Mod Archive Forums
Music Production => Tracking => Topic started by: cdnalsi on November 11, 2006, 15:21:41
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(http://cdn.untergrund.net/timesignature/title.png)
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Yay! Time for another compo!
This time only for trackers (yes Renoise and Madtrackers too) :P
The thing about this compo is that no 4/4 or square-ish time signatures are allowed. The deal is to make something very creative from a rhythmical point of view. But not only. The points of judgement will be Creativity, Originality, and another secret point which you will find out after the deadline As secret as the second judge who will cast his wisdom upon your tracks. I'll be the other judge.
Deadline: 1st of December, 2006
Info, rules, and such - here:
http://cdn.untergrund.net/timesignature
Good Luck!
Questions? fire away
-cdnalsi
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note: topic title edited as its breaking conformity in news topics. forgot it broke on the beta site :) -m0d
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Hello, a new compo sounds cool. :D
This would be my first try to make a tune for an compo. :)
One question is needed by me on what does mean no square-ish time signatures. Sorry i am not long inside with tracking. Or, what speed values are allowed (like inside milkytracker/xm),
because there a two values one is bpm another is speed. Im tracking usually on them with 125 bpm/6 speed.
So if I know to set the beat-values correcly right for the compo, i can beginn to make a try for it ;)
Thank you for support,
Greetings Denis :)
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Hi Dennis.
It's not about the BPM or the Speed of the track. It's about how many rows you have in a pattern.
For example. if you have a 64 row pattern, and you highlight every 8 rows, you'll have an 8 beat pattern. Which could mean that you have two 4/4 measures in the pattern. This is not allowed.
What you can do is use more or less rows in the patterns. If you use 56 rows, (and highlight every 8), you'll have a 7 beat pattern, or a 7/4. This is allowed. You imagine there are lots of combinations you can use to create odd time signatures.
I don't know if there are any tutorials of this kind, but I'm going to look it up.
Cheers!
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Hello, Thank you very much for answer :)
Now im experimenting a little bit, I've set the pattern count to 0x37(hex) (0...56) so I've got a 7 beat.
Greetings, Denis
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Hey, sounds like fun. But should not 3/4 rythms also be disallowed? It's the second most common beat and used in genres like Waltz and similiar.
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err.. eagle,
then 6/8 and 3/8 should also be disallowed. and 5/8 and 7/8 too, because they're the most common odd time signatures. (for example John Miles' Music)
but this sounds like a load of fun and a great challenge! I think I'm in!
I was thinking about doing a 7/8 Irish reel, but it might get a little more psychadelic. I also do not have Bodhran samples. :???:
or maybe a 6/8 7/8 beat shift! ever heard about 13/16 beat? It's 3/4 plus 1 extra 16th note. I'm practicing on it now! :D
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You can do some funky stuff on 3/4 which is also considered an odd time signature..
Great to hear more people are interested!
Remember the deadline: 1st Dec. 2006 :)
Cheers!
:thumbup:
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Hehe, I think I'll try an 13/4 beat. ;)
Although I'm rather busy at the moment making tracks for NoiseTrax UF, so I may not be able to get started before the deadline, so my participation may be on the side and not really part of the actual contest. Well, we'll see about that.
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some tutorial for explain time signatures would be nice...
first about explaining what means 4/4.. what is a beat.. what is a tick.. well there are many things for understand.
Anyway for newbies would be cool if someone create a list of patterns lenghts and where you place the highlight rowns for create certain time signatures
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Kmuland:
The wikipedia article on time signatures has some good general info on time signatures...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature
If I understand correctly, trackers have an internal clock that cuts time into units called ticks, and then process one line of your tune every n ticks of the clock. So if you track a tune at 8 ticks per line and then play it back at 4 ticks per line, it will play twice as fast. 2 ticks per line will play twice again as fast, etc. This setting affects the way some effects work.
As for row highlighting, I'll do better than a list- you can have a formula that tells you how long to make your patterns and what to highlight. Let's say you want to use the n/m time signature and track with q measures per pattern, and you want to divide each beat into p parts. Then you need to make your patterns n*p*q rows long, with your major highlight every n*p rows and minor highlight every p rows. (other people feel free to check this...)
Basically western pop music has been bound to the 4/4 time signature since, well, basically forever. The purpose of this compo is to get us thinking outside that restriction. :)
I'll try to get something together; this will be my first compo (if I finish something, that is...)
EDIT- my math was off
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did nobody ever notice that 12/8 can be counted the same as 4/4?
the only difference is that there are 3 8th notes in each count, instead of 4 16th notes.
4/4 beat:
|1 ta da ta |2 ta da ta |3 ta da ta |4 ta da ta|
12/8 beat:
|1 ta da |2 ta da |3 ta da |4 ta da|
Casus: 12/8 in Modplug Tracker :grinno:
speed: 3 BPM: 125
you start regularly at row 1, but the next measure starts at row 24, instead of row 32.
Take a bass drum, place it on row 1, 12, 24, 36, and break the pattern at row 47 (the next pattern starts at row 48 )
next, take a snare drum and place it on row 4, 8, 16, 20, 28, 32, 40 and 44.
listen to the result. Tadaaah! a nice waltz!
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Sounds nice..Some things are unclear anyway..Is there some size limit or can I do a 100 mb mod? And should I bother myself with the appearance of the song..Do I need to explain somehow the rhytm chosen? I might even do a song for this 1 cos I've just started tracking again (like for fun anyways..)..The rules would be nice to be clearer, now it's like possible to cheat if one's willing to..
Anyway, 15/7 beat rules supreme!
Sorry 'bout the typos..Drunk as always..-..
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I'll try to answer your questions.
- About the 100mb mod. I don't mind downloading it, or even hosting it. But the people who will check out the entries surly will. The thing is that you will not be able to download the entries individually. It will be a big pack with all the entries, so think about this..
- Do you need to explain somehow the rhythm chosen. If I were you I'd not go into that 'chaos' type of song. Think of it this way - challenge me. But challenge me in a way that is professional rhythmically and melodically, coherent, and not just blip-blops.
- About cheating. I really don't see how you can cheat on this one. Simply put, you can of course use 4/4 for variety's sake, otherwise, I don't see how you could actually cheat. But I'd really like to see you try :D
Anyways, I hope maybe you'll reply with your decision whether you will participate, and with the rhythmical explanation of 15/7 :quote:
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yeah, I was wondering about the 15/7 too. especially the /7 bit. Wondering what that looks like. I think it doesn't exist even. Has to do with a septole... no I wouldn't have a clue...
so show me and make me marvel! :grinno:
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15/7 time isn't too hard to understand. Basically you cut a whole note into 7 equal pieces and then put 15 of them into a measure, just like with 4/4, 6/8, &c. Of course standard music notation is best able to handle divisions of the whole note that are multiples of two.
Really, though, with a tracker you can completely disregard the second number in the time signature. It's only there for the standard notation with quavers and semiquavers and stuff. The important thing is how many 'pulses' there are in a measure, and the top number in the time signature tells that. For instance, if you track a piece in 12/8 time, it might as well be in 12/5 time or 12/100 time. It doesn't matter, although with standard notation you'd have to change the tempo to make a 12/8 and a 12/5 piece play at the same speed.
With a tracker, a better way to think about the time signature is called 'meter'. The meter of the song is (kind of) like the accent pattern in poetry. Duple meter moves in two, like
DA da DA da DA da DA da
and triple meter moves in three, like
DA da da DA da da DA da da DA da da
You could mix it up, like
DA da DA da da DA da DA da da
or
DA da da DA da DA da da DA da
or just use quintuple meter
DA da da da da DA da da da da
and so on, for whatever n-tuple meter you want. Most music is in straight up duple or triple meter, though, and occasionally switches from one to the other.
A nifty challenge would be to make two parts play in different meters at the same time...
By the way, onetwothree.xm by Loonie is a great example of a mod that plays around with meter. It's in triple meter, but sometimes it sounds like duple and triple played together:
ftp://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/Fasttracker%202/Loonie/
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The septole cannot be used as a time signature. It's a music theory fact.
I have an idea. Instead of just babbling about the signatures and stuff, why don't you guys enter the actual competition? :P
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hiyaaa!
How's everyone doin'? I've just submitted my entry to cdnalsi.
It is an Irish reel in 7/8 and I even found a Bodhran sample :D
I'm very curious about your entries!
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I sent my entry yesterday... I got a little carried away with the time sign. It's kind of random.
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The septole cannot be used as a time signature. It's a music theory fact.
I thought so...
if you'd use a septole it would just be a very fast 7/8 beat or 7/16 :grinno:
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Hey, it's nearly the 2nd of December, that means it's 1st of December now. How's the compo turning out? Were there many entries? Good ones, bad ones? When will the outcome be published?
seew manny koowes-chunz!
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the compo is off because of the few entries :(
thanks
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Perhaps extend the deadline. Seems compos are victim of their own success. Too many are simultaneously ongoing to be able to hold everyone's interest. Too many one hour compos in #mod_shrine, too many compos on CTGmusic. Its just too much - too soon. Perhaps put the deadline into January next year, it will at least give you more time to promote the compo. Cancelling it just like that isn't fair on those who have bothered to enter.
Folks will be less likely to pay attention to your calls for a compo in the future if this is the way you deal with situations like this.
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when the number of entries are low then I'd say it's easier to choose.
:D when the compo is cancelled, then I would like to get some feedback at least, because I normally wouldn't force myself like I have done to get a song finished.
Especially because I am quite proud of the result. It was completely new to make something attractive in an odd time signature, and putting that in the shape of an irish reel was also quite some venture.
I believe there were at least 2 entries.
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Yes, well, there are 5 entries and I just don't feel it's right to have a voting and reviewing session for only 5 entries. However, I will give extended feedback on each of the tracks on the website in a couple of days.
The fact is that I can't extend the deadline. In the next month and a half my schedule will be quite full, and I won't have time to deal properly with this, and I apologize.
But I don't want you who entered to feel disappointed about this, so I'll work on some reviews.
Cheers!
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Oh, I did not get in time, did I? Crap...
I started working on a tune with 11/4 time signature. It sounds quite african, really. Accourding to an aquaintance of mine, it's quite a common time signature in some parts of Africa. Hope I'll get it done in a soon future, but then again, my agenda is already overfilled so it will probably end up in the bottom of my "to do"-list.
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Remember that 16 sample competition a while back? I won that one... because I was the only one who entered, haha. So yeah, compos are slow these days, it seems. Extend the deadline and prod some more people is what I'd say. I'd enter this one myself, but I know that tracking in an odd time signature would either be an outright disaster for me or it would fall back somehow into a more conventional time signature. I just don't have the sense of rhythm you need for this kind of thing. Sorry...