Competition planning/suggestions thread

Hello? There's already a fugue challenge lol

I am well aware of that.
But its not all fugues of one
theme in competition against
another.

Jeremy

Fugue is perhaps the best form to test
ones skill as a composer. Its all about
a theme and how that theme is used in
structure.

That is so much an opinion is stinks of shit.

I've got this crazy idea.

People really want prizes......which would be cool with these contests, but
this website doesn't have funding to work with. (If I am correct.)

Why don't we set up a paypal type thing where any member of this site can add/donate money
to a contest. That would make it so that there are cash prizes for each contest.

I also think we should only run one contest at a time. That way, people don't lose so much
money because they want to donate money to these composers.

There should be some prize...I mean....recognition is nice, but when you work
extremely hard, you should definately get an award for it.

What do you think? I would donate some money to these contests. We could do
everything electronically. I don't think it would be too difficult at all....Just write a
check to the winning composer.

On an earlier post, I really rail against the idea that music competitions will necessarily be judged subjectively.

Over at Squaresound, we held a poem setting competition (for which I was a judge), and the judging was broken down into three main areas, each of which was broken down further into three or four aspects of a piece. From a total of 100 points, each individual aspect was worth about 10 points. The aspects were things like relation to text, part writing skill, instrumentation, creating mood... these things make it a lot easier to quantify a composer's display of skill in each arena.

If we ever get around to having another competition, we ought to place such restrictions on the judges - it would give them a much easier time evaluating each piece on its own. I know that rubric helped me a great deal as a judge.

I have an idea for a competition idea. How about an orchestration contest? We can have a couple periods that composers can enter in: Classical, Romantic, Modern. There will be one piece selected for each catagory and then the site could pick a few objective people to judge the entries. Scores would have to be submitted (as PDF files) as well as a sound recording (preferably with a high quality performance like the GPO). There could even be other awards for the best use of the GPO. In fact, that could be another competition all together: taking a midi file and transforming it into a professionally sounding file with the GPO or other orchestration program (Reason is also very high quality I've been told).

well just a couple of ideas. I think it'd be fun to have an orchestration contest and it also lends itself well to being judged. The winner could receive a performace of his piece (surely someone here is a conductor who could offer to record the winning entries with his/her orchestra--it would be great fun for the orchestra members as well)..

So guys, what do you think?

I propose some pieces:

Classical: Mozart Sonata-Fantasy C-minor
Romantic: Schubert: Grand-Duo Sonata 1st movement (Exposition only--since it's quite long)
20th century: Debussy Prélude: Des feuilles mortes

piano_player18 - There's the possibility I suppose. It could work like a lottery. But the problem is, only the people confident of winning would donate any money, and if it was a requirement to donate in order to partake in the competition, entries would be quite low.

johannhowitzer - Very good idea, we may implement this for the next competition.

neuhausen - I like that idea, it seems to remove a bit of subjectivity. Will also consider it.

piano_player18 - There's the possibility I suppose. It could work like a lottery. But the problem is, only the people confident of winning would donate any money, and if it was a requirement to donate in order to partake in the competition, entries would be quite low.

well... we can vote before the competition if it´s going to be paid... like we could keep doing the competitions without donations, and some other ones we vote... like: "Ok, this new competition is about a piano concerto, blah, blah, blah" how much are people willing to donate for this?... they would say: this month i don´t have any money... or i could contribute with 5 dollars.. somebody else could say 4 dollars, 10 dollars, and at the end we vote for how much we are going to donate for that specific competition... after, the prize would be acceptable.. i mean, i don´t care if i pay 5 dollars and i lose... i would like to win but if i lose the money it was more of a "donation" and that way competitions are going to be more challenging i think..

Hello. I am a new user, so I anticipate that my ideas will carry little or no weight at all - they may well be ignored completely. There are however, as I am sure you are all well aware, a whole assortment of *unfinished* pieces written by incredibly gifted composers that would serve as a fantastically well written and exciting basis on which a competition could potentially be based.

To put that in clearer English, why not have a competition to complete an unfinished work?

THat's an incredible idea! I'll strongly consider doing it after Nick finishes his movie theme competition.

It is a good idea. If it is carried through with and made into an actual competition, how would it work? Would someone write the beginning of a piece and everyone would have to finish the same piece? Would we use a piece already made and not yet finished? Finally, if there is more than 1 piece to finish could there be be different divisions or something like that? Maybe like classical, jazz, romantic, and so forth? Just a couple questions and/or suggestions however you see them.