@G2961

I was looking at your posts in this thread... And I just wanted to say, that's impressive!!! You are a Godsend to the audio portal!!!

The amount of fake artists and music you debunk is phenomenal. You deserve gratefulness from all the real musicians putting efforts into crafting their art! Thank you for what you do!!

There will always be real music made by the real artists who love to make music, but I agree it's getting drowned by AI content flooding all platforms. It's quite sad really, it removes visibility from those who put efforts and love into their creations, getting diluted by fast food existing for the sole purpose of turning a profit.

I wish that all big platforms like YT would force a sticker to be applied to anything AI generated to let people know, and make sure nothing can be monetized if it's AI generated so there's no $ incentive to do it at the very least. Real artists crafting music don't need their potential -already slim- revenue streams to be diluted by robots that can just copy the real artists and pump out thousands of tracks a day.

A)

B)

Voice of the Fallen

C)

A piano instrumental representing Corvin's interaction with the mysterious spirits.

Here it is!! Almost last minute ^^

Let's go with the unpicked ones! Got some general ideas in my mind for both :)

1. Voice Of The Fallen
2. Bond Of A Father And Son

@OVERSCORE You already know it! :) But for anyone else, I find my best ideas when improvising for a while and then reaching a kind of meditative state of mind while playing. Then magic happens! It helps to get ideas that emerge straight from the subconscious this way, creating mindful music that I can connect with on another level.

Otherwise if I go for a more conscious, mathematical or technical approach to generate ideas I tend to get less interesting stuff. Music that may still sound okay, but that doesn't connect the same way. I encourage anyone to try improvisation! It's such a nice way to start the composition process! Once a good idea comes, I work on it more consciously until I get a final result that is satisfying enough.

Here is my piece for the bronze category! Good luck all the 4 remaining! :D

Congratulations to @CloakedSoup and @icantpronouncethis who are going into the finals!!

@CloakedSoup I feel like you're a big fan of Harry Potter! Your entry this round really made me think it could be in one of the movies and it would fit perfectly among the other professional tracks. I listened to your 2020 Harry Potter OST for the Minecraft mod, it's very similar at times but with more of a Voldemort vibe, more action packed in some sections, with its nice contrasts that can evoke a wide range of mysterious scenery. You improved a lot during the past 4 years! I was going to comment when you released but then figured I'd rather not risk to jinx anything! :) Very good job! 

And special mention for @trixelbit I felt bad for you when reading what happened with your PC! Such a shame it happened only the last day before deadline!! 

@icantpronouncethis you got a nice free pass for the top 2! I'm jealous! (Not true) ;) 

Getting to the semi finals is something I was absolutely not expecting when getting into the NGADM. 

For those who don't know, I was not making it passed the auditions at first! So here goes an argument if anyone hesitate to get into one of these contests, try no matter what! 

It's been an awesome experience, it helped me a lot to put perspective on my work and improve in many ways, get very valuable feedbacks, test my limits, grow a bit of confidence, work under the pressure of deadlines, and meet very nice people! 

I'm just a tiny bit sad that my last piece was not quite up to par with what I know I'm capable of.

But inspiration is not always here to the maximum of its potential! I think it shows that it lacked a bit for this round 

I was lucky enough up to now to get nice inspiration flowing, it can't last forever! haha  

Nevertheless, there is absolutely no disappointment, getting to the top 4 out of 256, I'm quite proud of it!! 

Happy Halloween!

I had plans to work on something for the occasion, worked on some ideas past week, but then COVID hit.

I swear this virus disables the brain! Couldn't get in the right state of mind to compose anything. Gonna try next year! :)

Good luck to everyone participating!

I was thinking about making a voter public or removing voting power, only if an account would vote too often a lot lower than the average. Voting 1 or 0 on something that averages 4.5 is very likely not fair. Voting 1 or 0 on an average of 2.5 is probably fair. It could be measured and used to detect users who abusively downvote lots of material. Then to either limit voting power and/or make their votes public.

I'm all about keeping the voting anonymous for everyone else though!

For the same reasons you mentioned, to encourage people to vote on submissions.

The more people vote the more the average gives a good representation of the appreciation.

Lots of content deserve 2 or 3. But 1, or 0 the published material must be extremely bad.

I would say someone who often votes 3 stars lower than the average is most likely up to no good.

Anyway it's not something very important in the end, just thinking out loud about potential solutions to limit the problem brought by OP :) Not that I would personally care that much that such thing would be implemented. Getting a huge drop due to 1 voter is a bad surprise that lasted 2 minutes. I was not freaked out by the score drop itself, but by thinking about "Oh no! Did I forget to adjust something? Does my mix sounds like trash? Did I miss something, an obvious mistake?".

Keeping high ratings would matter more if there was something like a streaming distribution of NG music that favorizes discovery of old music by wider audience who could filter NG music based on rating, and many other options. Then it would be sad to get great material artificially brought down because it would limit its discovery potential. Otherwise, it's a kind of non issue to me! I just like to brainstorm :)

Oh well forget about that then! :) I think that's the right approach, just not care! All that matters is the reasons why we make music. Getting a 0 is surprising, not something to be happy about.

I was thinking about it, maybe it would be nice, if someone votes too low on too many published projects versus the average, then they get outed, their name appears everywhere they voted way lower than the average and voting power resets or lose points. I don't know, anyway like we already said, it's not that important, has no impact other than on the score itself!

I completely agree, focus must stay on what's relevant, no matter if it may be a bit frustrating to get a good score destroyed by one voter hitting 0. The love for our craft comes first, then if the goal is to publish the average appreciation and feedbacks matter a lot more than any amount of stars.

"Fair" rating in something as subjective as art creation, can be quite tricky! I think you get a good point too about ego. Sometimes it's about real issues that would need attention, and sometimes about big ego artists who need a lesson of humility. A justified low rating that comes with constructive feedback can be an opportunity to grow!

Though, I think measuring one's habit of voting too low vs average could help detect those who vote down based on ill intentions more than on any fair reasons. Bringing some kind of negative effect for those who abuse down votes, up to removing ability to vote, could help discourage the practice. If someone votes 0 half of the time, always on stuff that get an average rating of over 4, it would be a strong tell tale sign.

I didn't think it was a thing! It smells like petty narcissism. "Look at what you made me do! Now I'll punish your art if you don't give me what I want!" For some people art is just flowers growing out of nowhere that can be picked whenever, without consideration for the gardener without who there would be nothing to pick.

I was wondering how my last piece could drop so much based on one rating after whole bunch of good ones. And I liked the piece too:) But in the end I just thought, someone really didn't like this style of music, we all have different tastes after all! It's not that having high or low rating will change anything in the passion I have in making music, but it can affect the discovery potential for musicians who would put gems out there but then be the 500 000th track down the list between 2 other that are much lower quality, just because it's been voted down artificially.

But then, does it matter a lot? Looking into lots of artists who post high quality music and are popular on NG, they don't get many listeners passed the first week or 2 post release. I feel like most releases get 99% of their audience during the first couple days, unless it gets publicity outside of NG, or maybe if it gets extremely high rating, enough to be in "best of the year or month", or if it's used in other projects, movie, or game then it can gather more attention over time... But looking over the archive even of featured music, I don't think that the star rating affects the audience in any significant way. It's a somewhat non issue to me, I just find it sad that someone feels like giving bad rating either for no good reason, or just to use the very little authority they can get to try to hurt someone else.

So, what could be done to correct ratings of music that's being downvoted for no good reason? Maybe create a forum post where musicians can claim they've been ridiculously downvoted, so then people on the audio forum can go bring that average back up to act as counterweight. I think there could be enough people in this forum to help bring up bad ratings on music that is worth future discovery. If there was a significant audience for old releases I think that discovery potential would matter a lot more, and with it the star rating, but without it I don't know. I sure was surprised by the big drop in my own rating, but it doesn't bother me.

@wobwobrob I went ahead and brought a couple of your tracks up. Not sure if it will change anything, but your average is slightly higher now

Here it is for the round 4!

Wow! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to go forward! :D It was a dice roll in my mind, who was going to the next round.

@LucidShadowDreaming crafted such a nice piece, more complex in instrumentation for sure vs piano solo, catchy, well designed, full of interesting elements, and modulations. I think that from this round, all 8 of us deserve the same level of recognition. There is always each judge's personal tastes that come into play, also our own ability as artists to generate something that will connect with others as well as we can during this short period of 2 weeks, different amount of time to put into it. I know for sure that without managing to get in the good state of mind, be inspired for long enough, and having the time to put the hours in, it would be very different, and I couldn't manage to produce Windy. It's my favorite composition so far and it makes me very happy that it connects with many, and was appreciated enough by the judges to make me advance into the semi finals.

Congrats to everyone, making it or not into the next round! I hope I can get the same level of inspiration coming for the next composition, because @CloakedSoup is another extremely good composer!

Wish me luck! :)

❤❤❤

The takeover feature is very nice! It gives an opportunity to bring to the front the "super favorite" of many people with different taste, or showcase old or obscure stuff that would be hard to discover otherwise. It will probably be abused in some way though, but I don't think it would be much of an issue. Anyway adjustments can always come along the way.

Only thing that comes often is that it should take less space on mobile. I'm sure it will be addressed by the amount of users complaining though! Other than that, it will sure bring more people to buy the supporter status. Which is a good thing to keep the site afloat. A website costs money to run! Lots of people underestimate how it can ramp up!

It's an interesting concept to trade services among artists and encourage collaboration! Having a in house currency tied to a crypto in the real world could gain lots of value by itself, or lose it all, I'm not that well versed into this though!

I was thinking of it similar to twitch bits. All users could buy any amount of NG$ for real money or vice versa, all users would have a in site "bank account" of NG$. I think tying it to US$ would make it more trustworthy, but I might be wrong. I don't know the legal implications or how hard it would be to implement, or if it would be better with cryptos associated to it. But I think the launch of a "digital product" by NG in the form of virtual currency, would be well received and would generate decent inflow of funds. It could be traded between users at will, for services as you mention, or as donations.

It's pretty cool that you already thought of such concept! I think it would be an awesome feature.

An idea was roaming around in my head that would fit very well with Newgrounds I think.

Imagine there would be a way for users to buy a certain amount of a new NG "currency", say 100 NG$ per 1$US.

Then a user could distribute NG$ to creators of their choice, and when a user cashes out, it pays out 0.90$US per 100 NG$

People encouraging artists would give 10% to NG by doing so, and it would be seen as a good argument by many artists probably to bring their fans on NG. It would also mean that 10% of any amount of NG$ bought could be used right away, then the 90% remaining waiting for distribution to artists and cash out, could be used to generate interests while it sits there.

Then interests could trickle into prize pools, attracting more artists.

It's an interesting concept! I sometimes use this at small scale, within a phrase or section, tempering with tempo a bit and including odd polyrhythms. It can make it possible to follow a regular longer tempo while notes accelerate or decelerate within the phrase, and in the end no matter if the listener "feels" the more regular longer beat, or the shorter one that is a lot less regular, both join at the same place.

Odd tuplets are very fun to explore all in itself, it could be used to create your idea. Example, first playing 8 notes per measure, then 9 notes, then 10, 11, 12,..., 16. Following the same tempo, you multiplied the speed by 2. A bit of rubato between the different polyrhythms I think could help tie it all together.

It was a tough one to put together! But here it is! :D

Happy madness day! May I pour a bit of piano madness in here? :)

I think I surpassed the weirdness of Gravissimo with these two, composed with Madness Day in mind :

I'm speechless! That's the biggest surprise up to now, and an awesome one! :D And now facing @LucidShadowDreamer I need to start working ASAP on my next piece because I have no doubt about one thing, it won't be an easy round! You are a composition beast!

It makes me quite happy to be back in after this swimming sprint out of the boat for 2 rounds!

I'm glad that the efforts were recognized, and gave results! Also glad that luck played in my favor, because it was sure part of it!

I'm not the kind to be proud for every little thing, could even say quite far from that. But the reception of my last couple pieces, especially the last one, and this round result, gave me this feeling that I didn't have for... quite a long time! Knowing that lots of people relate, understand or connect in any way when publishing what I create is the thing that matters the most to me! When very skilled musicians and producers like we find on NG also connect then it's even more powerful!

Now it's the first time in the different contests that I think of it as "I maybe have a chance to reach top placements!". It's also the first time I think of my music as having more potential than I thought before. I feel like I left a plateau recently in my musical journey, I feel like it's being exacerbated by forcing deadlines that come with the contests. My mind went from "It's just one more ordinary piece in a sea of millions" to "I have something unique that lots of people, and musicians, enjoy!".

I can't thank enough all the organizers, judges, everyone who passed by.

It may not mean much, but you're all helping me tremendously, probably more than you think.

Congratulations to all who participated and made it up to any point, it's already an achievement!

Now back to music! ❤❤❤

Up against the best score of the past round! My hope gage went down quite a bit, but there's still some left in the tank. Wish me luck! :)

Wow! Didn't expect this. Thank you very much for getting me back in!

Now fingers crossed, because at this point the quality of the music produced leaves no place for mistakes!

It totally makes sense! AI tools, better hardware and software, and the quantity of participants as well, all matter probably in contributing to better overall quality. And on NG there's also potential for help from other musicians! Seeking out for my mix really brought me to improve my sound quality.

I like to think of the future and what it could be. Extrapolating actual innovations into the next 10, 100 or 1 000 years and imagine the possibilities. Maybe instruments will change, maybe at some point, the music we play will come directly from the chip reading our mind, all instruments perfectly represented, perfectly mixed, optimized to evoke something. The imagination gets directly transcribed into sounds without any physical input. Or it controls a cloud of nanorobots painting art directly from our imagination.

Then all artists do is do activities to ignite inspiration, then let the idea generated flow out by itself. Could be a movie plot! :)

Just making sure, I don't mean people using generated AI music in the competitions, reading back I figured it could be interpreted that way, it would be a mistake! :) I refer to AI tools that can be used to enhance music quality, which I find good, it makes it easier to create better quality music. There's also more and more hardware, intuitive midi controllers, VSTs, wide choices of plugins that are also better than ever. What I don't like is really AI generated music that requires a prompt and it picks and modify things that real artists created.

TaintedLogic Said a couple times that he was surprised by how many quality entries were coming this year, more than ever if I'm right.

I wonder, if the correlation is strong with the rise of AI. It seems to be. Which would mean that probably lots of people use it in their production? What is great though, is that AI evolves, which means that at some point everything that was previously AI generated, will most likely be discovered, due to higher computing powers, etc. Maybe also that people will be producing music from their own less and less... And at some point despite a huge amount of music being produced, almost no one but very few will actually understand the concepts behind and be capable to create truly authentic music.

It's hard to know where it will lead. I think that it will impeach a whole lots of people from actually getting into music.

Music is a hard path that requires a whole lots of passion and efforts. AI encourages people getting into it to not do the hard work, which will probably lead to less and less people actually understanding and producing truly authentic music. Maybe AI will create rarity of authentic artists

The Universe works in mysterious ways @Everratic we end up with the exact same average! I thought it was worth a mention ;)

Congratulation to everyone making it into the finals, it's already an accomplishment in itself, and congrats to the podium! Very well deserved. @HollandAlbright I kind of had the feeling that you would at least be in the top 3 and probably first! your piece is truly wonderful, every single note is carefully thought out, there's no filling, it's melodically and harmonically extremely well designed, you sure deserve the win!

For my part, 6th place! I take it as a trophy as well! That's quite awesome, I was not expecting this with all the high quality content that's been posted by everyone and my big doubts about myself, that are surely dissipating a little bit along the way thanks to all the feedbacks, and this placement! It's encouraging me to continue to share my music that would otherwise just not be recorded, or just be kept on a hard drive forever.

Thank you to all the judges and organizers, for creating this opportunity for us to compete in a friendly way, it was a very nice experience!

I would be surprised if 5 drop out at this stage, but will post it here just in case!

Here it is! Finally! :)