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Which kind of set of music compos would you like to have in a big demoparty?

Which type of music compos do you like and which not and why?

Cheat sheet: Revision 2025 had fast music, streaming music, executable music, oldskool music and tracked music.

I'd like to split the Tracked Music compo into Multi-Channel and 4-Channel.

And reduce the size of the executable music to 16KB.

Also, make FLAC a format allowed in all Streaming Music compos.

whatever magical solution that both manages keeps all the chippy stuff out of streaming/tracked and at the same time makes it fit the same "chip" compo without any platform feeling unfairly treated.

GL.

Not a set, but i'd like the tracked music compo to have meaningful restrictions.

Revision but Streaming music is replaced with 4 channel mod compo

Split 4ch and Nch yeah.

I think the music compo programmes of big parties like Revision are great and I'm very grateful for them, but there are a couple of things that I'm not sure about.

As a somewhat greedy (well, I would prefer to say ambitious...!) 'oldschool' musician, I find Revision's 32768 byte size limit unnecessarily restrictive. It's just about fine for C64 stuff, but I've been discouraged from finishing things like SNES and Mega Drive tunes because getting executables for these platforms down to 32768 bytes is prohibitive to me, as I don't have the programming ability to optimise/compress tunes to make them fit. It should be a music compo first and foremost, not a file compression compo. So, I would propose having a compo for '8-bit' platforms (C64, Master System, Game Boy, etc) and another compo for '16-bit' platforms (Amiga PreTracker and AHX, Mega Drive, SNES, etc), with the latter compo having a markedly more generous size limit.

I don't necessarily expect many people to agree with me on this stuff, but here are the five music compos that I would run if I was a big party's benevolent dictator:

8-bit Platform Music
16-bit Platform Music
PC Executable Music
Streaming Music - possibly themed on a particular genre or style - has worked quite well at parties before!
Tracked Music - maybe it could be dedicated to four-channel MODs, with XM and IT tunes competing in Streaming Music instead? Not sure... I quite enjoy Tracked Music as it is, anyway.

I would probably do away with Fast Music. It made sense to me in the online/satellite editions of Revision, as we had access to our instruments etc at home as well as ample quiet time to get things done, but live at a party... I just don't think the compo produces much in the way of real quality, especially when the prompt is to make a track out of a given sample, like the Destination vocal from the 2019 invite and the 'blitter blitter...' thing from this year. It gets a bit repetitive!

Oh wow, didn't know that. That's indeed an unnecessarily strict restriction - 64 KB should be fine for an 8-bit platform. All the while 2 MB tracked music (5 MB for Evoke) is a-okay. :)

Yeah indeed.

Oh, I would take 64KB for '8-bit' platform tunes and 2MB for '16-bit' platform tunes to the bank all day long, thank you very much...! :D

I could make a secondary point about this my suggested division of 'oldschool' platforms being fairer (so that Spectrum isn't going up against Neo Geo or whatever), but it's primarily about the file size limits issue for me. I find mixed compos to be fun in general. :)

As Big Jim once said:

Anyway the point of that is to ask, what about S3M?

My point was that if a whopping 2 MB is fine for tracked music, then a modest 64 KB should be fine for 8-bit executable music, too. =)

That said, as a approved contestant, do you have any specific wishes/complaints re: Deadline music compos? :)

Committee Music
Teenage Pop Music
Low-End Music (only frequencies below 220 Hz)
Tracker National Anthem Compo
32kb Streaming Music

i still think "fast" music compos should be at least 180bpm+

Aha, yes yes, agree on that, and maybe 2MB would be too much for a '16-bit' platform compo... but it definitely needs to be higher than 32768 bytes, to my mind.



I think Deadline having three music compos is pretty reasonable - a mid-sized party probably shouldn't spread itself too thin by having too many compos. I've always found Deadline's music compo rules to be fair and easy to understand, too. If I can find something to moan about then I'll let you know. :D




...what about it? Revision's Tracked Music compo allows it I believe, but it's not a format I've dabbled in so I can't really comment where its place should be. As for the word from the Church of Big Jim, I don't know when that was written, but I might suggest that MOD actually is the most popular tracked music format in 2025, and you can still do great stuff with it with a bit of effort and flair...?

I don't have strong opinions, except that I feel it's weird to have SID music in exemusic, which (in my mind) is supposed to be partially about making a synth.

Perhaps I should explain one thing or two to make my point about Executable Music clear.

When I say I would reduce the limit to 16KB, I mean I would probably release executable music that was 4KB or 8KB on the Amiga, or 2KB or 4KB on the Amstrad CPC (or another 8-bit computer), but I would double the limit in the rules so that the same three or four coders weren't always the only ones competing in every compo. :]

Although I know there would probably be less strict rules regarding precalculation time if we were to lower the size to 4KB on the Amiga 500. Right now, it's very difficult to get below 16KB (if we want something that doesn't sound like chiptune) while maintaining the 30-second rule on an A500 (that rule is perfectly fine for modern computers, aka PCs).

And, as for Tracked Music... A module should fit on a floppy disk! That's what the MOD format was invented for.

When have we ever seen 2MB floppy disks? :]

a party like Revision needs a 3 hours long drone compo

Not sure if I'd be happy with reducing PC exemusic limit to 16KB but I'm kinda biased, lol.

AI Music compo

/s

I approve this message.

Sorry for a dumb question but, what is the point of dividing the music compos into 8-bit and 16-bit platforms when the architecture of the platforms have nothing to do with how capable their soundchips are? Or are you suggesting that Atari ST 4bit tunes should go up against stuff like SNES?

Also, PC executable music compo at revision is by far the least voted for compo. Just saying.

I'd happily consider removing the 32768 byte limit from Revision's oldskool music compo (or increasing it to something like 1.44Mb) - it is meant to be primarily a compo for musicians rather than coders, after all.

I see a couple of possible unintended consequences to that, though:

* Logically we'd have to disallow plain MOD files, so that it doesn't become the alternative tracked music compo for people who don't think they can pass preselection for the real tracked music compo. (This would have to be done partly on the honour system, because we can't police against people submitting lightly obfuscated MODs as Amiga executables.) This would mean that there's no longer a suitable compo for Amiga chiptunes (in the "MOD file with tiny samples" sense), because file size is the only meaningful way to distinguish those from regular tracked music. Presumably they'd go into tracked music instead... is that a bad thing?

* It could make the compo a less attractive proposition to things like AmigaKlang and the winning OPL3 entry, where "check out the cool sounds I can get from this synth" is a large part of the selling point - since there will be a perception among the audience that it might have been achieved with big-ass samples instead.

tbh I think that OPL3 entries belong in the executable music compo

gasman: Would simply doubling the limit to 64 KB not work or result in other (foreseeable) unintended consequences?