Leaderboard

"Adventure. is a large and energetic orchestral piece that takes you through the eye of passionate searchers, who wander deep in a forest in search of something that they believe are essential to their community. Through many obstacles and difficult paths, these passionate searchers scramble and traverse the extreme conditions of the woods. In the end, their work pay off as what they had found is beyond what they had expected." Howdee everybody! This is my submission for the "From Bits to Bangers" competition! I...kinda just don't know what to say other than to thank you the judges and the participants. For the judges, I appreciate you all for judging all of our pieces fairly and giving them feedbacks. I know it's hard to objectively review these pieces without getting too much into subjectivity, and the feedback that you guys have been getting, but I think the judges team did a very good job! I love all of you guys' reviews! For the other participants, don't let the result discourage you to a certain degree. I believe that competitions like this really help you keep track of the progress you've been making as a composer, at least for me anyway. I would like to also thank the voters who voted for me on the popular voting polls. I'm delighted to be one of your guys' favorite submission. I think that's all that I'm going to say since I can't think of anything else. This project has been heavy for me, especially the scoring process (oh look, that's me complaining about making the sheet music for pieces again. Seriously though, the software would literally froze every time I click on something). It's actually my first ever orchestral project that I was able to finish and score, so that's something. But I think in the end, It was all worth the effort. Though I am probably going to take a break from composing orchestral pieces, literally got a fatigue from it. Oh also fun fact, I wrote the piece description and the title like minutes before I submitted, so... yeah. Alright ya'll, enjoy the piece!

"This is my first Caprice for Solo violin. It is my submission to the "From Bits to Bangers" Young Composers music competition. I chose the first of the five 8-bit video game music tracks available to be chosen from, the "Dragon's Lair". The beginning of my piece starts off from my perception of the starting part of the track. Then I proceed to build on it what becomes my caprice. Later that initial part returns in various different forms." The above was my description of the piece that I provided with my submission to the competition. For me the piece sounds like a masterpiece all-through. And since music cannot be judged - at least not entirely - objectively, if at all (its appeal being largely subjective), I think I am entitled to my opinion and my opinion counts. And yet, most of the judges of the competition - at least 3 of 5 of them - judged it as extremely a bad piece, failing to see anything good in it at all. One even had the impudence to give a score of "0" in one category! The question arises: in such competitions where judges rule, who judges the judges? Are there no criteria to hold them accountable when they cross lines and let their subjective biases show through? I guess my music is of such a high level that it is only appreciated by a select few. And since music's appeal is largely subjective, if the majority of judges and even the audience condemn it as bad it should not and does not matter. I have spoken this time when at other times I did not (when posting a judged piece) since this time the judgements, especially by 3 of the judges were unacceptably harsh and would seem to amount to a devaluation of the piece. And also because if I stay silent again this time, it will be taken as acceptance of all that degrading, unacceptable, judgemental and devaluing judgements by 3-5 of the 6 judges. As to why I chose to speak here, a place that might seem inappropriate since it is intended for posting pieces, the reasons are twofold: 1) I did not want to be lured into the "Dragon's Lair" of the judges themselves by responding with my objections in the premises of the competition where my piece was almost trodden underfoot. 2) There must be a re-evaluation of my masterpiece - at least in my opinion - and so when posting it I could not afford to not make my opinion of the unacceptable nature of the judgements it underwent in that competition clear!!!

The title says it all: three valses, meant to be played as separate movements. I have quite thoughtfully polished the presentation of this one, as one might notice right after going through the entire PDF file and past the cover. The names of the pieces mean, in due chronological order: "The dance of the mannequins" in French, the "The hilly journey of a stagecoat" in German, and "The clockwork's pendulum" in Italian. Enjoy!

Hi everyone! Here's my latest piece. Score to follow. Previous versions were posted as Incomplete Works; but I've expanded the piece a lot this week, and finished it off. The inspiration for this work was Bear McCreary's blog about his music for "Lord Of The Rings" spin-off series "Rings Of Power". He wrote about using the G maj to D flat maj chord progression to represent the Elven land of Valinor. The tritone separation of these chords evokes a sense of a mystical place that's forever out of reach. My piece all grew out of that simple chord progression, and I developed an A-B-A structure. Interested to know whether you think the music flows well, and if my orchestration works? Also whether my renditions are improving? I know the long strings and vocals sound a bit dodgy. Perhaps I should try using Logic Pro to make a better version. Updated versions of the score will be posted further down the thread.

Hi all, This was my submission for the "Bits to Bangers" contest. Though I was only aware of the contest pretty late, when I saw that the Castlevania 2 theme was one of the options, I knew I had to give it shot since it was one of my favorite games from the Nintendo era and I loved the music from that game in particular. Because of time constraints, I didn't do as much with the theme as I would have liked and was admittedly pretty conservative with it and couldn't compare with the excellent submissions from the other competitors but it was a lot of fun to come up with something!

Hello! I've just realised I've been very absent from here for a few months, so here's a setting of the Kyrie I've done today in a couple of hours. It's very rough at the moment, so please excuse some score presentation issues! I'm regretting writing it as a reduction, and I think I will eventually present it as an open score, given all the different melismata in different voices.

It's not a personal bias, it's a definition of a word. A banger is an upbeat rockin tune, like, you know, all of the 8 bit tracks to choose from. I chose to judge in the best way I saw fit. Um, yeah. If we met the goal of 10 entries, the prizes given would be increased as was mentioned in the OP. Pretty simple stuff.

Hi again Alex! Wonder how this would sound with better sounds, though it's already pretty good. Just a detail about this: in the first page, the copyright footnote is overlapped by the score lol. I also agree with Mark and Jordan. While the mood you maintain is alright, I believe that almost all directionality gets blurred because of it. For example (to put one, I am sure there are other places where this is more evident, likely past section B, where I find a bit more difficult not to "get lost"), the point at which strings make their entrance would be a nice one to introduce some contrasts via silencing some other voices, maybe in the way of what I think that the section B starts with (?): a question-answer pair of phrases. Whatever the problem be, you can manually transpose a staff to the key you wish. Also, make sure you don't have the "Real sounds" button activated, since it de-transposes everything. (that's from MS3. If you are using the 4th version, I believe it must exist too). Kind regards, Daniel–Ømicrón.

We discussed splitting up the monetary awards differently with @Tónskáld - the patron of this contest without whom the contest would not be possible, while the music was being submitted. We decided against that since it was in the original competition announcement that a 2nd place prize of $60 and 3rd place prize of $40 would be given only if there were more than 10 entries, so we did what we said what we were going to do. It is important in a competition like this to follow through with our commitments and be consistent with our decisions, so although we had conversations about the prize money since the number of submissions was so close to 10, we decided against splitting up the money differently because it would be inconsistent and go against our original commitment. It's very likely that the 1st place winner would feel cheated out of the prize they were expecting if the prize money was split differently. Also, offering more prize money is up to @Tónskáld's discretion, since he is the sole patron of the competition and the competition wouldn't be possible without him in the first place.

Well yeah, but at the end of the day I suppose it's a matter of opinions. I truly didn't see it as strong in that regard as other entries after several listenings. I agree on the fact that dividing the money between several participants would be better than giving everything to one, specially in these cases where many good works have been submitted. I'm sure we'll better consider it next time. 👍 Thank you and the rest of the participants for all the feedback. Kind regards, Daniel–Ømicrón.

I also had a trouble with that. If you expect participants to write in certain style - make it a rule. For me a banger is a piece which you would consistently re-listen. If you have personal biases that should not be a reason to deduct points because that is not in rules of competition and that's not a category. Also shoutout to Omicron for indicating how little winning entry had to do with the actual track... That was exactly my thought and I was really amazed at how much attention it got as I didn't understand how it got so much points for "Execution of Given Challenge" . It certainly is a great original track, but... Nevermind, just personal thoughts. --- Also as a feedback I'd like to leave a thought of not promoting the event of 200$ prize for 3 places recieving the money and then later cutting it to only 1st place recieving 100$. I understand that it was a point in original post (which I sadly missed), that if you didn't recieve 10 entries, you would cut the award, but the way it was done was like indicating you are going for amount of entries, rather than their quality. And in my opinion you could've made an exception since competition was missing only 1 entry. Anyway, congrats again with organisation.

I listened to the whole thing and followed along in the score. The chord progressions did remind me of "Elvish" music by Howard Shore (and from what I can recall of the Rings of Power... I didn't watch much of that show). You can find complement chord progressions (G vs. Db, C vs. F#, etc.) in a lot of modern music, filmscore or otherwise. John Williams famously includes them in the opening Star Wars fanfare, and Holst puts them everywhere in Mars, for example; I wouldn't necessarily say that Bear McCreary has cornered the market on Elvish chord progressions, nor are you beholden to follow his lead. For the first couple of minutes, the piece certainly evokes a sense of wonder and etherealness. After that, however, I have to agree with Mark that it becomes a continuous mood for 7 minutes that changes pace and feeling only a little throughout the piece's duration. Its development is a little disjoined, in my opinion. Themes and variations are introduced over the chord textures that don't seem to have any relation to each other, and appear to serve merely as a way to make the piece longer for the sake of making it longer. I didn't notice any bad part-writing. The vocal parts seem singable, though there should be some indication as to what sound they're singing. It's a great piece overall! My suggestion is to develop your thematic material ahead of time and work it in to the piece as organically as possible. This should be significantly easier now that your mind has conceptualized the piece. Keep up the good work! Jörfi

Dude you should be really proud of this one. Phenomenal orchestral color, and congrats on winning the competition!

Excellent! But...was Schoenberg on the right track? And was Bernstein when he asked "Whither music?" via his view of Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question"?

It's a chromatic harmonic consecutive scope which i wonder how it might triumph as a fuga progression programme as epidodal to a simille Tema chromatica! It's protypal!

Every judges' personal opinion enters into the judging process and the taste criterion is meant to separate those personal opinions from more objective attempts at evaluation. The taste criterion allows the judges to score how much they personally enjoyed a particular composition. The judges aren't robots - they have feelings too.

You handle vocal writing very well; each part stays comfortably within a singable range. I am concerned, however, about the harmonies you've used here. For the most part, the harmonies remain contracted, separated by 2nds alone. This is certainly allowable and, at times, effective, but I wonder if using them here muddies up the sound too much... Your harmonic language, too, is a bit confusing. Is there method you use to choose chords? The rhythms are also problematic, I think. The alternating 5/8 and 6/8 time signatures don't really lend themselves well to the natural cadence of the text, and the truncation of words mid-syllable (eleison --> ...ison, etc.) only adds to the difficulty. What effect are you trying to achieve with this work? Is it intended to be worshipful and reverent (like the text)? Or is it being written for a professional choir to showcase their abilities to perform music of a more eclectic taste?

You are right in that music is subjective, but I will remind you that meeting the requirements of a competition are critical if you want to do well. Receiving low scores doesn't mean your music is bad, and doesn't reflect who you are as a composer. It simply means that more people saw that this specific piece of music just did not fit the criteria. For example, something as incredible as Beethoven's 5th Symphony would have gotten low scores if you think about it, maybe except for melody and harmony, because it would have most certainly not fit the criteria for this competition! With that said, I personally enjoyed your work, but enjoying something doesn't mean a judge has to give high scores for this particular event. The whole idea of the competition was to convert 8 bit tunes into something bigger. Right off the bat, your piece was one track making it difficult to judge. So in terms of orchestration, the form of your piece ended up being too small (and of course this is my very subjective opinion as one of the judges). But then this is why we have 6 judges. I also had to look at what the other contestants did as well, and all of them had multi track works. I realize this wasn't a specific condition of the contest, however you were up against 8 other people. In a competition like this, the other works will either set the bar a lot higher, or a lot lower. But in this case, the bar was set quite high, because the quality of submissions were immaculate. I know it is disheartening sometimes to receive feedback that is on the negative side, but you can quietly use this feedback to your advantage. There are many of the great composers who had to endure such criticism in the past, and this was their profession and livelihood. So they were forced to listen to the feedback from their audience in order to improve. If you don't adapt to feedback, you end up losing. And this doesn't apply to just music. It applies to anything in life.

Hey Vince @Thatguy v2.0, I've almost forgotten this piece lol! Well ironically I feel like this prelude is where you show your freest self lol! You are really free flowing in this one and the imagination is the highest comparing to the previous six preludes since here you are without any constraints of styles. Very attractive jazzy style here which I can never compose like this (since I am always too serious in my music ! I enjoy your words in your score even though I cannot read them all! I do think this will be difficult to play especially I'm not used to playing jazzy style pieces at all! Thanks for sharing and waiting for no.8! Henry

Oh guys, I feel really bad about writing this because all of your feedback and comments were so kind that it makes me sad haha. However, I think I have to make the point. As you may know, I asked in the chat if it was okay for the judges to vote in the poll and, to be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable seeing the judges pick their favorite pieces in the poll. As I said before, after all, they're showing their preferences with the ongoing competition, and even when users can vote for their own works (something did hahah, but which also shouldn't be allowed imo) the judges will be the ones who will score your work. Now, please don't take this the wrong way (actually, it took me a while to think about it), but given the above including that my work also won the poll (including votes from the jury and myself) I think the best thing I can do is to withdraw my work from the contest. This seems to be a healthy community, however, if a user says that the poll gave a hint to know the winners, I couldn't argue with that because I was among the winners, and I'd really like to avoid that situation. Again, please don't take this badly, nothing against the judges or the rest of the contestants, I'm glad you chose my work but I feel a bit uncomfortable within that context. I entered the contest just for fun and that's how it was. I'll be happy to give all the honors to the next on the list, or maybe you can leave the place deserted, as you wish. I hope you can understand that, it's just a personal matter, nothing more :) That said, thanks for the comments I received, I'm very glad you liked my work! Before I forget, two things. First, I'd like to mention the entries A, B and E. Perhaps they weren't the most lush and complex entries, or perhaps some of them lacked harmonic fluency or put a double stop wrong or something like that. However, they were the pieces with fewest errors in writing and reading. In the same line, but with a little more work, the entries C, F and I. (I may regret it in the future haha, but at a quick glance they gave me that impression). And second, I hope I'm not taking the words too literally, but I didn't understand one judge's point in pasting some sort of complaint all over the entries about how disappointed he was because the contest turned out to be "From Bits to Ballades". If you want a specific style or mood, you should include that in the rules. Since the contest was pretty free (at least I didn't notice any special requirements), I think we all did what we felt was right, without following a specific requirement. So don't be disappointed expecting something that wasn't required 👍

Having watched almost nothing of South Park, I don't feel I'm qualified to say anything here. But I know good music when I hear it (or so I tell myself), and this is good music. Fun and soulful... real bluesy feel. I give it two thumbs way, way up!

Nice, catchy piece. Bloomin' difficult to play (not that I've tried). I liked the up in the sky bit followed by everything tumbling to bass (bars 16/17/18). I reckon Billy Mayerl players would have problems doing this justice but for this style it's effectively a study and a worthwhile prelude in the traditional sense. Great.

Hi Pabio! It's a decent passacaglia for me. The move to F# minor in b.22 onwards is unexpected and it's weird in a good way. For me I don't know why but I feel like this piece is very sacrastic in tone. Those false relations, unexpected modultation, dissonances are very mocking for me. You should put the dynamic markings in the middle of the two staffs instead having them under the LH staff as this may cause confusion! For bar 59-61 I think you can simply write the left hand notes on the treble clef with the stems downwards to avoid confusion. This can reduce those lines indicating the movement of voices there! Thanks for sharing! Henry

LOL For me I find this place particularly tranquil without the tremolos in b.70. But the passage can also be qualified as dolcissimo there so it's up to you! I see that in b.66 you put rivido there so I think frequent indications is fine here. Accentuating the left hand is great! Having the half pedal will make it powerful but not aggressive, but not dry without pedal. Well I think repetition doesn't have to be exact repetitions. For example voice exchange, octave doubling, octave higher or lower can change the appearence of the passage but not the core of it, thus adding varieties but still maintain the coherence there. Quite regretted @SSC is not here when I joined YC! Henry