Compos — music competitions in the tracker scene

A compo is a competition with a deadline, a rule set and a vote; in the 1990s PC scene they ran on IRC, by e-mail and at parties, and they were the main way a tracker got quick, public feedback. The one this wiki has full sources for is the 20-minute-chip-compo.

The format, in tracker terms#

• Constraints are the brief. The 20mc's rules were a chiptune definition: ≤ 20 KB uncompressed, ≤ 4 channels, the week's sample pack (plus, at first, two own samples), MOD/XM/S3M only, 20 minutes plus 10 to transfer (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo). Blackwolf's Olympic parody keeps the same skeleton — hand out the sample pack at the opening, "use the trackers provided and the samples provided", play the results to an audience, judges vote (source: s-tw065-tracking-as-an-olympic-sport).
• Shared, detuned sample packs stop pre-made entries: AmusiC detuned the pack samples "to avoid ready made patterns" (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo) — so a compo entry begins with tuning and instrument-design under time pressure; see chip-samples.
• Voting evolved from ranked lists with obligatory voter roll-calls to a 0–9 grade per entry averaged over voters, self-votes allowed, machine-parsed forms (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo).
• Distribution: each round packed as 20mc_xxx.zip on ftp.cdrom.com, thanks to Snowman of hornet (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo).

Party compos: Assembly '95#

The big parties ran the other kind of compo — pre-selected entries played to the hall. necros's review of the Assembly '95 music shows the machinery: a multichannel competition won by skaven's "Catch that Goblin" (Yolk's "Temple of the Sun" 7th; Zodiak's "Respirator", which Necros rated higher than the winner, "didn't even make it to the final 15-song cut"), a four-channel competition (Cube's "Illumination" 2nd, Lizardking's "Crayfish Party" 3rd), a jury cut before the "big screen", and a rule against extended samples that disqualified the-zapper's "Distance" (source: s-tw024-in-review-asm95). trixter in November 1995: the four-channel compos still held at Assembly and The Party "require more skill" than the 20-minute chip compo, "bare-metal" tracking of the other sort (source: s-tw033-4channel-lives-on).

Party compos and contests in the interviews (1995–97)#

• NAID 1995 (the first North American International Demo competition), from two participants: every entry was played (about 65 songs, some 7½ hours); composers' names were announced before each song, so known names were cheered before a note — "a popularity contest" (island-of-reil), though placement was not decided by the audience vote; mosaic: judge "on the technical (effort it takes to make it) and how it sounds", never with the name; the judges rewarded originality over "general demo music"; results: necros 1st, Mosaic 4th with Tears, CCCatch's Modern Society mis-announced as by "Kenny Choo"; the first-time organisers ignored attendees with Assembly '94 and The Party 4 experience (source: s-tw006-naid-opinion-interviews).
• NAID 1996. The rules as known in April: a 5–7 person preselection jury picks 20 songs; the vote only partly public, the rest jury ratings (per Mr. Khan, not final); saxy: unfair to unknowns (source: s-tw054-interview-saxy). kal-zakath's figures afterwards: the jury picked the top 20 and its ratings counted for about 80 % of the vote, public voting 20 % — "the jury has TOO much power" (vegas); live vocals were not allowed, lyrics "have to be sampled and tracked into the music"; Vegas's entry placed 15th (source: s-tw062-interview-vegas). NAID also ran a free-for-all compo with no limits (source: s-tw060-interview-fisherman); lyrics were the trend (liam-the-lemming) (source: s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming).
• Music Contest (organisers in 1995: snowman, dan and floss — source: s-tw022-interview-jase). MC2: big-jim 40th in the rookie section (sources: s-tw003-interview-five-musicians, s-tw013-interview-big-jim). MC3 (summer 1995): won by jase (Oxygen/Enigma) with an XM, beating Necros — a symphonic tune had won the previous one; Jase's goals were top 5 and "an XM in the top 5" (source: s-tw022-interview-jase); it had a veteran section — esper-division 11th veteran (source: s-tw029-faces-in-the-crowd-esper-division); quarex entered hoping to be judged "based on my music, not who I am" (source: s-tw019-interview-quarex); loki entered; ender had never heard the entries; master-of-darkness cites "what Skaven and Jase did for Assembly and MC3" as the elite "warping the norm" (sources: s-tw035-interview-loki, s-tw030-interview-ender); Popcorn signed as "MC3" staff (source: s-tw017-interview-amusic); clef was 6th in its rookie division (source: s-tw055-interview-clef). MC4 (1996): blackwolf could no longer enter as a rookie (source: s-tw040-interview-blackwolf); entries in progress in April 1996 (Saxy, Clef) (sources: s-tw054-interview-saxy, s-tw055-interview-clef); the "player controversy" — no standalone impulse-tracker player existed, so IT users had an advantage; ryan-sprott proposed judging each format in its own tracker; Liam the Lemming entered as a veteran, applied to judge, and advised entrants: "I pray they don't go all symphonic thinking that'll get a top ten placing" (sources: s-tw063-interview-ryan-sprott, s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming).
• Assembly. Popcorn on Assembly '95: "a total farce with all the SB support crap … 2 steps back for the demoscene"; Big Jim: "it doesn't affect my entry in the music compo" (source: s-tw013-interview-big-jim). rage was 2nd in the Assembly '95 multichannel compo with "Guild of Sounds" — "I was happy when they even played the tune!" (source: s-tw060-interview-rage). zalt and psibelius both entered party compos without attending — Psibelius jointly with ior at ASM'94, Zalt with a friend at The Party 5 (source: s-tw040-interview-zalt).
• Other parties. Zalt was 2nd in the Icing'95 multichannel compo (source: s-tw040-interview-zalt). Oz96 (Sydney, "Australia's first demo party") had a 16k music compo, won by Clef; mick-rippon expected his Oz96 tune not to place because "most people won't understand it" (sources: s-tw055-interview-clef, s-tw041-interview-mick-rippon). Greece had a demo party in early 1995 and planned a big one for October 1995; Australia's oz95 was upcoming in August 1995 (sources: s-tw017-interview-amusic, s-tw022-interview-jase). khyron: "anything from the TP3 4-channel compo just rocks" (source: s-tw111-interview-khyron).
• Timed IRC compos beyond the 20mc. The Trackering (1996): "you get a set of normal samples and have one week to write a tune" — the long-form sibling of the 20mc; Kal Zakath preferred it because it "always has many nice tunes from skilled composers"; Rage disliked both because he could do nothing good in 20 minutes and "don't like to use someone else's samples" (source: s-tw060-interview-rage); Liam feared competing against Yannis Brown in it (source: s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming). The 1996 IRC compo boom — CrapCompo (Vegas's "Mario Goes to the Jungle" won one), BlahCompo, SpurCompo, AnotherCompo — "all in the name of fun … good practice" (source: s-tw062-interview-vegas).
• Why four channels stayed alive. leinad kept writing 4-channel songs "to be in all possible compos at the parties" (source: s-tw002-interview-leinad). A pitfall: fasttracker-2's .MOD export cannot be trusted on an Amiga compo machine — a friend's chiptune with sixth-octave notes "all became Bs in the 5th" and placed last (source: s-tw040-interview-zalt; see mod-format).

What compos are for#

• Training under a clock: the organiser's stated purpose was "to have hours of fun and tension, and give a task to people, which actually made them improve their tracking abilities" (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo).
• Feedback: "we vote, we can vote high for who we like, and constructively criticise songs that we don't" — one writer placed 12th in "tt#25", was told the leads were too loud and the chords dissonant, found the chord bass notes were too low, remixed and released (source: s-tw099-why-tracking-is-the-perfect-artform).
• Judging, from the entrants: "Musicians should judge other musicians!" — "a particular style or genre always wins" (Mick Rippon) (source: s-tw041-interview-mick-rippon); u4ia never entered a compo: "It's sad the way people vote for names instead of the music sometimes" (source: s-tw067-interview-u4ia); injekted on party compos: winners predictable, "400 disks labeled 'my techno tune'" (source: s-tw054-interview-injekted-and-subhuman).
• The newbie's counter-view: "Don't be composing for competitions … Just compose for yourself" (Master of Darkness) (source: s-tw027-faces-in-the-crowd-master-of-darkness); against it, Loki: competition between groups "aspires people to do better, and more" (source: s-tw035-interview-loki).
• A door outside the scene: Exxon won first place in a real-life electronic-music compo in Austria with a ten-track XM and recommends "real life music competitions" as the way to get noticed (source: s-tw115-tracking-semantics).

Side effects#

A weekly chip compo produced "an EXPLOSION of chiptune-making" that some blamed for a glut (source: s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate); by the organiser's own account people stopped voting after Christmas 1995 because "the scene was full of chiptunes, which were of a really bad quality", so the compo paused and returned bi-weekly with rest breaks between cycles (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo).

Contradictions recorded#

• Rage versus Lizardking at Assembly '95. Rage says he beat "Lizardking, my hero!" in the multichannel competition (source: s-tw060-interview-rage), whereas Necros's review places Lizardking's "Crayfish Party" 3rd in the four-channel competition (source: s-tw024-in-review-asm95). Either Lizardking also entered the multichannel compo below 2nd place or Rage conflates the two; the review does not list the multichannel placings below the winner, so neither source is wrong on its face.

A SID compo in 2015: CSDb's Ambient SID competition#

• scarzix won it with Singularity, a 12-minute stereo (2SID) tune made in two days on a beta of cheesecutter; he had stopped entering compos because CSDb's system has "anonymous downvoters + everyone can see the current result before the voting has ended … Too much strategy involved for a fair competition", and treats a compo as "a fun assignment" instead. The rules allowed 2SID and named Delta, Lightforce and Parallax as inspirations; most entries were "experimental stuff" rather than the Galway/Hubbard sound he expected (source: s-sidin14-scarzix-interview).

Related#

20-minute-chip-compo · chiptune · island-of-reil · mosaic · jase · vegas · rage · hornet · chip-samples · tracking-workflow · tracker-scene-history · mod-format · skaven · the-zapper

Sources#

s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo · s-tw065-tracking-as-an-olympic-sport · s-tw099-why-tracking-is-the-perfect-artform · s-tw115-tracking-semantics · s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate · s-tw024-in-review-asm95 · s-tw033-4channel-lives-on · s-tw006-naid-opinion-interviews · s-tw002-interview-leinad · s-tw013-interview-big-jim · s-tw003-interview-five-musicians · s-tw022-interview-jase · s-tw029-faces-in-the-crowd-esper-division · s-tw019-interview-quarex · s-tw017-interview-amusic · s-tw027-faces-in-the-crowd-master-of-darkness · s-tw041-interview-mick-rippon · s-tw040-interview-zalt · s-tw040-interview-blackwolf · s-tw035-interview-loki · s-tw030-interview-ender · s-tw054-interview-saxy · s-tw055-interview-clef · s-tw054-interview-injekted-and-subhuman · s-tw062-interview-vegas · s-tw060-interview-fisherman · s-tw060-interview-rage · s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming · s-tw063-interview-ryan-sprott · s-tw111-interview-khyron · s-tw067-interview-u4ia · s-sidin14-scarzix-interview