Dubstepforum.com

KVR has an awesome One Synth Challenge that the community actively takes part in.
Sure they have a whack of prizes that they give away but this will be to improve your synthesis regardless of the synth in question.

Each week a synth will be voted for by the community and a subsequent week/ 2 weeks? will be allowed for the production of the tune with the voting to follow.

Rules:
- Unless specifically announced before the competition, you must use only one virtual synthesizer for all sounds including percussion. Layering several instances of the synth is allowed.

- Submissions uploaded to SoundCloud only. Submissions must be downloadable and shared to the current One-Synth-Challenge group.

- Submissions must be announced in the submissions forum thread and include a brief report how it was made:
The DAW/host, all FX used, and how many instances of the synth and FX was used. It is also recommended, but not mandatory.

- Effects (external plugins):
- Any type of modulation effect like chorus, phaser, flanger etc is not allowed.
However, if another type of effect (like delay or reverb for example) has modulation as a secondary effect,
it can be used, but the modulation usage must be minimal.
- Effects that pitch the sound are not allowed.
- Any effect that transform the sounds to make them unrecognizable as being from the synth is not allowed.
- DAW effects are allowed, as are 3rd party effects if they are freeware and easily available.
- Any kind of effect already IN the synth can of course be used freely.

- No external samples or live sounds like voice, guitar etc allowed. However, for convenience or CPU saving,
synth bouncing/sampling are allowed but only where the EXACT same result could have been achieved using
the original synth. This means that for example pitching and reversing is not allowed. Sampling for example
a bass drum in order to get a consistent sound is not allowed either. Sampled or bounced audio must not be
edited in any way. Samplers used must be host samplers or freeware and easily available.

- Commercial 3rd party synth patches/soundbanks are not permitted

- OSC might request project files at any time. Failure to produce it upon request will lead to disqualification.
(intellectual property respected with file used for examination only and destroyed immediately afterwards)

- Your entry must be composed specifically for this contest

- Cover tracks are not permitted.

- Collaborations are allowed.

- Max 1 submission per entrant (person or team)

- No track length limit

Challenge No.1 will be Firebird 2 from Tone 2.

http://www.tone2.com/html/firebird_vsti ... zer_1.html



PC only unfortunately but all Mac submissions welcomed if you are using a bridge of sorts.

Edit - Challenge will run from Monday 7th - Monday 21.

Nice! I might have a little play about with this tonight.

Been meaning to make an entire tune using sounds from my Moog actually... this might be good practise.

Can we get some numbers in here of people interested in competing?

sounds interesting, I'd give it a try!

Electric_Head wrote:Can we get some numbers in here of people interested in competing?

Try 0.

A little too restrictive for my taste, but carry on

I feared it was going to be too restrictive.
But that is the nature of this challenge.

It's not necessarily a tune contest but more a synthesis challenge.

Have you never used a single synth to produce a track nowaysj?

Electric_Head wrote:Have you never used a single synth to produce a track nowaysj?

I've used synths to produce all of my sounds, as a basis, yeah, but never without further modification (and never all the same synth ). I've worked as a sound designer, 90% synthesized, 10% recorded sounds, but most synthesized sounds end up going through some kind of sampling, pitching, something that would fall foul of these rules.

I don't mind a limited synth as well, as long as you can do things later in a sampler (or other audio modulators), but firebird... with no sampling... think this challenge is for someone else.

Have fun though, it does sound like fun, and will undoubtedly be challenging and rewarding for those who participate.

I wish you all the best, and can't wait to hear the entries.

Should I relax the rules?

Yeah, I would think so - relax or tighten them up even more - like no external fx (no internal daw fx outside of the synth, -some daws like logic have everything), no bouncing and a limited number of tracks.

Nice idea still.

I like the idea of doing a whole song out of just a short sample/loop - but it depends on having the 'sence' to see where the freedom is in doing that. Just saying.

These are the same rules that are used on the KVR one synth challenge.
It has it's merits.
But I can understand that folks may well be less inclined to want to focus too much on synthesis and more on song creation.

Ah, ok safe.

We should definitely do some sort of comp tho.

Well, I think KVR has a significantly larger user base, dsf production not so much. So if .2% of the KVR community participates, they could have hundreds of participants, but if .2% of dsf/p participates... you'll have maybe a couple of dudes wiggling the knobs of firebird.

Whatev's, not trying to neg out on this laudable challenge, just trying to represent the potential pitfalls of conducting such a limited challenge on dsf/p. Carry on, and lets hear those tracks.

Fully agree with you.
Hence my statements above.
I honestly believe it may well be to focused for DSF.
And there's no blaming the community because it is geared towards production of completed tracks.

Suggestions?

I would enter something but Firebird makes me want to throw up.

Honestly, a part of the problem for me is firebird. I've only used it a couple of times after it became freeware. I don't know... just seemed limited.

I've only done one session with this synth, and it is a bit like getting handed some alien ufo and told to fly the thing back to the Pleiades, but it seems to inspire very weird experimentation:



This is freeware as far as I know now. The version I installed, I don't think was the cm version... lemme check on this. This is just a suggestion.

This is where I got Aalto as freeware. Pretty deep synth in my limited experience with it.

http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2013/03 ... solo-free/

I've only done one session with this synth, and it is a bit like getting handed some alien ufo and told to fly the thing back to the Pleiades, but it seems to inspire very weird experimentation:

Good sell