Competition planning/suggestions thread

I'm a tad confused about your proposal, Monkeysinfezzes: is the idea for people to write by hand and not have the opportunity to hear their music as it is written down (a la Finale/Sibelius etc.), or is it that you believe the mechanical process of notating by hand carries with it some kind of merit?

What I'm saying is that the only way the judges could judge the work is by studying it through a PDF file of the scanned, handwritten composition. And I'd go for both points you just laid out, Mike

OK, well first and foremost, how do we know they haven't input it into a notation package beforehand and then copied it out by hand? To me, that point alone renders the whole exercise futile.

I just thought about that

Originally Posted by Monkeysinfezzes

I just thought about that

My God thats a novel idea! Seriously though the fact that I am posting innane posts demands we need some sort of competition which hopefully doesn't fizzle out like the symphonic one.

I suggest something ambitious but not SO ambitious that everybody who says yay at the beginning ends up saying nay, ironically, at the end. (Excuse my humour (yes that was it))

Perhaps some form of tone poem? Rhapsody or such-like? I would say fully-orchestral but I'm worried it might be poo-pooed.

Anonymous entries, 100% unposted work, voting thread (rather then judges) though perhaps a minimum post should be set up before people can vote so there's no I'm joining just to post malarky. No assistance in teaching, maybe a 3-4 month deadline?

Yeah this is just an idea see if there is any interest.

I second the idea of a rhapsody; I know that CreationArtist is doing something like that, but maybe there should be a "more official" one. And I bet you would get more people to do it if you said "Make a rhapsody" and that was close to about it. No guidelines on instrumentation, length, etc. Just require a midi/score/etc. and I think that it would do good.

Or another idea would to have a painting by somebody (Van Gogh, please, lol) and then just base a composition off that painting. And then maybe the composer would have to give a little blurb why they did what they did in the piece. I guess you could do that with anything, really.

Or another idea would to have a painting by somebody (Van Gogh, please, lol) and then just base a composition off that painting. And then maybe the composer would have to give a little blurb why they did what they did in the piece. I guess you could do that with anything, really.

I like that idea!

I've been begging to have a concert band piece competition.
It appears that will never happen.

I think we're all suffering from a bit of "competition fatigue" in that the last one didn't exactly go swimmingly.

However, if people begin pooling ideas and discuss what they would like to happen, we will eventually create a poll and, in due course, launch the next competition.

Could we try and have something (dunno what) that'll keep people in the competition? In the last one we went from about 20 participants to 3 entries. How about something decidedly less ambitious than a symphony?