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Who's in?

So this discussion started percolating a little while ago and here we are:

the first ever DSF VSTi Contest Challenge.

In a nutshell, you are to make a song using only the provided VSTi, drum machine + breakbeat samples (breakbeat courtesy of Sackley) and the provided toolkit of DSP effects (the Kjaerhus Classic series.) You can also record your own vocals as long as they're used as traditional vocals, i.e. sung, rapped, or spoken content (no beatboxing or humming basslines )

The purpose is to A) punish the VSTi and make it do naughty things, and B) demonstrate that tools do not equal talent - and that sometimes limitations can be liberating and encourage you to try things you might not ordinarily do with your gear, not to mention showing people with fancy setups that there's more to a good song than expensive plugs. The featured freeware VSTi for this round will be TAL ELEK7RO, a very versatile and powerful synth with lots of potential. The featured drum machine kit is the Analog Impact 1, a "boutique" drum machine that sounds classic but still has its own unique character. And finally, our very own Sackley has provided a set of four samples of the same break (played live by him) with 3 versions having different mic tracks and the 4th being a composite mix.

Ready? Lets get this started!

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The 3 Rules

1) Songs can only be made from the featured VSTi, and the provided drum machine kit and breakbeat sample (percussion can be synthesized from the VSTi as well.) You may also record your own vocal content provided it's sung or spoken and not you making synth, bass, beatbox sounds. If a vocal sample is ID'd* as coming from existing media such as film, music, television, the submission will be disqualified.

2) The aforementioned provided sounds can be processed only using the provided DSP vst plug-ins. You can use your sampler to capture, stretch, re-pitch, reverse, or chop the samples, but using native DAW/sampler processing to do anything like bandpassing, phasing, flanging, chorusing, gating, compressing, reverb, delay, etc. is not allowed*.

3) Song can be any style/genre; Song run time can be no more than 4 minutes (entries running over will not be included, period); two weeks deadline with 1 week of voting.

* Winner must be able to provide patch/screenshot/some sort of basic documentation for how sound were made if requested.

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Download the Contest Pack here:

file taken down

Contains:
the Analog Impact 1 drumkit,
Sackley's breakbeat,
the Kjaerhus Classic series installer .exe,
and a direct link to the TAL ELEK7RO page so you can choose either the 32 bit PC, 64 bit PC, or Mac version as needed.


Deadline for contest submissions is MIDNIGHT Pacific Standard Time (7 PM GMT) on August 18th.

When you're ready to submit your song, please upload to a share site (sendspace, rapidshare, divshare, etc) and PM me the link with your name and the name of the track.

Do not disclose your identity until voting is through, please.

I like the looks of this y'all, though i think the contest organizers should coordinate between the sample pack competitions as well. keepin busy on DSF!

Thanks Sharmaji.

Haack (currently overseeing organization of the DSF Samplepack contests) knows about this, plus we're in downtime between sample contests (#25 is just ending voting now and #26 hasn't been announced.) I will definitely try to make sure that they continue to be timed this way too so we don't overlap production/voting periods at all.

looks really nice, coun't me in

what if we use hardware samplers... nothing like analog clipping

For what it's worth, the kjaerhus (spelling, undoubtedly) plugins install to C:\Program Files\VstPlugins

Don't ask me why, mine is only to do or die.

deadly habit wrote:what if we use hardware samplers... nothing like analog clipping

My opinion: as long as its' kosher with rule #2 - go for it. I know that some might construe this as going outside the designated limits of signal processing, but if you can show us how you did it (in this case turn the knob to 10) then it's fair game IMHO. Not to mention - I'm sure y'all are gonna find other ways to work within the rules to find other loopholes.

Besides, you can get pretty close to (maybe even better than) analog clip with certain combos of the Kjaerhus plugs.

re: installer putting plugs in random location - that's weird. They all begin with "Classic," like "Classic Delay," "Classic Auto-Filter," "Classic EQ," etc.

Very nice, looking solid Alpha

to be clear: we can use a drumsampler like Battery or drumracks to play the drums right?

nowaysj wrote:For what it's worth, the kjaerhus (spelling, undoubtedly) plugins install to C:\Program Files\VstPlugins

Don't ask me why, mine is only to do or die.

Mine put it in C:\Program Files\VST

But copying to correct folder works for me.

Love these analog impact samples. Threw some samples into the step and have a dope beat in 2.3 seconds. Nice.

surefya wrote:Very nice, looking solid Alpha

to be clear: we can use a drumsampler like Battery or drumracks to play the drums right?

Cheers, thanks man.

You can use a drumsampler for sequencing/sample-playing as long as it's sticking to #2 above. You cannot use its FX capabilities - only for capture, stretch, re-pitch, reverse, or choppage.

And I'm glad to hear the Analog Impact 1 is to your liking, Nowaysj. I too just loaded up everything and had a groovy little number writing itself in less than 5 minutes.

This is gonna be fun and produce some very interesting results I think.

I'm well up for this, though I daresay I have a lot on my plate at the moment so if I don't get round to finishing it I wouldn't be surprised. I barely know how to use my regular synths let alone learning a whole set of new ones... word.

going to have a bash now

alphacat wrote:Thanks Sharmaji.

Haack (currently overseeing organization of the DSF Samplepack contests) knows about this, plus we're in downtime between sample contests (#25 is just ending voting now and #26 hasn't been announced.) I will definitely try to make sure that they continue to be timed this way too so we don't overlap production/voting periods at all.

Yhes man, you know my address

Good things, keep in touch.

Edit:

Should see the next sample pack coming end of this month.

i'm down, this seems cool.
one question though:
can we use native eq's that are included in the daw's channel strip?

I'd love to participate, but Tal Elec7ro does nothing but bad things on my logic setup - if I'm playing a track and try to use it at the same time, it tends to be rather unresponsive, and seems very buggy. Have tried both the vst and the au component, both similar problems

EDIT: Just realized this competition isn't very mac-friendly at all, with some of the pack not usable on mac at all (.exe files)

shaneynclan wrote:i'm down, this seems cool.
one question though:
can we use native eq's that are included in the daw's channel strip?

Nope, no daw based processing. Only the kjaerhus plugs to do ALL of your processing.

Give this a go, sounds awesome, probably wont finish it though, no time

Okie stupid question... am I allowed to use my drum machine for these drum samples??

shaneynclan wrote:i'm down, this seems cool.
one question though:
can we use native eq's that are included in the daw's channel strip?

If you can bypass the EQ's and use the Kjaerhus EQ instead, that would be preferable. If this is somehow impossible in your DAW then I'm willing to overlook it in favor of being as inclusive as possible though. What DAW you usin'?

amphibian wrote:I'd love to participate, but Tal Elec7ro does nothing but bad things on my logic setup - if I'm playing a track and try to use it at the same time, it tends to be rather unresponsive, and seems very buggy. Have tried both the vst and the au component, both similar problems

EDIT: Just realized this competition isn't very mac-friendly at all, with some of the pack not usable on mac at all (.exe files)

Well... In the larger context - not just this contest - yes, VST development in general has favored PC only because of the circumstances of code availability to 3rd parties [as regards Microsoft and Apple...]

Wikipedia wrote:VST plugin standard

The VST plugin standard is the audio plugin standard created by Steinberg to allow any third party developers to create VST plugins for use within VST host applications. VST requires separate installations for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

The majority of VST plugins are available for Windows due to both Apple's proprietary Audio Unit software for OS X and the lack of information and patent encumbrances that make development difficult for Linux platforms

The good news is, though, that you're not totally without options. I'm happy to provide the individual .dll files - and there are a few options for VST-adapting software for Mac. See this post for more about that. But just to reiterate gently, the world of freeware VST's is definitely slanted towards PC users. Luckily you plucky MacHeads are resourceful though, right?

And finally, as far as bugginess: older, dodgier systems have been known to choke a little bit under ELEK7RO's cpu load; make sure you have the newest version first (released last month.) If it's still acting bitchy, perhaps running it alone in a separate session and rendering results to import back into the main project can be a viable workaround (listen to me - I sound like I'm actually doing my day job here too. )

mexter dorgan wrote:Okie stupid question... am I allowed to use my drum machine for these drum samples??

Rather than getting all technical on ye, what drum machine are you talking about? If it's something like an MPC and you're loading samples to play on the drum machine, then yes (be sure to read Rule #2 above though.)

If you mean using a drum machine hard/software unit's own sounds, then no.

If you're lucky enough to own an Analog Impact 1, then... shit, I can't think of anything sarcastic enough to say.