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2020-10-31 22:02

Frostbyte

Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 170

Event id #3001 : 2020 Short Music Loop Competition

Let'em few seconds shine! Finally a compo to publish those sweet, sweet patterns that never evolved into complete tunes!

RULES:

1) Original, previously unreleased work. No covers, no remakes or parts of composer's own (released) tunes, or anyone's tunes, from C64 or other platforms.

2) No graphics or effects of any kind. I know this rule isn't going to be everyone's favourite, but this is a music competition, not a demo/graphics competition, and fx & gfx do affect people's ratings.
Black screen with the following static, undecorated single colour text (using standard unmodified PETSCII) in the upper left corner:

[Loop Name] by [Composer Name]
(C) 2020 [Group Name]
[SID type, e.g. 8580] / [Tune Speed, e.g. 4x]

For example:
'Short, thank Cthulhu' by Jojeli
(C) 2020 Artline Designs
8580 / 4x

No transition or screen wipe effects, replacing standard characters with PETSCII's graphical symbols, or other sneaky ways to add effects or to decorate the player.

3) Single SID at standard $D400. In other words, the loop must be playable on an unmodified C64 with either 6581 or 8580 SID.

4) No samples in any form. We don't want this to become a "best sample loop" competition. Otherwise, anything you can do with a SID goes, and you can use as little or as much rastertime as you want.

5) No lower limit for the length of the loop. Yes, even very short but interesting loops are allowed, even encouraged. :)

6) Upper limit for the length of the loop is around 15 seconds. However this is a flexible limit, depending on the tempo of the loop. For example 8 bars in 4/4 time signature @ 120BPM (16 seconds) is perfectly okay. So no, you don't have to cut your loop one bar short just to meet the length requirement. :) For arrhythmic loops, stick to the max 15 second limit.

7) Loop must be immutable: Every time the loop is played it should sound the same, and it shouldn't evolve in any way. No trickery or utilising SID's ADSR bugs etc. to add random note skippings or other variation to the loop. Think of a loop sampler playing the same loop over and over again - that's the goal here.
However, as an exception to this rule, a tiny overlap of the end and beginning of the loop is allowed. For example letting an instrument on a channel play from end of the loop until the first note in the beginning of the loop on that same channel. But this must be within reason, for up to 1-2 secs. Any longer than that is considered to be an evolvement of the loop, which again isn't allowed.

8) Up to three entries per composer, with permission to replace one of already submitted three entries with a fourth one. It is preferable to stick to the entries already submitted. However if you just made a fourth loop and it is an absolute killer, one of the three entries already submitted must be moved outside compo. This can be done only once.

9) Because many SID players would play the loop only once until progressing to the next tune, please lengthen the playtime by manually copying the loop until the length of the tune is at least a minute, and then jump back to the beginning (for infinite looping on C64 and such players).

... 40 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2020-10-31 22:40

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3136

Quote: Quoting Jojeli
If the first iteration of the loop sounds different than the second and all subsequent iterations of the loop, then no. :) Rule #7 covers this.
Hmm well, the "loop" would be infinitely long. There are no SID writes after init. :)

the compo is "Short Music Loop" not "single SFX" so it has to be music. If you manage to make actual music without further sid writes, I'd like to hear one.

2020-10-31 22:49

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2847

Quoting iAN CooG

the compo is "Short Music Loop" not "single SFX" so it has to be music. If you manage to make actual music without further sid writes, I'd like to hear one.

One could argue that "single SFX" is a (degenerate) special case of a loop. And what does and does not constitute "actual music", well... philosophical question, innit? :)

2020-10-31 22:53

Frostbyte

Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 170

Quote: the compo is "Short Music Loop" not "single SFX" so it has to be music. If you manage to make actual music without further sid writes, I'd like to hear one.

To be exact, the tune can be anything the composer can come up with, let it be music in a traditional sense, or arrhythmic buzzes or noises or whatever some people may not consider music, or may consider SFX. As long as it loops back to the beginning after 15 seconds(ish) or less.

So @Krill, your idea of writing to SID only on init breaches the length rule #6.

2020-10-31 22:56

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3136

Music must contain melody and rhythm. But if John Cage's 4'33" is music to you then, anything counts, even silence, so why even bother, a single RTS counts as a sid =)

2020-10-31 23:00

Frostbyte

Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 170

Quote: > 9) Because many SID players would play the loop only once until progressing to the next tune

Point 9 imho is not required, don't force people doing some artefacts based on "some" players looping or skipping to next tune. That requires an entry in the HVSC Songlengths database, the tunes are yet to be added to HVSC and hence still not there in the sldb, and no player knows exactly how long the songs plays before it loops, yet =)
Besides, the auto-skip feature can be always turned off.

I respectfully and wholeheartedly disagree on this. Eventually the players will get to know song lengths, and if the length of the song is a single iteration of the loop, on many (most) modern players it will only play once until progressing to the next tune. I added the "multiply until 1:00 or more" rule to avoid this.

If I'd add some of these loops into my playlists, I'd want them to play for a while, not just once, especially in the case of very short loops.

2020-10-31 23:23

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3136

> many (most) modern players it will only play once until progressing to the next tune

I don't know of any players that detect a sid loop by themselves without the Songlength database, care to name one or two?

> manually copying the loop until the length of the tune is at least a minute

this is useless as the loop is detected anyway on first repetition. 15*4 or 15*1000, the loop is still after 15 seconds.

2020-10-31 23:45

Jammer

Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 1289

I cannot even imagine the flood that's gonna happen :O Mini PETSCII was nothing compared to this :D

2020-11-01 00:03

Frostbyte

Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 170

Quote:

> many (most) modern players it will only play once until progressing to the next tune

I don't know of any players that detect a sid loop by themselves without the Songlength database, care to name one or two?

There probably are none. Let me rephrase what I meant: The players will play for the duration of the song as per Songlength database, and then progress to the next tune. The scenario I would like to avoid is that the loop would be played only once, and what I would like to achieve is that the loop would keep on looping for a minute or so, before the player progresses to the next song. How this is done, I don't mind.

Quote:

> manually copying the loop until the length of the tune is at least a minute

this is useless as the loop is detected anyway on first repetition. 15*4 or 15*1000, the loop is still after 15 seconds.

What detects the looping? Is there an automatic tool to determine the song length that then gets added to the Songlength DB? Sorry, but I don't know much how the song lengths get determined. I always thought this was a manual decision, or some fancier tool would have been taught the specs of many player routines, and recognise the speed commands / settings, and the end of the pattern list (from where there may or may not be a loop back).

If the song lengths of 1:00 or more could be manually added to the songlength DB for each compo entry, that'd be absolutely fine. Then indeed there would be no reason to repeat the loop for X amount of time until looping the whole song.

2020-11-01 00:07

Frostbyte

Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 170

Quote: I cannot even imagine the flood that's gonna happen :O Mini PETSCII was nothing compared to this :D

:D I reckon it may be a popular compo... Not sure if as popular as tiny PETSCII compo, though. That was insane.

2020-11-01 00:37

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3136

Quoting Jojeli

Quote:

What detects the looping? Is there an automatic tool to determine the song length that then gets added to the Songlength DB?

Yes, a tool developed by Wilfred Bos/HVSC which actually plays the tunes (very fast, without actual audio output) for the equivalent of 20 minutes (or more when needed, hardly) and detects the point of repetition - or if it goes silent for a while, if it doesn't loop - by analyzing the whole data emitted. It's not even a 100% success guaranteed method as many tunes don't even have the same values emitted on loop or some channel goes out of sync on loop etc, so there are many in an exceptions list that have to be adjusted manually. The sldb even has errors due to this, it's nearly impossible to verify every tune and subtunes in a lifetime, but they gets fixed after a wrong timing gets reported to us.
It's one of the lengthy processes we need to do when we close the update, and gets longer each release, not surprisingly.

I see that while writing this the first entry just got added, let's check it out

C:\temp>sldetect.exe 200mph_24_7.sid
Processing...
; /200mph_24_7.sid
36ace184cdf1eb8e5fa1b69e5c092885=0:15.323

Total time: 00:00:09 (+659 milliseconds)

nice one, and seems detected correctly.

Quote:

If the song lengths of 1:00 or more could be manually added to the songlength DB

Not happening, no. =)

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