2025 Halloween Satisfaction Survey

Please fill out the survey to help us organize better competitions in the future!  The survey is anonymous so we won't be able to see who voted for what.  The poll closes on Monday, November 10th, 2025 at 11:59 pm PST.  Thanks for voicing your opinion!

This is really one of the competitions I enjoy the most on YC! Hope more ppl can take this survey so we know how to improve on our next competitions!

Henry

I took it.

1 minute ago, therealAJGS said:

I took it.

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

1 minute ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

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

Happy Halloween... 👻👻👻👻👻

sorry, forgot to press submit!

43 minutes ago, therealAJGS said:

sorry, forgot to press submit!

LoLoL!!

First of all, I have to say that I really enjoyed this competition! It was an intense two weeks—on the one hand, to finish my own composition/arrangement, and on the other hand, to listen to such a diverse range of great musical works. I think all the participants invested a lot of time, effort, and passion to achieve such a result!

I must admit that – puh – reviewing seems to be harder than composing!

We have seen a lot of

• atonality and non-traditional musical structure (to mention some, but not to be exhaustive all "Dima’s National Dance" by @Dima, "From Above, Now Below" by @Thatguy v2.0, "Diptych for Piano Quartet" by @Cosmia, "Aos Si" by @HoYin Cheung, "American Cryptids" by @Micah, "Fumage" by @Justin Gruber, "Clowns" by @sebastian Pafundo, "Woodwind Quintet" by @Maxthemusicenthusiast, "The Mist" by @Kvothe, "A Hollow Theme for Halloween" by @therealAJGS) and – on the other hand –
• more „beautiful“ and „well-behaved“ pieces (for example, "Ghost Town Requiem" by @UncleRed99, "Bagatelle No. 6" by @Omicronrg9 and "Dance from the skeleton ball" by @MK_Piano), which I very enjoyed, too.
• As „balanced“ between this two poles I would consider "Daunting Steps" by @ferrum.wav, "Trio Variations" by @TristanTheTristan and – lol - my own piece.

Therefore, the decision was very hard and due to the subject of the competition, Halloween, the more outlandish pieces were in the better position. The dedications of the badges „spookiest/scariest piece“, „strangest/weirdest/most outlandish piece“ and „biggest thriller“ were – in my opinion – not so easy to distinguish, so that we have one glorious winner in nearly all categories, "From Above, Now Below" by @Thatguy v2.0, my best congratulations.

Special thanks to @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing that funny contest!

What did you think of the official competition reviewing template?

For me, the competition reviewing template was very useful, giving the focus what to review a clear structure. Even if I did not give a textual review according to the eight categories but only a general one, scoring according to the definitions (i.e. between 0 and 10 points) and calculating an average was useful and helped to determine the winner(s) for the different badges.

I could also imagine that in future competitions, the template and the numbers will be used in an official sheet to determine the overall winner. In such a case, however, it would be necessary to formulate more precisely how we should award the points in order to achieve a fair result that can be used for such a calculation. I noticed that some of the reviewers often awarded 10 points to pieces/categories they liked, while I was a bit stingy with this top score (apologies to all participants). I would like to say that such differences in the use of scores between different reviewers, although consistent in their own assessment, could lead to a kind of injustice.

What would you like to see in future competitions?

I think, the most revenue of the competition is getting a lot of review in a short period of time. Therefore, I would like to keep the competition „just for fun“ without monetary awards.

An interesting variant could be to keep the competitors and judges anonymous. Such a rule could be combined with the mandatory use of the template and its usage for the calculation of the winner, as mentioned above. In such a case it would be necessary to require that all participants review all the other entries to achieve comparability and fairness. However, such a strict set of rules could imply that some members would hesitate to participate, thus we could try out that for one competition, but should not apply it to all future ones.

12 minutes ago, Wieland Handke said:

Special thanks to @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing that funny contest!

You're welcome!  I enjoyed it!

14 minutes ago, Wieland Handke said:

I could also imagine that in future competitions, the template and the numbers will be used in an official sheet to determine the overall winner. In such a case, however, it would be necessary to formulate more precisely how we should award the points in order to achieve a fair result that can be used for such a calculation. I noticed that some of the reviewers often awarded 10 points to pieces/categories they liked, while I was a bit stingy with this top score (apologies to all participants). I would like to say that such differences in the use of scores between different reviewers, although consistent in their own assessment, could lead to a kind of injustice.

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.

19 minutes ago, Wieland Handke said:

An interesting variant could be to keep the competitors and judges anonymous. Such a rule could be combined with the mandatory use of the template and its usage for the calculation of the winner, as mentioned above. In such a case it would be necessary to require that all participants review all the other entries to achieve comparability and fairness. However, such a strict set of rules could imply that some members would hesitate to participate, thus we could try out that for one competition, but should not apply it to all future ones.

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 just finished my little vote. I had a fun time, even if I didn't "win," I still feel I gained some experience. Heck, it gave me a passion to make new music and make more music of similar instrumentation. I was happy to see that I was not the only one who did a Piano Quartet with Strings to pair. It was refreshing to hear how different 3 people can make contrasting music with the same constraints. I will reference them in the future when it comes time to do more. 🙂

About the grading or reviewing aspect, I think a simple solution is to keep brackets or divisions for submissions. We saw a complete mix of tonal and post-tonal, amatuer and professionals. It can be hard to grade them all at an equal level when you have to conform yourself to a different standard for each person. I want to be the first to suggest this idea:

I think before the next competition, you should categorize users by division based on an entry poll or application. Like most real festivals, forums or competitions, each user will have to file an application to enter with their work. Some places in the US are now asking for cover letters and resumes to pair. Since the point is to keep it fun and more informal, I suggest making a poll asking for people to help gauge their experience:

"Have you seen your works performed?"
"Have you taken music theory before?"
"How many years have you been writing music?
"Do you have the ability to write sheet music?"
"Will you submit a post-tonal (Without key-center) or tonal (with key-center) work for this event?"
Etc.

Similar to existing competitions, we can categorize people before hand, create divisions and judge more accurately. Some divisions such as the following:

• Amatuer
• Professional
• Post-Tonal
• Tonal

This was my only gripe with the formatting. It felt hard to review everyone to a level standard when the goal-post was never consistent. I do not want to feel like the bad guy for using language or concepts they are not aware of, or risk being redundant if it is clear they have experience. The table used for reviewing was a little vague as it felt more subjective. I do not mind that when rating music, however, it may be nice to specify what you mean by "Originality" or "Textures". Someone may have a different understanding of what those words mean and it will affect their reviews. Defining some of them beforehand will also standardize the ratings. Thoughts? 🤔

Thanks for your vote and for voicing your opinions @MK_Piano!

43 minutes ago, MK_Piano said:

I think before the next competition, you should categorize users by division based on an entry poll or application. Like most real festivals, forums or competitions, each user will have to file an application to enter with their work. Some places in the US are now asking for cover letters and resumes to pair. Since the point is to keep it fun and more informal, I suggest making a poll asking for people to help gauge their experience:

"Have you seen your works performed?"
"Have you taken music theory before?"
"How many years have you been writing music?
"Do you have the ability to write sheet music?"
"Will you submit a post-tonal (Without key-center) or tonal (with key-center) work for this event?"
Etc.

Similar to existing competitions, we can categorize people before hand, create divisions and judge more accurately. Some divisions such as the following:

• Amatuer
• Professional
• Post-Tonal
• Tonal

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.  

51 minutes ago, MK_Piano said:

This was my only gripe with the formatting. It felt hard to review everyone to a level standard when the goal-post was never consistent. I do not want to feel like the bad guy for using language or concepts they are not aware of, or risk being redundant if it is clear they have experience. The table used for reviewing was a little vague as it felt more subjective. I do not mind that when rating music, however, it may be nice to specify what you mean by "Originality" or "Textures". Someone may have a different understanding of what those words mean and it will affect their reviews. Defining some of them beforehand will also standardize the ratings.

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!

23 hours ago, Wieland Handke said:

First of all, I have to say that I really enjoyed this competition! It was an intense two weeks—on the one hand, to finish my own composition/arrangement, and on the other hand, to listen to such a diverse range of great musical works. I think all the participants invested a lot of time, effort, and passion to achieve such a result!

I must admit that – puh – reviewing seems to be harder than composing!

We have seen a lot of

• atonality and non-traditional musical structure (to mention some, but not to be exhaustive "Dima’s National Dance" by @Dima, "From Above, Now Below" by @Thatguy v2.0, "Diptych for Piano Quartet" by @Cosmia, "Aos Si" by @HoYin Cheung, "American Cryptids" by @Micah, "Fumage" by @Justin Gruber) and – on the other hand –
• more „beautiful“ and „well-behaved“ pieces (for example, "Ghost Town Requiem" by @UncleRed99, "Bagatelle No. 6" by @Omicronrg9 and "Dance from the skeleton ball" by @MK_Piano), which I very enjoyed, too.
• As „balanced“ between this two poles I would consider "Daunting Steps" by @ferrum.wav and – lol - my own piece.

Therefore, the decision was very hard and due to the subject of the competition, Halloween, the more outlandish pieces were in the better position. The dedications of the badges „spookiest/scariest piece“, „strangest/weirdest/most outlandish piece“ and „biggest thriller“ were – in my opinion – not so easy to distinguish, so that we have one glorious winner in nearly all categories, "From Above, Now Below" by @Thatguy v2.0, my best congratulations.

Special thanks to @PeterthePapercomPoser for organizing that funny contest!

 

 

What did you think of the official competition reviewing template?

For me, the competition reviewing template was very useful, giving the focus what to review a clear structure. Even if I did not give a textual review according to the eight categories but only a general one, scoring according to the definitions (i.e. between 0 and 10 points) and calculating an average was useful and helped to determine the winner(s) for the different badges.

I could also imagine that in future competitions, the template and the numbers will be used in an official sheet to determine the overall winner. In such a case, however, it would be necessary to formulate more precisely how we should award the points in order to achieve a fair result that can be used for such a calculation. I noticed that some of the reviewers often awarded 10 points to pieces/categories they liked, while I was a bit stingy with this top score (apologies to all participants). I would like to say that such differences in the use of scores between different reviewers, although consistent in their own assessment, could lead to a kind of injustice.

What would you like to see in future competitions?

I think, the most revenue of the competition is getting a lot of review in a short period of time. Therefore, I would like to keep the competition „just for fun“ without monetary awards.

An interesting variant could be to keep the competitors and judges anonymous. Such a rule could be combined with the mandatory use of the template and its usage for the calculation of the winner, as mentioned above. In such a case it would be necessary to require that all participants review all the other entries to achieve comparability and fairness. However, such a strict set of rules could imply that some members would hesitate to participate, thus we could try out that for one competition, but should not apply it to all future ones.

 

You don't like mine... that is depressing. 

1 hour ago, TristanTheTristan said:

You don't like mine... that is depressing.

Oh no! I liked all the pieces very much. Your „Trio Variations” are neither „terrifying“ nor too „well-behaved”; I find them „good balanced.” That's why I placed them in the third category, right next to my own.

(Hahaha, you voted for yourself ...)

On 11/5/2025 at 10:47 PM, MK_Piano said:

Similar to existing competitions, we can categorize people before hand, create divisions and judge more accurately. Some divisions such as the following:

• Amatuer
• Professional
• Post-Tonal
• Tonal

I'm glad most people are favoring the fun part of the competition rather than monetary rewards. I think it's best to keep it that way for now, and your divisions would be good to use as the badge rewards instead of what we did. However, since we wanted it to be a poll instead of actual judging this time (it was thrown together pretty quickly), I like the categories we used as easy fun ways to vote. In hindsight, as I voted, I noticed there wasn't any "most fun" category, which yours clearly would have won to me. @PeterthePapercomPoser pointed it out in our discord, and we should've had that category. These are easy ways to improve managed by experience and feedback. With actual judging, your way is the way to move forward imo. 

More afterthoughts:

I like the poll as an alternative to judging, I think both are equally valid. I'm not a fan of seeing who you vote for, but I know I'm in the minority with that. 

The framework for assigning numbers kind of got out of hand imo, but I'm glad people seemed to have fun with it. It wasn't necessary, but I'm glad it was an aide for people in determining which pieces they liked best. Being up front about WHAT we would be voting for would maybe be better for future poll based competitions. 

@PeterthePapercomPoser @Thatguy v2.0

Thank you for the replies! By no means did I mean to dissuade the structure you implemented. You cannot conform to everybody and no competition is going to be "fair" for every entry. You will have to find a system that is both fair, and not overly strict. I believe my logos was not as clear as I intended in my previous reply. Two things can be true at once and it is refreshing to see many different musicians advocate for a low-pressure means to simply write music; or share existing creations they feel have merit. At the same time, I do not want to take away from the people who are less experienced trying to throw in their works with professional composers. I do not see it fair if they do. 

As you hinted for the next possible event to be a Christmas one, with no limit on ensemble size, would it make sense to lump and judge a symphonic orchestra work to a solo sonata with piano accompaniment? Or a digital work to a sacred-vocal work detailing a hymn? This was the basis of my thinking in my OG reply. I simply wonder if there is a mesh between formal and informal. Here was an alternate take on my idea(s):

Keep the judging by poll, and limit the votes to categories; as you did. With using a table for review, I wanted to suggest another addition to all the info you provided. You added a table showcasing the scoring system (7-7.9 = Average / Standard ). I meant to suggest adding a diagram that defines the words being used: Taste, Originality, Textures, Score Presentation, etc.

• Taste - Your personal score from 1-10
• Score Presentation - How the score is organized / How easy it is to understand the score from 1-10
• Originality - How unique does this score sound from 1-10
• Creativity - How well the submitant made and used a theme from 1-10
• etc.

I thought it to be a good way to avoid confusion of the terms by defining the language you want to use. I do not believe that add-on to take away the fun aspect of this. Thanks again!