The Graindance & Plasmatron Challenge
 

Access have a habit dreaming up kickass preset names for press shots of their products. The corresponding presets however are not available in the actual products.

So for the TI SNOW pictures they had Graindance and for the TI|2 shots they chose Plasmatron.

How about we create these patches ourselves? A sort of sound design competition/challenge...

If enough of us join we'll eventually have a bank of ubercool graindance and plasmatron patches - which we can share with Access as a "big community thank you!" for offering us the OS 3 for free on our Viruses.

Anyone likes to join?

8)

we will even reward the winner of the competition with a t-shirt :) ... but only, if it becomes a real competition with a couple of entries ...

best, marc

This is an interesting idea. I'm tempted to create some patches.

Graindance sounds like involving one of the newer wavetable modes.

The name Plasmatron somehow reminds me of a Wavestation factory sound which had a name including the word "Quark" sounding like an odd morphing bowed bell, of course containing wave sequences.

Let's see if I can whip up something on these...

stay tuned
HiEnergy

Count me in :mrgreen: I'm anyways designing some sound libraries for work.
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Jeep-Eagle history

I'd be interested in this; especially the "graindance" one. I'm already working on a few graintable patches; they're currently called "grainola" 1-5, but I'm sure I could tweak them into graindance. :D

Cheers Marc, that's really cool. You can say what the minimum number of entries should be to make it count :cool:

Personally I'd like to participate as well so I'm not sure yet how to go about voting for "winners".

So far we have:
- HiEnergy
- Splat!
- Ceri JC
- Brambos

but let's wait for more people to join in.

Very nice idea, Brambos, and thanks for the offer Marc. :)

Shall we set some criteria/rules first, and then a challenge-end date?

* Virus TI only, or all Viruses? (I guess with a name like "Graindance" non-TI Viruses wouldn't be able to use the graintable element of the TI).
* Should the overall winner be chosen by Access themselves, or by user (forum) voting?

I think each entry should have a brief >20 second demo MP3 (made by the entrant themselves) showcasing their patch (to let people hear it to its best potential, or how it's meant to be played), along with the patch dump/data (not to be made available to everyone until the competition is over).

The patches should (obviously) be evocative of the Graindance and Plasmatron names.

Discuss! And then let's set a time limit.

Sounds very interesting, yes I'd like to.

Timo's proposed rules/format sounds fair.

How about "Graindance" limited to the TI and "Plasmatron" open to all?

28th of February (my birthday :D) as a final entry date?

Shall we wait to see if Access want to host/judge this before determining where exactly people should send entries, etc?

EDIT: Might be worth making a rule on whether or not people can submit multi-mode entries or not. People might get narky if they get beaten by someone using more than one voice if they don't realise they were allowed to.

How about 26th of Feb? (My birthday) Hahaha!
Anyways, since we're on multimode..... err how exactly do we access multimode or save multimode patches using VC?Are there presets already? :p Sorry if i sound like a n00b. My baby sn0w is only a month old.
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mac game

How about the 3rd February - My Birthday!! Hang on that wouldn't be enough time, scrap that:D

Let's go for a compromise: 27th of February (which happens to be my birthday - I kid you not).

I think the multimode is only accessible in midi mode (i.e. not via VC). I may be mistaken though - I also have just recently caught my virus. :-D

Good points, Timo. If Access would do the "judging" it would be great - but if they prefer to use their resources for their undoubtedly busy business-times (with the release of the Mk2 and all) that's perfectly understandable.

I would say no multipatches - keep the challenge to single presets.

Ofcourse Graindance literally makes most sense for TI users, but since it's about an artist's/sounddesigner's interpretation of the name, I don't see how non-TI Virus users couldn't create a preset that has a graindancy character. 8)

PMSL! Excellent, Splat!, do you think that's fair?

I am also new to the Virus, so don't take this as gospel, but that is also my impression. A workaround I've come across is to make make 2 patches designed to be used together, suffixing the patch name with 1/2 and 2/2. Load one to channel one, the other to channel two and then just copy all of midi track one to midi track two. That's a bit of a faff, so I'd be happy to limit it to 1 voice.

:confused: It's funny how everyone's birthday is suddenly in February :mrgreen: Lol, I'm cool with any date. *Does the Grainy dance* 8)
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vaporizer store

What are the chances of that!! Mind blowing.

And to add to it further, the 27th is my Dad's birthday. O.O

OK, 27th Feb it is, and is open to all Viruses! :)

As soon as Access/Marc can confirm if they are free to be able to judge the competition I'll add a news item to the Infekted homepage and kick it off.

Will the Graintable and Plasmatron entries be judged as "one" (both together, as one entry), or individually (effectively two separate competitions)?

I guess to keep it as just one competition Access could perhaps rate each of the two patches per person themselves, and the person with the most points for both overall wins.

I think that each one has to be judged individually - to ensure that the best possible patch is used for each instead of an inferior plasmatron winning just because the graindance was so good. IF there can only be one winner (they may have two shirts somewhere in their warehouse), whoever's judging has to decide which patch is better - the best graindance or the best plasmatron.

I agree with your idea of an mp3 demo (of just that patch being played) to get a feel for it (with soft knobs and all).

I'm going to try to use OS3 features since not many patches use them yet. I hope everyone else does too.

i think the forum should rate, not us.

best, marc

Fair enough. I think that could work (maybe using the poll-system on the site?).

Alternatively we could maybe also ask some of the resident Sound designers on e.g. KVR to nominate their favorites. People like Howard Scarr hang out there, and so do representatives of Arksun, Bigtone etc. Just an idea.

I concur. :)

w00t :mrgreen: w00t
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Kijang

can we have it so we post an mp3 demo of the actual patch as well as the midi file..

that way people with a virus A/B/C can hear what they soundlike too

Now is there finally a fixed deadline for the competition?

Watch this space. Been strapped for time to post the thread/news with all the details this weekend, but will get it underway tonight.

How about the date be 1st March so it's easier for people to remember?

Will there be two t-shirts available, one for each patch, or if Marc's unhappy we'll find a way to tie the two into one?

Shall we also say you cannot vote for your own entries? Otherwise we'll have like 10 entries, each with one vote! lol

Therefore, if your entry is good, other people will vote for it, and thus you don't need to vote for it yourself.

Thanks for picking it up Timo.

1st of March sounds good to me!

The competition is officially OPEN!

http://www.infekted.org/virus/showthread.php?p=286271

Best of luck to all. :)