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Thanks to all the participants who submitted music to the competition - the recipients of "The Participant Award"! Click on the links of each entry to read all the reviews for that entry: Entry A by @Ricardo A J Ferrari Entry B - 'Fabula' by @rsn Entry C - 'Three Sententiae for Piccolo & Tuba' by @luderart Entry D - 'Chrysanthemum' by @BAllen Entry E - 'Not Always to the Swift' by @Studio_H Entry F - 'When Tortoise and Hare meet, tell tales, and play tunes' by @semotivo Entry G by @Tedd Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy Entry I by @Mark Dal Porto Entry J by @Noah Brode Entry K by @ComposaBoi For winning the Themes/Melodies category with a score of 9.23, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Tune Smith" badge! For winning the Harmony/Chords/Textures category with a score of 9.38, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Ingenious Harmonizer" badge! For winning the Form/Development/Structure category with a score of 9.75, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Musical Architect" badge! For winning the Originality/Creativity category with a score of 9.50, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Musical Explorer" badge! For winning the Score Presentation category with a score of 9.63, Entry D - 'Chrysanthemum' by @BAllen receives the "Immaculate Engraver" badge! For winning the Instrumentation/Orchestration category with a score of 9.75, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Outstanding Orchestrator" badge! For winning the Execution of Given Challenge category with a score of 10.00, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Theme Winner" badge! For winning the Taste category with a score of 9.75, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Impeccable Taste" badge! For winning 1st place in the popular voting polls, with 32 points, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "1st Place Popular Vote" badge! For winning 2nd place in the popular voting polls, with 14 points, Entry K by @ComposaBoi receives the "2nd Place Popular Vote" badge! For winning the 3rd place in the popular voting polls, with 9 points, Entry G by @Tedd receives the "3rd Place Popular Vote" badge! For winning the "Favorite Tortoise" popular voting poll, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "Favorite Tortoise Award" badge! For winning the "Favorite Hare" popular voting poll, Entry G by @Tedd receives the "Favorite Hare Award" badge! And now, ::drumroll:: for the official winners of "The Tortoise and the Hare" Instrumental Music Composition Competition: For winning 1st place, with a score of 9.61, Entry H by @WowBroThatWasReallyEdgy receives the "1st Place" badge and the $100 USD prize! For winning 2nd place, with a score of 8.53, Entry J by @Noah Brode receives the "2nd Place" badge and the $60 USD prize! For winning 3rd place, with a score of 8.51, Entry I by @Mark Dal Porto receives the "3rd Place" badge and the $40 USD prize! Congratulations to all the winners! And thank you to the foxes @Thatguy v2.0, @PeterthePapercomPoser, @Tónskáld, and @chopin for judging the competition! They will be the recipients of "The Fox Award" badge! A special thanks goes out to @Thatguy v2.0 and @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing the competition! They will receive the "Community Organizer" badge! And an extra special thanks goes out to @Thatguy v2.0 for financing the competition! He will receive the "Patron Award" badge! Here are all the reviews by fox: Thatguy v.2.0 , PeterthePapercomPoser, Tónskáld, chopin. To check out the spreadsheets where each fox kept track of their scores, go here: Thatguy v.2.0, PeterthePapercomPoser, Tónskáld, chopin. To check out the final results spreadsheet where all the scores were calculated, go here: Results Spreadsheet We encourage all the participants to now submit their entries under their name for further feedback from the community! To listen to all the submissions go here:

Wow, I am floored! Thanks to the judges for their hard work in reviewing all of the pieces in such detail — that's no easy feat — and congratulations to the other winners and all of the other entrants for their works. This is one of the most successful competitions I've seen on this site (and I've been on-and-off here for like 9 years or something 😅). This prompt really inspired me, and now I'm hoping to engage a local woodwind quintet to have my piece performed live. Who knows, maybe I'll adapt a few more fables along the way. Thanks again and congratulations to all!

The H dude broke it. Here's a brief of my personal thoughts nobody asked me for, I'm sure I double checked. They might lack explanation and proper redaction BTW but I didn't have so much time to write (adding clarifications when really needed): • A: Jazzy, kinda cool, but doesn't really direct me anywhere. but the melody is not bad at all. Lack of dynamics? Works good, but last measures seem less careful than the rest of the piece. • B: Okay, not my style that's for sure. I don't like the scoring nor that you must predispose me to listen whom is whom but that is part of the contest so that's just personal opinion about speeches accompanying music. There're some notes REALLY out of the pentagram and you have those silences issue (here I'm talking about a scoring issue I had in the past that I believe it can be still seen in my Noc1). In other words, the work give me the feel that it hasn't been carefully composed. It lasts 5 mins, but I don't see this as a race, it feels too random. • C; I don't like it much. I understand they're just phrases, I do see a tortoise & a hare, and objectively speaking they don't sound bad, but it didn't convince me, sorry. • D; Unless you're predisposed to listen what the text says, imo you will not listen anything resembling it. Also imo, the point of instruments is that apart from being capable of making sounds like other objects could, they can produce interesting timbres. There are some good-sounding bits, but I do not see any race going on! Marimba appears to be faster than clarinet. It's not even composed for the competition if I didn't misread. • E: The only I had time to listen before. I thought it was kinda okay it does say something more than B&D. Didn't read the speech (and I won't read it, I don't want to be predisposed to anything). Harmony is kinda repetitive and it's either 2 tortoises or 2 hares. I don't really see two different animals here. They emit the same sound! 9 mins of race that could have been compressed in 2-3, there's not much development. Yes I see some racing signs but that's all. • F: Okay the hare is kinda jazzy too I guess. The scoring is meh, but the articulation is very detailed in the clarinet. However, a detail: there's a harp but no harp pedal indications nor anything like that. Those tempo indications should be better notated imo. I believe the writing is careless. Still I am 2:30 and this piece has told me lotta things. But dear piece, you have lost your appeal imo, letting yourself go with the topic in mind and forgetting about the music being cohesive and even coherent with itself (perhaps it needs more listenings) It's quite a mess of a score, even more than my first sonata or perhaps not that much who knows. The "Tortoise shows off" part is written in a kind of messy way. The ending was not very satisfying to me and I didn't felt like there was a racing going on but perhaps in the last bits. • G: The drumset strikes, yesss. It's good, cannot complain. And I get we are getting the tortoise steps. Okay I think this is simple (melodically) but goes straight to the point. And represents fairly well what's supposed to happen. GG. • H: Another clarinet really? It's more popular than I thought definitely! Curious, the steps are represented more or less the same way than in G but in Bb instead of Bb-. Bah, the best one by far. Congratulations whoever made this. Less than 5 mins told me much more than the combined A-E. That is how it should work. I listen to it, understand it and even want some explanation which I DON'T NEED to understand the piece. • I: Okay it seems bangers started in G. This one seems a little less meaningful than the prior one but definitely good, definitely a finalist imo. (Here I was running out of time sorry 😞) • J: It has very good moments, but I don't feel the race that much. Still it is in the upper-half of the pieces I've listened to today. • K: This is the last one (but do not tell me what an aciacc. represents, make it represent it). I feel it slightly better than J and as meaningful as I. Good use of material, I understand what happens without reading whatever is written. The hare motif though, where have I heard it before, it's super catchy? Better played than I imo. Finalists: H>K>I>G>J what a five bangers. Kudos to the drumset guy. Seems that we agreed on the 1st hehe. Thank y'all, organizers and composers, it was good to check all those pieces in a row. Kind regards!

Congrats to all the winners! Lots of fantastic entries, thanks all for being a part of this

Constructive criticism is warmly appreciated

A friend showed me an AI image generator. I set it to "Dark Fantasy" and it presented me with what I thought looked like a Dark Souls boss. So I composed a theme loop to fit her non-existent boss battle. Let me know what you think, and happy Halloween!

Yes, credit where credit is due. A shoutout to my fellow judges, @chopin, @Thatguy v2.0, @PeterthePapercomPoser for their tireless efforts in brainstorming, promotion, outreach, and (of course) judging the competition! Kudos to all those who participated. It's never easy to submit your compositions for critical evaluation—takes an obscene amount of courage to do that—and it's just as hard to squeeze time in to a busy schedule to make room for fun-but-not-altogether-important side projects like this competition. I was very encouraged and rather humbled by the overall caliber of these works. Here's to hoping future competitions are just as high quality! And, naturally, a huge thanks to @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing and managing this competition. We all owe him a massive debt of gratitude! A hearty congratulations to all who participated but especially to our winners! Keep up the fine work, fellow composers! Sincerely, Simon Cowell Tónskáld