PeterthePapercomPoser

In all the years past, the Christmas Event was just an event - not a competition. It was a completely free event with no limitations on ensemble nor duration and no judges, or scoring. The intent was just to channel the spirit of Christmas (or the holidays or winter) in the music in any way the participants saw fit. And there were only two types of badges - participant badges for everyone who submits music and community organizer for whoever bolstered the event through an announcement post and submissions thread. There was never any popular voting or anything like that either. Sure, that's a great idea! Let me know what you think of the Category Definitions in the Competition Reviewing Template that I just added! Thanks for your input!

Thanks for your vote and for voicing your opinions @MK_Piano! We have had this idea at the end of the last formal competition - "Dreamscapes" - which had monetary prizes and an official set of judges. As can be seen at the end of the "Dreamscapes" Satisfaction Survey linked below 5 out of 10 voters in the survey liked the idea of having tiered divisions for entrants of different skill levels. I think one of the problems with this idea is that we can never know if we'll even have enough participants joining the competition to justify having even just two different tiers. And would this also imply that the prize money will be split evenly between the different winners from the different tiers? Or would the more advanced tier get the lion's share of the prize money? But either way, I think from looking at the results (so far) of this 2025 Halloween Satisfaction Survey, the emergent fashion seems to be that people prefer to keep the competitions as casual as possible or just for fun and without monetary prizes. The formatting was optional. All the reviewers were free to use the reviewing template or dump it and make their own. Or just write comments and forget any kinds of categories or numerical scales. In the past when we had official competitions with monetary prizes, the official judges talked to each other about the entries (the composers of which were kept anonymous by me) on a set of competition dedicated discord channels on the Young Composers Spot discord server. We were a team and presented a concerted effort to review all the entries as consistently as possible. And as mentioned above in my response to @Wieland Handke's post, the only thing that needs to be consistent from one judge to another is the differences between the different entries. So that even if each judge rates the entries in a different range of the numerical scale, as long as the differences between the different scores are consistent across the whole set of entries, the scores all get averaged between the judges and produce a fair result. Thanks for your response and sharing your thoughts!

You're welcome! I enjoyed it! First, thank you for voicing your opinion! When we've done competitions with monetary awards and official judges in the past this was an issue that people have brought up. However, ultimately, when the different scores from the different judges were averaged together, as long as the judges tried to accurately reflect the differences between the various musical entries in their scores then once the scores were all averaged together, even if say, some of the judges scored the pieces in a different range of the scale than others, the scoring still worked to accurately reflect the differences in quality between the different entries. In the past when we had competitions with monetary awards, the entrants were kept anonymous by sending their entries by personal message to me. I would then add their entry to the submissions thread. I think in a free contest, this requirement might be too strict. And I personally don't like the idea of keeping the names of the judges anonymous because it discourages discussion and interaction between the judges and the members. Thanks for voicing your opinion!

I think it's harder because for me it's very important to evoke the casting in the music as closely as possible. So I can't always just write the music I want - I have to follow the underdrawing of the casting. Thanks for your review!

I don't how this is still happening but your vote isn't showing up on my end again... 😕

I come to you with yet another Muzoracle casting. Lisa is a friend who has kindly bought me my own Muzoracle set (which lets me do these castings for people I know) and Chromatic Harmonica. Thanks Lisa! (Muzoracle is a storytelling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice.) This time Lisa asked me if her new breath notation (based on harmonica tablature) will help others with aphantasia to learn to read music. This is my biggest casting thus far - with 10 positions, so I had to take two pictures of it to capture the whole thing: My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below. The instrumentation of the piece was guided by the suits of the cards drawn. Since there were two brass cards drawn in the 3rd and 4th positions, I included Trumpet and French Horn. Then, in the 5th position we got dealt a card in the suit of Woodwinds, so I used a Flute. Then in the 8th position we drew a triad of strings so I used a Violin. And finally, in the 9th position we drew a Soloist of Percussion card so I used a Vibraphone. If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here: https://muzoracle.net/ This short musical interpretation of Lisa's Casting is about a minute and a half long. The piece is in Eb major since the black musician's die landed on Eb/D#. I then made the following harmonic/melodic underdrawing that I used in the composition of the music. I started the piece on a single solitary A note surrounded by Silence since the first card drawn was the Silence card. Then as the piece progressed, I added more notes (Cb, D, and G) and let the piece fall into a rhythm. I used the brass instruments first since they were the first to be drawn. Then the Woodwind card got drawn in the 5th position so I had the flute trill between F and Gb. The strings card gets drawn in the 8th position so that's where the Violin comes in, playing high E major (Fb major since its based on RA) chords as a triple stop. Then I used the Db and Bb to build a Bb half-diminished b9 chord with the Fb major chord on top since the 9th position is a Soloist of Percussion card (Vibraphone). The whole piece repeats before finally ending on the tonic chord Eb major (which I added simply for the sake of the music and a clearer tonal identity). If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Lisa's 3rd Casting. Comments, critiques, suggestions, or observations are of course, always welcome. Thanks for listening!

The competition is now over! Check out the results and winners!

Check out the results and winners!

Ok .. your votes are showing up now. Thanks for voting!

none of your votes are showing up on my end. Are you sure you hit the "Vote" button at the bottom of the form to submit your votes?

Popular and cinematic music often doesn't develop themes in a classical way, instead opting to repeat the themes in different keys and sometimes even in the same key.

@chopin and @therealAJGS are you going to vote in the poll?

I've encountered a very interesting (and very long) article about "aphantasia" or the inability to see mental images in the New Yorker: Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. (I had to read the article on my cell phone since if I tried to open it on my computer it would require me to get a subscription to the New Yorker.) Summary of the article: Some people can't visualize mental images. This has been dubbed aphantasia after Aristotle coined the term phantasia as the ability to fantasize. But there is a wide spectrum for this ability from hyper-phantasia or the ability to experience abnormally vivid mental imagery to aphantasia or the inability to do so. And this isn't limited to visual imagery but to all of the senses including hearing music, touch, taste or smell. Supposedly, children are born hyper-phantasic and lose the ability gradually through the pruning of neurons in the brain during normal brain development (although some people claim to have been born with aphantasia). I have very vivid memories of being able to imagine whole new pieces of music as a child, complete with a full complex instrumentation/orchestration. I would do this before falling asleep and it was this memory which I attribute to my finding the passion to learn how to compose music later in life. The article also talked about how children who actively bolster their ability to daydream, fantasize or imagine things can stay hyper-phantasic into adulthood. Perhaps this is how Mozart was able to foster his ability to compose and remember music completely in his head. But the question I want to pose for you is whether this kind of ability is something that it is better or worse to have for a composer. I've heard of many composers who have had the ability to hear a whole piece of music in their head all at once, with full orchestration and they always seemed frustrated because they lacked the ability to capture the music on paper or in their sequencer/DAW or notation software. The music just sprung into existence so spontaneously that it proved difficult to capture. It seems that if you don't also develop a great musical memory then the ability to imagine the whole composition in your head all at once is ultimately futile. I have also been diagnosed with a mental illness and it was around that time that I started losing some of my hyper-phantasia. To me, that explains why I had to switch to writing music on paper as the music was now being composed at basically the same pace as I wrote it, not any faster or slower. It was definitely a qualitative shift in the way I wrote music. Before, the whole piece would be finished in the amount of time it took to imagine it. Now, I was never sure how the piece would turn out until I actually sat down to write it. I think there's definitely advantages to both ways of writing. But for me I found that I couldn't be as easily disappointed by my work when I composed in this way. People think that aphantasia is a disease or a disorder, but there is a wide spectrum and I think everyone's gotta learn to take the best advantage of whatever kind of gifts that they may have. Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear what you think! P.S.: This article was recommended to me by my friend Lisa who has aphantasia and bought me my own Muzoracle set and Chromatic Harmonica. So thanks again Lisa!

Henry, since you are in Hong Kong you forget that you're living in the future! LoL He actually has 30 hours before he has to finish his reviews! haha

This is just a reminder post for those wishing to receive an "Ardent Reviewer" badge that by Monday 11:59 pm PST you might still need to review some works! @Omicronrg9, @Wieland Handke, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, @chopin, and myself @PeterthePapercomPoser have reviewed all the entries (minus their own) and will receive the "Ardent Reviewer" badge! @TristanTheTristan - you still need to review Thatguy's piece and the last five pieces in the list. You will receive the "Ardent Reviewer" badge! @HoYin Cheung - you've only reviewed two pieces. Do you still intend to review the rest? @UncleRed99 - you still need to review Omicronrg9's piece and the last six pieces in the list. @Kvothe - you still need to review Maxthemusicenthusiast's piece and UncleRed99's piece. You will receive the "Ardent Reviewer" badge! @MK_Piano - you still need to review sebastian Pafundo's, Maxthemusicenthusiast's, Kvothe's, Thatguy v2.0's, and the last five pieces. @Thatguy v2.0 - you still need to review Micah's and Dima's pieces. @therealAJGS - you still need to review Maxthemusicenthusiast's, TristanTheTristan's, and the last two pieces. You will receive the "Ardent Reviewer" badge! @Cosmia - you've only reviewed three pieces. Do you still intend to review the rest? Of course, we're all grateful for your time and your willingness to review however much you want to! Thank you for making this competition fun and instructional for everyone!