Summer 2026 Competition Poll

Multiple users have inquired about the next competition, so that warrants a new Summer 2026 Competition Poll!

The poll will close on Wednesday, July 22nd at 11:59 pm PST.

Here are the givens that each competition will maintain:

• The duration of each piece should once again be between 3 - 7 minutes.

• Reviewing the entries will once again be spearheaded by the members/competitors at large. You are free to use the Official Competition Reviewing Template or you can review the entries in any way you see fit or create a template of your own making!

• There will be tiered "Ardent Reviewer" badges given out for this event:

  • Featherweight Reviewer - for reviewing 33% of the entries

  • Welterweight Reviewer - for reviewing 66% of the entries

  • Heavyweight Reviewer - for reviewing 100% of the entries

• We are instituting a policy of not allowing any AI generated works in the competition. Because of this you will be required to detail how you created your piece and submit a PDF score or midi file for the perusal of the staff and members at large.

• The musical entries to the competition are final once submitted. This is for the sake of consistency of reviewing (so that each reviewer reviews the same piece of music without any changes).

However, there are a few things we'd like the members to help us determine (in the poll):

1) What should the competition be about?

1. To write background music for one of @chopin 's Retry Bro's YouTube videos. Explanation: @chopin has a new YouTube channel! It's called Retry Bros. and consists of him playing Super Mario Maker levels and coming up with entertaining narration from Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, and other assorted characters. There's also a musical element. So far, Mike has come up with some clever lyrics and used AI to make realistic sounding songs that go along with the video. Now, where you would come in is that you'd be writing background music for one of @chopin 's new videos!

2. To write some kind of autobiographical piece with a paragraph describing how the music portrays the autobiographical material. This one is @UncleRed99 's suggestion. The idea is to "write a piece that simply tells a story about your life, and something meaningful within it. Utilize complex elements to express emotion, tension, or any other desired emotional or mentally relatable expression. Provide a brief summary describing the root of the story being told."

3. @Thatguy v2.0 has bestowed his theme proposal to me. I had another idea for an "Excerpt Exchange". Basically composers entering the competition would send the staff an unfinished excerpt of their music for the ensemble that we'll be writing for in this competition (we'll find out what ensemble from the member voting to question no.2 below). By sending your unfinished excerpt you bestow upon others the right to work on and finish your composition. The composers will be given a random excerpt from a random composer without being told who composed it. Each composer will be tasked with making the best piece they can and finishing it to the best of their ability. The minimum length of the excerpt should be 8 measures.

4. @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu has also bestowed his theme proposal to me so I decided to include another theme in the options: "Sound Mimesis - Acoustic Anatomy". The idea is to use the instruments at your disposal to mimic sounds in your natural environment (although the sounds don't technically have to be created by nature - they could definitely be artificial sounds, but should be mimicked by acoustic instruments). As an example watch this Talking Piano YT Video. Or watch this flute mimicking bird calls.

5. @Omicronrg9 has also bestowed his theme proposal to me. This theme would be called "A Plenty of Persichetti Prompts". The composers would be given a choice to compose music based on prompt(s) inspired by exercises from Vincent Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony". There would be 5 prompts inspired by Persichetti's exercises (but not directly taken from the book) that the composers could use to inspire their music. These prompts would be based around various music theory ideas. I've amassed a document listing various such ideas that could be used in this competition: Musical Composition Prompts.

6. @MK_Piano has proposed the theme - "From Nothing, to Something."
   

   What greater challenge of a composer than to take nothing and turn it into something! Your goal is to take the text from Paul Verlaine’s summer poem “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été,” (So, on a bright summer day it shall be) and turn it into a piece! This poem is short, but filled with evoking images of what summer can feel like. Attached is the poem in English:

   So, on a bright summer day it shall be:

   The great sun, my partner in joy,

   Shall make, amid the satin and the silk,

   Your dear beauty lovelier still;

   The sky, all blue, like a tall canopy,

   Shall quiver sumptuously in the long folds

   Above our two happy brows, grown pale

   With pleasure and expectancy;

   And when evening comes, the breeze shall be soft

   And play caressingly about your veils,

   And the peaceful stars looking down

   Shall smile benevolently on man and wife.

   The poem in French and English

7. @Tónskáld has also bestowed his theme proposal to me. Another idea I had would be called "An Invitation to Dance". The composers would be tasked with writing music in the style of a dance in a modern style, that could actually be danced to and exhibited all the proper characteristics of said dance. The composers could choose from a list of dances including but not limited to the following: Pavane, Galliarde, Tarantella, Saltarello, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Minuet, Bourree, Polonaise, Chaconne, Gavotte, Waltz, Mazurka, Tango, Samba, Mambo, Merengue, Rumba, Paso Doble, Cha-Cha-Cha. Note that the composer would be tasked with composing only one of these dances rather than a whole set (such as a Baroque Dance Suite). It would also be expected that the music be "dance-like" meaning that it's not just an instrumental derivation of one of these dances that aren't meant to be danced to.

8. My own idea is for the members to write M&M&M's - Mock-ups, Mash-ups and Medleys. The idea is for the members to take 2 or more preexisting themes from different genres of music and to make mash-ups and medleys with them. The staff and/or members would vote about what pieces/songs to include in the following list of genres and the composers would then choose 2 or more pieces from the list to combine in a medley or mash-up (or both!):

   1. A single piece of Film Music

   2. A single piece of Video-Game Music

   3. A single piece of Early or Ancient Music

   4. A single piece of Classical Music (Baroque, Classical or Romantic)

   5. A single piece of Pop, Rock or Jazz Music

   6. A single piece of Rap or Hip-Hop Music

   7. A single piece of Anime Music

   8. A single piece of Modern/Avant-Garde Music

   9. A single piece of World Music

2) What kind of ensemble should the competitors be free to choose to write for?

1. Solo piano/keyboard or solo polyphonic instrument (such as guitar, harp or accordeon)

2. One monophonic instrument accompanied by one polyphonic instrument

3. Choice of mixed trio/quartet/quintet of individual instruments

4. Other mixed ensemble of more than 5 individual instruments not exceeding 10

5. Chamber orchestra (string orchestra)

6. Full orchestra

3) How many months should the competition span? (1 month, 2 months or 3 months)

Happy voting and let us know what you're happy about or what could be changed about the upcoming competition!

just a bunch of questions, but first let me start off with my own disclaimer

Right now, I am doing another time consuming competition for music for the next two months so I may not be able to participate however though I love this community and it always gives good feedback so I may have some loopholes I could use to allow me to still participate

quite honestly, it would be a lot to have three commissioned music right on top of each other (two from the competition I previously had said about plus this one with one more) [and commission is just what I mean by a piece of music that is called for by a competition given its nature]

OK, my first real question is am I allowed to submit previously written music by somehow and by some miracle the voted prompt turns out to fit a older piece I have not submitted for a competition even if I change the instrumentation a bit to make it fit

if we do the large mixed ensemble option, the one consisting of 5 to 10 instruments let me just first clear that I do have my own back up plan just in case if this idea is rejected, but is it plausible I could write for a possible 10 person front ensemble (the thing about percussion is that you could have one person with one part pick up two instruments and also some auxiliary percussion such as drum set and rack consists of many things as a combo

so just wondering if I’ll be able to do that given my last entry to a competition that use a similar approach kind of gave some controversy it’s very much by tradition that some of these instruments are mounted on upon each other

"Contemporary Composers Sector" ? ...........This Category tends to be in the Minority, as opposed to the Majority of

🪦DEAD Composers.

Top 10 Modern Film Composers

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by interlect

18 minutes ago, Fruit hunter said:

just a bunch of questions, but first let me start off with my own disclaimer

Right now, I am doing another time consuming competition for music for the next two months so I may not be able to participate however though I love this community and it always gives good feedback so I may have some loopholes I could use to allow me to still participate

quite honestly, it would be a lot to have three commissioned music right on top of each other (two from the competition I previously had said about plus this one with one more) [and commission is just what I mean by a piece of music that is called for by a competition given its nature]

OK, my first real question is am I allowed to submit previously written music by somehow and by some miracle the voted prompt turns out to fit a older piece I have not submitted for a competition even if I change the instrumentation a bit to make it fit

if we do the large mixed ensemble option, the one consisting of 5 to 10 instruments let me just first clear that I do have my own back up plan just in case if this idea is rejected, but is it plausible I could write for a possible 10 person front ensemble (the thing about percussion is that you could have one person with one part pick up two instruments and also some auxiliary percussion such as drum set and rack consists of many things as a combo

so just wondering if I’ll be able to do that given my last entry to a competition that use a similar approach kind of gave some controversy it’s very much by tradition that some of these instruments are mounted on upon each other

I will let Peter reply officially to this. In the meantime, from what the sentiment was last time regarding percussion ensembles:

1. Ensemble size starts with the amount of persons and performers. NOT instruments.
2. Individuals can swap instruments.

5-10 instruments can also mean 5-10 persons. However, 5 percussionists can play 2-3 instruments depending on the part.

This said, in percussion ensemble, you would not have 15 staves to show all instruments played. Instead, 5 staves (in this example) and use written instructions to showcase the performer changing instruments (see below):

You use one stave to mark one performer, however, write in the part when they change instruments. So, for your previous submission, you would need to find away to only use 5-10 staves for 5-10 persons and not instruments.

Whether or not previous submissions are okay? That is for Peter to answer.

54 minutes ago, Fruit hunter said:

OK, my first real question is am I allowed to submit previously written music by somehow and by some miracle the voted prompt turns out to fit a older piece I have not submitted for a competition even if I change the instrumentation a bit to make it fit

Yes, in previous competitions, when people already had a piece pre-composed WAAAY ahead of time (like years) that fit the instrumentation and other requirements for the competition, they were able to submit it. However, such entries were obvious to the judges and it didn't predispose those entries to being judged favorably as they didn't fit the theme of the competition as nicely. But that doesn't and shouldn't keep the contestants from trying if they wish to do so.

58 minutes ago, Fruit hunter said:

if we do the large mixed ensemble option, the one consisting of 5 to 10 instruments let me just first clear that I do have my own back up plan just in case if this idea is rejected, but is it plausible I could write for a possible 10 person front ensemble (the thing about percussion is that you could have one person with one part pick up two instruments and also some auxiliary percussion such as drum set and rack consists of many things as a combo

To concur with what @MK_Piano mentioned above, I do think we will from now on count the ensemble size by the number of performers/players not instruments. That can include just about any sound that a human being and their available tools at hand is capable of producing (although this can get pretty involved if you care to do so).

Also there's a very easy way to get Musescore to only display staves that have events in them (if multiple instruments are played at once like in the case of an involved percussion rack or something).

thanks for all the replies as again I think going by ensemble size is much better. This will also prevent people from pulling a fast one with making “string orchestra”stuff. (a moment, including me that I’m not proud of.). But basically taking something that is meant for five instruments in treating it using patches for a section.