many oldskool tickets get sold?"

A lot of people who buy oldskool tickets have nothing to do with the demoscene, they just have friends with oldskool privileges and like the cheaper tickets.

I wonder about the gamma correction of the projector.

Can we safely use dark shades or is anything below 0xff202020 or 0xff303030 lost ?

Forced chord progressions are ugh. A horrible idea of listening to a bunch of tunes that are mostly in the same key. Unless the chords are interesting or can be extended into ninth chords or whatever.

yzi: Pygmy's demo wasn't destroyed by any processing but just bad luck. It was shown in realtime on an ordinary A4000 and it worked when testing it just minutes before the event but had those horrible glitches on the second run. That's one of the main reasons the entries are shown recorded: to not get any surprises of the hardware running the demo.

I propose to do a realtime music compo as ussual OHC with samplepack, and add one additional rule... "the theme".. for instance you have a sample pack and you have to compose a theme for "detective movie":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_IImfpAIcI&list=PL3xWDJFprPxUVb1yt_-kWWOIe5tDepARN

It would be challenging enough, so it could be 2 hours compo with samplepack and thematic..

the real pro musicians can do music for expessing them selfes as a part of something more bigger