мллллллм лл лл млллллм оллн млллллм лл лл лл лл лл ллмммм лл лл лл лл лл лл лл пппплл лл лл лл лл лл плллллп плллллп оллн плллллп млллллм млллллм млллллм ллллллл млллллл млллллм ллллллл лл лл лл лл лл олн ллмммм ллмммм олн лл лл лл лл лл олн ллпппп пппплл олн плллллп плллллп лл лл олн плллллл плллллп олн мллмллм млл пллпллп плл мллмллм лл пллпллп лл жФвФП в Т вФФП ЗЗ жФвФП вФФП в Т вФФП ЗЗ жФП жФвФП жФФП вФФП в Т К ЧФФД ЧФ НН К ЧФТй К Г ЧФ НН гФП К К Г ЧФТй гФФД а а С аФФй а а С гФФй аФФй гФФй а гФФй а С гФФй Music Contest #1 (The TRUE Story) The idea... It all started in the shower. One morning in mid-September, Snowman was getting ready to go to school. He had just recently downloaded the spoils of Assembly 93' and was envying those indivi- duals who had competed in the music competition. 'To bad,' he thought 'that we don't have a music contest you don't have to fly thousands of miles away to attend.' The Music Contest was born. For the next two weeks, Snowman would work on the rules to the Music Contest during his Chemistry lecture class. After the basic framework was down, Snowman contacted his buddy Ryan Cramer from Renaissance and asked him what he thought. There were a few of things that Ryan and Snowman differed on. One problem with the original version of the rules was that they were about 3k quality and 8k bad humor. Stripping extraneous jokes and unimportant things helped to make the rules much more efficient. It had been Snowman's original intention to include a packet of samples with the rules that all entries to the contest were to be made up of. This, Snowman thought, would make things more equal for everyone. In addition, all entries were to be under 50,000 bytes long, and the only format allowed would be the MOD standard. This again was to make things more even for everyone. Also, having just the MOD format meant that the Amiga people who entered could hear all the entries to the competition. Well, THE PEOPLE bitched about a maximum length of 50,000 bytes: the maximum length became 300,000 bytes. THE PEOPLE bitched about only being able to use the MOD format: MODs, FARs, ULTs, S3Ms, MTMs, and 669s were allowed. THE PEOPLE bitched about having to use a pre-selected sample packet: any samples were allowed. Getting the word out... Once the rules to the contest were completed, Snowman needed some way to get the word out. Having recently moved to Akron OHIO to attend Akron University, Snowman was given an Internet account. This was wonderful because it meant that Snowman would be able to contact Amiga users and international people much easier. Snowman obtained Internet addresses of demo groups and amiga musicians by two different methods. One was by calling Programmer's Oasis and downloading a file which contained the addresses of most major demo groups. The other was a little more difficult. On Internet, files that are uploaded are supposed to have an accompanying text file telling what the file is so that people can decide whether or not they want to download it. In the Amiga MOD files sections, many of these files contained addresses of the authors of these songs. Snowman did a mass download of all these little text files, copied them all to one big text file, and scanned for the "@" sign. [all internet addresses have an "@" in them] Snowman wrote these down and developed a computer musician data base. He wrote a mass mail letter telling about the music contest and distributed it to all musicians and demo groups on his list. There were many responses, a few of which follow... ----- > Hello Amiga musician! Me - musician? Why did you send this stupid thing after all? And where did you grab my e-mail address??? :) I wonder how many other non-musicians you've teased with this mail... ----- I have a couple things I'd like to talk about - regarding the Music Contest. Firstly, I had already started a MOD that was under 50K zipped, and then I find out that it has changed to 300,000 bytes! Well.. you KNOW people are going to make mods that are 299,999 bytes long. I would have liked 150,000 that's the perfect size for a good quality MOD... but you ARE running this so do whatever! [Snowman 1/5/94 - Having completed the contest, I feel that 300k is a perfect maximum length for a song] Secondly, The only way I can see fair judging is if you separate MODs into certain categories - (ie: Rock, Metal, Techno, Pop, Undefinable - or whatever 5 categories would be good) this would help your judgments, because either way you do it (have a panel of judges or you let people vote) it will give every artist a chance. (ie: If I was judging, I would have a slight bias toward Rock) [Snowman 1/5/94 - Thought about this, but decided against it. Having a diverse panel of judges means that we will equal out biases. Also, since the voting was broken down by different aspects of the song (form, samples, originality, and overall effect), it really was not possible to have bias voting] But if your judging is based purley on quality, originality and other factors, then I can see it being ok to just pick the top 5. [Snowman 1/5/94 - and thats what we did :) ] Umm.. How about you also make sure all the winning mods are distributed to all BBSs in the contest, that would be a nice prize addition. Because people with internet access will be able to get all the song entries for free. [Snowman 1/5/94 - good idea and I will do that] ----- [Snowman 1/5/94 - in the process of writing the rules and upload form, I made a few errors. This is partially due to the fact that I'm a horrible speller, and also because much of the data I obtained was over the phone voice, so I had to guess at the spelling] From Daniel Potter Thu Nov 4 17:51:53 1993 On Thu, 4 Nov 1993, Christopher G Mann wrote: > Digital Infinity (sysop: Mike Phillips) Heheh our GROUP is Digital Infinity, his board is Digital Oxygene :) [Snowman 1/5/94 - what a goof I am!! Big error. Not due to spelling, this was purely a careless error] > Based in Darlin, Texas, U.S.A. That's Garland, TX :) (Sorry for pointing out all your mistakes, it's just that they're kinda funny :) > Based in McClain, Virginia, U.S.A. McClain? Only if you're a Texan.. it's McLean hehe :) ----- One thing in this competition that makes me to wonder is it worth taking part in is that there is practically no prizes at all... It is not too difficult to get some companies to sponsor it. We, for instance, got so many companies to sponsor our latest demo-party that all we had to pay was the rent of the amusement-park in which the party was held... Some companies that are big enough would surely be interested in this kind of free world-wide advertising, since it would cost practically nothing for them to give some midi-equipment or sound-boards as prizes in a competition. [Snowman 1/5/94 - (see mc2soon for more info on this)] ----- I don't know where you found my name, but I am sorely flattered! I guess I need to check out one of the above sites (now that wuarchive is back up ;^), although it will be a new and frightful thing for me to work within the restrictions of the .mod format. I seem to recall that it is limited to 64 lines per block and a mere 16 samples and no synths or hybrids (gee, I wonder if this boy's been using med, while waiting for forte to sprout ;^). well, again thanks, and i will have to experiment to see what i can do with it - btw, i hope it was <=64 lines per block rather than exactly 64 per block.... hmmm... thanks! [Snowman 1/5/94 - this is one of the problems with having a music contest that spans Amiga and PC platforms. Getting a music format that is a standard is very difficult to do] ----- I'll be doing my military service on June,10th 1993 to May, 5th 1994. During that time I'll able to read my mail only on weekends (if I get vacation from army, which is very probable) so don't be surprised if I don't answer your mail very quickly. If you have bug reports about DMP, you can send them to news group comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard where other DMP users can help you. While I'm in the army, I will continue developing DSMI and DMP, so keep the feedback coming. This message is generated automatically by VACATION program. Otto Chrons (SA-int, Suomen Armeijassa - ilman naisia toistaiseksi) ----- What is this "No BPM" stuff? If your replayer doesn't support BPM specifications, then it is incomplete. I believe even Josh has an updated GUSMOD that supports BPMs... [Snowman 1/5/94 - This is an ongoing problem. Currently, GUSMOD does the best job of playing MODs on the GUS, but unfortunately it does not support BPM. I am not aware of a new version that does. :( I will have to do some work at fixing this problem] ----- Umm i would be very interested in attending if it is that type of event, go ahead and send me some info on local etc.. [Snowman 1/5/94 - What makes this letter funny is that I sent back a letter saying that you didn't "attend" this competition, you just wrote a song and uploaded it. About a month later, I got another letter from the same group saying that they were sorry but they were too busy to attend the contest. Too bad, I was hoping to get a chance to meet them. :) ] ----- Back to the story... Snowman found 5 different FTP sites on the internet for his Music Contest. (FTP is like a BBS on the Internet) He made a directory for his music contest rules on the FTPs and uploaded the rules. Unfortunately, Snowman did not do his homework, and found a very bad error he had made. Apparently, files starting with "$$" are not allowed on Internet. Snowman had to quickly update the rules to say that if you were uploading to Internet, just strip the "$$" off the file name. With Internet covered, Snowman turned his attention to BBS's. He had been calling the Sound Barrier (New York) and the Music Connection (Texas) for a long time, so he thought that those were good places to start. Snowman wrote letters to Daredevil (sysop of Sound Barrier) and Rob Butler (sysop of Music Connection) asking if they would want to be a distrobution site for the contest. Rob Butler thought it was a good idea and agreed to be a distro site for the contest. No response from Daredevil. (the Sound Barrier is the Renaissance world headquarters BBS) Really wanting to nail the Sound Barrier as a distribution site, Snowman wrote another letter to Daredevil. Once again, no response. Officially, the rules to the contest were released on the 2nd of November. It was on the 3rd of November that Snowman came home from school to find a little message on his answering machine. In a very obvious Texan drawl, the message said that 'This is Mike Phillips of the Digital Oxygene BBS, and I'd be very interested in supporting your Music Contest. Please call me back.' That is exactly what Snowman did, and soon afterward, Mike's efforts in promoting the competition made him the official World Headquarters. Within a couple of weeks after releasing the rules, Snowman had signed up other BBS's such as Ryan Cramer's Data Connection and Daniel Potter's Programmer's Oasis. Having signed on six U.S. BBS's officially and many more in the pipeline, Snowman wrote yet another letter to Daredevil. Once again, no response. Getting frustrated, Snowman posted a public letter to Daredevil so that everyone on the Sound Barrier could read it... "This is Snowman. I've written you several messages about being a distro site for my Music Contest. I already have major backing from more than a dozen U.S. BBS's, and several international ones. [Snowman 1/2/94: Don't count your chickens before they have hatched. Snowman only officially signed on 6 BBS's in the United States] If you do not contact me, via internet: r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu, or voice, I will list you specifically as NOT being a distro site for this contest. It would be a pity to see this wonderful bbs, which does so well in computer music circles, be left out of this event. To everyone else reading this, call Digital Oxygene or the Music Connection to get information on the Music Contest. Unless your sysop takes the effort, you will be left out of this international effort." Date: 11-11-93 (15:33) Main Board Number: -ў- 1,630 ЭЭЭЭ 1,667 -ў- To: CHRISTOPHER MANN From: SYSOP Read: NO Subj: Music Contest Status: RECEIVER ONLY Is this supposed to be some kind of threat??? I never said I wanted any part of this music contest, and I am a bit pissed off that you put me in there WITHOUT asking me! So... Take me out... [Snowman 1/5/93 - I had put the Sound Barrier in the upload.txt file as being an upload site. I mistakenly thought that they would jump at the chance to be a distro site for a computer music contest] I don't appreciate your actions on this BBS... Do you take pride in trying to publicly embarass me or trying to get everyone angry with me? You go posting messages saying something like "your sysop is an asshole because he doesn't want to join my contest" and that is pissing me off. If you don't like the way this board is run, I'll gladly delete you and you can call someplace else!! [Snowman 1/5/93 - November the 14th is the last time I called the Sound Barrier] Well, with a good base of BBS's and FTP's, Snowman took a little breather. Several minor corrections to the rules were necessary, but that was about it. Start of Trouble... Here is what happened the past month and a half (today is 1/5/94). First, Snowman discovers that 2 of the FTP's are deleting his files. Snowman drops them. Then, Snowman finds out that another FTP refuses to put his Music Contest rules/entries into a seperate directory (this is the Gravis FTP), so Snowman drops a third FTP. Down to 2 FTP's, Snowman is starting to get a little edgy. Then, he finds out that one of his remaining 2 FTP's is going down due to a temporary system crash. Finally, the FTP comes back up, and Snowman remains with 2 FTP's for the duration of the contest. It is now clear that more BBS distribution sites is worse than a few. Naturally, one would think "the more the better". But consider, for every BBS distro site, Snowman has to keep track of it and keep checking it for entries. Since Snowman was on very good terms with Data Connection, Programmer's Oasis, Music Connection, and Digital Oxygene BBS's, the sysops pretty much made sure that all the entries were distributed. However, there were 2 other BBS's that Snowman had virtually no contact with at all, and it is those 2 that became a problem. By the end of the contest, the words "Music Contest" did not appear anywhere on either of them to Snowman's knowledge. If you can see this trouble with United States BBS's, then just imagine what hell it was to get the entries off of four international BBS's. Needless to say, next contest will be much more selective in distro sites. Minor note of little importance to Music Contest: Snowman developed a milk intolerance during the competition. In addition, he was sick for an entire two week period at the end of the contest. Snowman couldn't figure out a good voting system until Mike Phillips said the word "commitee". On the spot, Snowman decided that he would have a panel of 5 judges voting for the songs. He selected Daniel Potter (author of Farandole), Daniel Goldstein (author of MMedit), Mike Phillips (sysop of Digital Oxygene), Rob Butler (sysop of Music Connection), and himself as judges. The actual specifics would be worked out later. Two people uploaded different versions of their entries. Very frustrated at having to download two different entries for the same person, Snowman made the new rule "No multiple uploads or addendums." Snowman was working on an upgrade for his computer and it crashed on the 3rd of January. It stayed down for a day until a jerry-rigged system could be made. This came at a very bad time. Fortunately, Snowman was able to get the system workable enough to finish the contest up. Then at the beginning of January, Mike Phillips suddenly became uncontactable. I don't know what happened to him, but he was in charge of collecting the European entries (today is 1/6/93). Apparently, Mike had a family emergency (today is 1/9/93). I was only able to contact one of the four european BBS's (see mc1notes.txt). I had to substitute Ryan Cramer for Mike Phillips. Also, Dan Potter was not able to vote on the contest due to time constraints. Well, that's the long and short of it... This contest was a LOT of work. It was lucky that Snowman did not have school over X-Mas break. He was able to devote most of his time to getting this contest finished. Anyway, you are probably tired of reading this, so go ahead and look at the other stuff included in this archive. Snowman 1/9/93