no, wait, hear me out:
let's say we have judge A, judge B, and judge C
judge A is quite harsh, while judge B is quite fair, while judge C is quite lenient
and we have three songs: song 1, song 2, and song 3
with quality being ranked in that order
(song 1 = best, song 2 = 2nd best, etc.)
judge A is assigned songs 1 and 2
judge B is assigned songs 1 and 3
judge C is assigned songs 2 and 3
judge A gives song 1 a 70 and song 2 a 45
judge B gives song 1 a 90 and song 3 a 70
judge C gives song 2 a 100 and song 3 a 80
now, with our current system:
song 1 (the best) = 160
song 2 (2nd best) = 145
song 3 (worst) = 150
clearly a bit unfair...
however, if we scale the votes:
judge A now gives a 100 and a 64
judge B now gives a 100 and a 78
judge C now gives a 100 and a 80
the scores are then changed to:
song 1 = 200
song 2 = 164
song 3 = 158

which is slightly more fair, though still definitely not perfect...

Yes, MaestroRage, I must admit I was expecting this to turn out weird while I was doing the scores, as I remember quite high ratings in previous MACs and my highest overall score was a 7.9, as I was being very picky and thorough.

However, frankly I hope to set a standard with this. Looking at it from a contest perspective: some stuff is waaaaay better than other stuff. This "waaaaay" is not represented by a measly 0.4 points on a 1 to 10 scale. The 9 (outstanding!) you give for encouragement should be a 4.5 (slightly below average).

You're potentially putting yourself up against VERY good artists. People who have been devoting their lives to creating music, who have mastered a style, in other words, who have spent a lot of time in their own development. Let's not kid ourselves, these people are among the consistent best artists here. Therefore, it would not be strange if their range lies between 8 and 10.
But the guy (or gal!) who has been FLing Vanguard for a week-and-a-half and cooked up a 1:30 tune that is "kinda fun to listen to" gets a 5. And anything below that gets anything below that.

I already pointed out in my DISLAMER, which is a pretty lame pun by the way, that 'encouraging' has been no factor for me because this is the only context in which we should judge by result only. We are determining the best song among the submissions, simple as that. Even more so because it will win exposure to flash artists, and for their cooperation, we want to give them quality.

As Rucklo regularly states, the MAC is still in its starting phrase so there's bound to be lots of flaws in it (and we should take the time to let our jaws drop in awe of how far it has come after 3 episodes).

Having all the judges do all the songs is not doable. So, let's become like those assholes from Idols!

or you know what? even better:
give each judge a limmited number of points to disperse amongst the songs they're judging

holy hell, you guys were harsh with the scoring, only Orr got a B, three other guys got a C minus and everyone else had a D or lower.

...

Now that I think about it.. the songs weren't really that xmasy... I guess they deserved it :/

HEY LJRUCKLOCOFFEEBASTARDPIGEON! It's neat you made that cool scoring .swf and everything, but since this MAC was themed don't you think their should have been a "xmasy" slider or something? According to the score system it would be very possible to sumbit a song that didn't sound xmasy at all and still get a hi score... which just isnt cool. I think the overall slider should be warped into a "X theme" slider.

At 11/9/06 09:57 PM, MaestroRage wrote: Guys the judging this time around was very awkward, and non uniform.
This messed up voting and judging system has resulted in some very... very unexpected results.

I do agree - there were definitely problems - and that's why I've asked for suggestions - I'm glad to see that you are interested in helping.

As for the messed up voting and judging system - I just did what I did with it... Yes, there are flaws but until someone can come up with a foolproof system then we'll always have problems with just about any system that's used. Anyone who has a better idea should PM or email me. I am always open to suggestions

Many deserving people, got really bad scores, any many who didn't got very high scores, because the judges were dispersed, and their mindsets were too different.

Yes, I agree again - the mindsets were far too varied and the way that the submissions were split up the scores just didn't work out very well. Some submissions which really weren't that great were assigned to a few judges that tended to give very high scores while other submissions that were VERY good were assigned to judges that tended to give lower scores... I know.. it ended up very much like comparing apples and oranges.

So the problem today wasn't the system to disperse the work, but the judgers themselves.

Yep... but how the hell do we fix it?

:There was not enough foundational rules to judging, far too much personal biasm and personal direction was involved, which frankly messed up the contest in great quantity.

A PM was sent to each judge explaining that this was a Christmas music competition and to judge accordingly - aside from that how are we to determine wether the judges actually do that or not?

MaestroRage, I agree with most of what you're saying but I do have a few problems with some of your comments though - example:

At 11/9/06 09:57 PM, MaestroRage wrote: So why was he given a rating so high for a song that had nothing to do with Christmas?
At 11/9/06 09:57 PM, MaestroRage wrote: DarkSide555 at 12th!? On what grounds? It doesn't sound christmassy? It's too sad?

These two complaints seem to be at odds with each other. In one case you're complaining that a song that isn't very Christmasy scored too high and in another you complain that a song that isn't very Christmasy scored too low...

So which is it... or maybe I'm just being a dick.

You also wrote this

At 11/9/06 10:24 PM, MaestroRage wrote: 1) every judge must judge EVERY song, so that all the harsh judgers will mingle with the lenient judgers.

As you pointed out in your post, this won't happen - I would love to see it work this way but it's probably going to be too much for the judges to handle.

2) Judges must be be objective together! A set of rules, basic instructions telling them "If the song has this + 1, if the song has that + 2, etc etc"

Hmmm - well - yes and no - I agree that the judges should all work from a common ground but to go so far as to set clearly defined rules in an attempt to quantify the more ethereal aspects of the songs we would end up stripping the soul right out of it... Then we're not really judging the songs on anything other than a technical level and I can't see a way to make this work. Maybe if you better explain what you have in mind - you should email or PM me with some more details.

OK then -

At 11/9/06 10:52 PM, attemptedperfection wrote: no, wait, hear me out...
...
which is slightly more fair, though still definitely not perfect...

I see how this could help - but it only really works when you have the advantage of typing it out using known variables - the problem is that we don't know who will judge more harshly or more leniently so we could still end up assigning a crappy song to several forgiving judges and a great song to some right bastards...

And another

At 11/9/06 10:53 PM, WinTang wrote: As Rucklo regularly states, the MAC is still in its starting phrase so there's bound to be lots of flaws in it (and we should take the time to let our jaws drop in awe of how far it has come after 3 episodes)

Yes, please do take into account for that - Rucklo and I both spend some time scratching our heads here and there and yes, there are problems...

Problems that do need a solution, but still - we managed to get this thing to the point where there was prize money involved and t-shirts were handed out...

MaestroRage - we should talk more about ways to address the problems that you described earlier.

As for everyone else -

Please consider the following, I work way more than full-time and I have this thing called a family - it tends to take up some time... Rucklo is very busy at school and believe it or not, he also has personal obligations that must be met - I really don't know much about DarkSide555 but I'm guessing that the same applies to him and to every other person that judged or took part in any way...

So everyone that gives a damn should try to help fix it instead of just complaining that it's broken and before anyone else thinks about bitching and complaining about all of the problems associated with the MACs please ask yourself this:

"Can I propose a workable solution that will solve this problem?"

If you cannot do this then kindly keep your cockwarmer shut until you can offer something wothwhile.

Thanks

At 11/9/06 11:43 PM, LJCoffee wrote:

I see how this could help - but it only really works when you have the advantage of typing it out using known variables - the problem is that we don't know who will judge more harshly or more leniently so we could still end up assigning a crappy song to several forgiving judges and a great song to some right bastards...

but I used exactly that situation for my example to prove my point: the more forgiving juges both judged the crappy song, and it still worked in the end. the scores would be scaled after all judges have judged, making a harsh judge's scores much more similar to a forgiving judge's scores. at least, that's the principle behind it.

Word LJ - let's figure out a way to balance stuff together. We are a forum, are we not?

I really would like to hear whether or not people agree with the points I made in my previous post (about fair judging) - as I said, I hope to set a standard but if you feel I'm way over the line please say so (and explain why).

Btw I believe that Maestro's comments on the Christmassy/Not Christmassy thing were pointing out a discrepancy - a mediocre song does not get lower votes for not being Christmassy, while a good song does (not necessarily my opinions on the songs in question) (though they are).

In other words, ROFL.

At 11/9/06 11:51 PM, attemptedperfection wrote: but I used exactly that situation for my example to prove my point

Alright - I'll PM you later - perhaps we should do a test run using your system - we could use one of the past MAC's as an example - rejudge it and see how we feel about the results.

At 11/9/06 11:55 PM, WinTang wrote: Btw I believe that Maestro's comments on the Christmassy/Not Christmassy thing were pointing out a discrepancy

I'll freely admit the possibility that I misinterpreted those comments - all in all I agree with everything that Rage said - my previous post wasn't meant to challenge or debate him in any way -

Rage - if your reading then I apologize if I got your comments mixed up!

I'm sorry guys is there a page that gives the comments for every piece?

At 11/10/06 12:08 AM, XBrav wrote: I'm sorry guys is there a page that gives the comments for every piece?

Woot top ten lol..... less critical with the numbers though its like u don't have any faith in the portal's musician great contest guys.

At 11/10/06 12:12 AM, Syntrus wrote:

At 11/10/06 12:08 AM, XBrav wrote: I'm sorry guys is there a page that gives the comments for every piece?

Woot top ten lol..... less critical with the numbers though its like u don't have any faith in the portal's musician great contest guys.

Yeah it was an awsome competition. I missed the show, nobody's posted the mp3 rip of it, and I wanted the reviews for pure critique.

At 11/9/06 11:43 PM, LJCoffee wrote: "Can I propose a workable solution that will solve this problem?"

First, a "theme" slider. I agree with others that the rankings are pretty fucked up. Like how the hell did RGH's jungle-safari song place 4th in a XMAS contest? I couldn't disagree anymore with that outcome, the song may be good but because of it's distinct jungle qualities and sound clips, which can be considered to be the exact opposite of xmasy, I wouldn't put that song anywhere near the top 10 for this contest. Second, when you look at some of the scores you can clearly see which people got the harsh judges and which didn't, and some of those harsh judges were so harsh that they had a big impact on the accumlative overall score of the song. Then there were some people with crappy songs who got lucky enough not to have any harsh judges assigned to them and ended up with a higher ranking than some of the good songs which deserved the spot more. Apparently, having an "originality" slider or a "clarity" or "diversity" slider just isn't good enough because individual judges have individuals perceptions and definitions of what originality is and what clarity is and what diversity is. The only way a system of judging like this, where you assign different judges to different songs and don't have every judge rate every song, ever works and produces fairly accurate results is when you throughly screen all the judges and have them study a specific rubric or criteria to judge the songs on, otherwise, their own personal misconcepts or biases get in the way of judging and totally screw some songs over.

My solution basically summarized:

1. Replace the "appeal" slider with a "on theme" slider.
2. Possibly write up a specific rubric or criteria for every category that the judges can follow so they don't have varying definitions or perceptions of the categories.
3. Find yourself some judges that would be willing to judge EVERY SINGLE SONG for the sake of accurate results. If you can do this step then performing step 2 would be rather unnecessary, since then a harsh judge would just judge every song harshly and only bring down the general range of the scores, yet it'll still be fair since everyone got judged by this same person.

There.

Pehaps I'm misreading your post, Rage, or perhaps I'm simply too tired, but I feel personally attacked by your comments. Forgive me if I'm way off.

I rated RyeGuy's song all tens except for the overall score, which I docked considerably for not being blatantly christmasy. But I don't see anywhere in the rules where it says exactly what is required for a song to be considered appropriate, and I hear several aspects of that song that could be related to christmas or the season.

I see that my scores are very high compared to Win's, and accept that fact. That having been said, i stand by every one of my ratings. For the most part I was extremely impressed with the quality of the submissions I reviewed, and congratulate every single artist on their hard work. In my mind, they each earned the EXACT point totals I gave them. I'm sorry you don't approve.

yo dudes lets chill.. this mac stuff is an intresting deal every time and the audio every time gets better and better. ths is good for the audio portal and trisekele truly he speaks from the heart.. i would encourage more cooporation with them damn flash artists so they don't constantly use px9 and actually look around for there music lets not have a big name come in but instead lots and lots of small name flash artists get in on the action perhaps an audio flash collab where we compete music vids. the project and this point seems in comprehensable but if we give it some time and we play our cards right maybe just maybe we could do somthing like that... i don't hole any h8 towards the judging its hard to judge and artform acurately because art is different for everyone. Krizzle is right in the sense that judges should judge every song so they are all held to a standerd. look at american idol all those guys are held to the standerd of the three judges. no drastic changes just the three of em. but still just a great contest i'm like a philosiphizer i write a hell of a lot but it never really goes anywhere in closing lets go ride bikes on tuesday.

Heres some reviews for some of the tracks i judged. I didn't review them all, just a few.

cornandbeans - {Christmas Grooves} (original) Score = 75.4

Had a nice beat to it, very, very happy indeed. The drums where brilliant and fitted perfectly with the song, and the other instruments gave the song a very lively spirit. Definately a winner in my books.

MaestroRage - _-={The Epic Christmas!}=-_ (original) Score = 84.6

Very evil sounding. I loved the bells in this song, they were great! The orchestra played very well and made it sound very Professional. By the way i meant to ask, what is it that santa says at the start of the song? Coz i really wanna know!

MusicalSerenity - MAC6 October X-mas Submission (original) Score = 81.7

Very, Very different from your other pieces of music. The sound was amazing and the whole song turned out spectacular. Too bad it was so short, i would have loved to hear more out of this style of music. Maybe another one like this next year for the MAC7? Anyway the song was great and a lot better than your trance tracks, you should be proud of yourself!

MusicalRocky - Familiar Blanket of Snow (original) Score = 78.1

The rhythm was very stylish and sounded very christmassy. The length was good and the instruments used were great too. Hope to hear more songs like this from you for the other MAC's.

SBB - Mirrors in the Snow (original) Score = 85.1

Really good song, i loved the entire build of this song. Great piece, you have alot of talent and if you can keep this good, there will be lots of great opertunities to come.

fr3kn - The Assassians Christmas (original) Score = 93.4

This song was my absolute fvourite song, i'm surprised it didn't get into the top 5, but at least you still got 7th place. The shotgun sound at the start is just to die for, and t gives the impression that Santa is gonna go kill some Punk-Ass Bitch for playa hatin him. Anyway great song and keep at it!

Spikrodd - Mamberiences (original) Score = 30.1

Not really very Christmassy. It wasn't equally catchy either. A rather dull and boring peice.

At 11/9/06 08:53 PM, WinTang wrote:
I was kinda disappointed in the overall quality of the submissions I was given to judge, they often seemed thrown together in a hurry, or with a "it's Christmas so I'm guessin prolly anythin goes" mentality. Both do NOT amuse me, especially when there's $250 at stake and the subject is very clear. You want to win so you work your fucking ass off, if you don't, you don't want to win.

Well WinTang I have to say for myself that I am kinda disappointed in most of the judges, you included. Good thinking of beeing a bit more critic than usual in this MAC because of the goods for the TOP 5 but let's face the facts, something went terribly wrong here. I wished all the judges would thought about that just like you.

I personally see a VERY BIG problem in the terms of judgement on such a contest based on certain traditional events. What excactly is christmas for you people? Is it the all known sound in that time, happy happy joy joy, bells, upbeat and so on what the tv and radio tells us on and on!? Have the judges just judged the tunes because of that? Well, I'm not saying it is so but the placements and reviews tell me something else...

No offense but the judging was very poor this time. NOT overall but in certain parts. Furthermore, why is "In the woods" 4th place? And "greensleves" 5th? The judges on this songs TOTALLY missed it. Sry for beeing a bit harsh but for me thats a bloody fact.

A tune for the "winter" whats called "In the woods" (lol) with bird and moor sounds. Oh yeah, I'm getting it, I can imagen wandering around in a forest and...wait...but not in the winter or at christmas. Greensleves...Water/Wave sounds? Do I have to say more!? Also, the bloody original is a ballad not a christmas tune...I thought that is what MaestroRage tried to ask in the chat yesterday.

So, how did the judges judged here!? I say on the sound or soundquality, mistakes not if the song has a meaning or delievers a certain message this contest. Again, I don't mean this for all judges. :P

Also I think saying to create a "christmas THEME" for this contest was the wrong word. OMG, Rucklo made ze mistake! no0b! >: ( There is NO christmas THEME and there will never be, because you can't catch this time of the year with just one THEME. Also the judging was VERY different in the last MAC. The judges there were really focused on what to judge what came trough the reviews very good. If you look back you know what I'm trying to say.

Sry for beeing a bit ego right now but I'm really suprised about the judgement on my submission. Was I supposed doing something for a christmas contest? Yes, indeed. But what did I do? Well, I tried beeing "original". I THOUGHT about doing something more "thinkable" for this time of the year. Something more sad BUT with a happy ending. Delivering a piece thats not like most of the submissions. Christmas is NOT only happy happy joy joy and all. This time of the year isn't a "very good" time for many people. Thats what I tried aiming for. And the amount of reviews here and comments I recieved elsewhere proof me that I succeeded in the very best way. (OMG egobiatch >: P )But why didn't it succeeded in the contest a bit better than it did? Was it "too" sad? Not classical christmas like enough?...

Thats what I'm trying to say, what excactly IS christmas for you people?

I already got some ideas what to improve but I'm still brainstorming atm. so I don't post the ideas here just right now (I'll PM you LJ). I just wanted to express my thoughts on this and I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say.

Congrats to all the "winners" though.

I would like to hear rucklo's/lj's take on this (the use of christmas theme as a scoring element) and here's why.

Judges' instructions in keeping with the christmas theme was the following:

Remember, this contest is for the best Christmas music so please take that into account when you judge.

Now, that's obviously vague. But I'm not pointing fingers - in fact, I think leaving the constraints very loose was an excellent idea, allowing excellent non-traditional christmas music to gain noteriety, and to encourage originality. In the Woods was one such tune, and as I said before, I completely stand by my review.

Congratulations DavidOrr and all other top submissions!!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed the contest and everything around it!

There are a couple of people who have worked with the MAC one way or another, and I´d like to reckognise everyone of them;

LJCoffee - Chief Judge, creator of the judgingsystem. 2:nd in command of the MAC6 - Oct. He and I made this contest together.

DarKsidE555 - Listmaster, updated the list, with new entries along the way.

Gooch - BBS Moderator, took care of spam, irrelevant posts etc.

PsychoGoldfish - Announced the final scores Live on readiogrounds.com

Metalcan - Sig-pic maker, have made all the sig-pics for the MAC´s!

Denvish - BBS Moderator, puts the best audio on the frontpage.

TomFulp - Provides the awards along with creating/managing this website, newgrounds.com

All the judges have performed a great job too! They´ve been assigned 10 songs each to judge and make a short review of. The reviews from each judge should be in this thread any time soon.

B0unc3
Quickbeam
HouseMasta
SolusLunes
Kingbastard
LJCoffee
SuperDrummer146
Wintang
Triskele
Rucklo

Most of all, Thank you everyone who participated in this contest, yo uall made this a great show with great music! Go in peace :)

Man, it feels like I really missed something when I wasn´t listening to the show live... the thread grew a couple of pages!! :)

This is a quite vauge contest that´s meant to be fun, and something the rest of NG (flash artists) have use for. The reason all judges should make short reviews is to show how they were thinking when they judged, so hopefully you who wonders about the judging get some more answers there. "Christmas theme" is vauge, and the judges have had their own personal "christmas experiences" to look back on when it came to judging. I stand by the judges 100%, since in this judgement, it HAVE been a reasonably subjective judgement that lead to the final result.

The judging system isn´t perfect, it will never be. Not even such a sophisticated system as the automated Flash Portal is perfect.

However, we are always trying to improve, it´s great to see so much feedback about the contest! Keep em coming!!! :)

The results are already out (Thanx LJC;) but I´ll post a full list with links here soon as well.

Final scores + links;

1
DavidOrr - Christmas Eve (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 86.275

2
SineRider - SineRider's Christmas Epic (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 74.475

3
MilkMan-Dan - The Purest of Winters (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 70.8

4
RyeGuyHead - RGH: In The Woods (original)

Video Game

Adjusted Overall: 70.575

5
attemptedperfection - Greensleeves (MAC6) (cover / remix)

Industrial

Adjusted Overall: 67.325

6
MaestroRage - _-={The Epic Christmas!}=-_ (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 67.075

7
fr3kn - The Assassians Christmas (original)

Techno

Adjusted Overall: 63.8

8
MusicalRocky - Familiar Blanket of Snow (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 63.7

9
cornandbeans - {Christmas Grooves} (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 60.9

10
speedmetalmessiah - This is Christmas (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 60.5

11
Deflektor76 - Christmas is for everyone (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 59.175

12
DarKsidE555 - A world so cold (original)

Metal

Adjusted Overall: 58.425

13
Syntrus - Xmas yo! (original)

Techno

Adjusted Overall: 56.975

14
XBrav - Christmas Time - Presents! (original)

Jazz

Adjusted Overall: 54.65

15
BlackNoise - The First Sled Ride (original)

Jazz

Adjusted Overall: 54.6

16
Grumbleduke - Skull Castle Festivities (cover / remix)

Video Game

Adjusted Overall: 53.95

17
SBB - Mirrors in the Snow (original)

Ambient

Adjusted Overall: 50.425

18
TjA - Christmas Magik [Final] (original)

Trance

Adjusted Overall: 49.925

19
josh-tamugaia - Christmas All Along (original)

Pop

Adjusted Overall: 47.075

20
xlash - Snowman Dance (original)

Techno

Adjusted Overall: 43.65

21
stealth-annihilator - March Of The Elves (xmas song) (original)

Classical

Adjusted Overall: 41.075

22
SadSpoon - Santa DnB (original)

DnB

Adjusted Overall: 39.65

23
Spikrodd - Mamberiences (original)

Ambient

Adjusted Overall: 38.625

24
MrPariah - DJ Santa's dance club (original)

Dance

Adjusted Overall: 25.55

Here are my reviews;

MilkMan-Dan - The Purest of Winters
When I first listened through all songs in the contest, this is the song I personally liked the most. This really gives a sweet commercialised "christmas feeling" we can see in those sugar sweet christmas-movies. I think this song have the most NG christmas flash potential of all songs in this contest! Great job!!!

Adjusted overall - 72

SineRider - 1. SineRider's Christmas Epic
I really like the mood in this song. The bells in the beginning sounds kinda false, to be honest, but it´s not that important.
It kinda feels like it´s not going anywhere though... it´s a little too "empty". Good christmas song overall though.

Adjusted Overall - 40.5

Stealth-Annihilator - March Of The Elves (xmas song)
A few samples bring the christmas spirit in, but it´s not there all the way... That synth was in my opinion a little annoying. It could definitley have worked better if you´d have given the synth some pause here and there. The song is a little too monotone.

Adjusted Overall - 19.1

DavidOrr - Christmas Eve
This song is just plain awsome. I love the way it shifts to a more myserious direction after a while. It´s just that it kindof reminds me of Warcraft II in some places, and that lowers the christmasishness (is that a word??:) some. It´s just a small detail though. The ending is really epic, wich too is on the edge to "fantasy-world", kindof.
That´s just me being pecky though, the song have a great and interesting arrangement, and is a song I can listen to over and over again! Great christmas song!

Adjusted Overall - 71.6

DarKsidE555 - A world so cold
This is a quite touching song. The song itself isn´t that much "christmasish" in the classic way, but this is definitley a christmas song with a strong message. Perhaps a subtle bell-sample or something would have brought it a little more towards December 24´th (25´th in some countries:). Mellow stuff!

Adjusted Overall - 52.9

attemptedperfection - Greensleeves (MAC6)
I never heard the original, and to be honest the first time I heard this song I didn´t think much of it. It didn´t take me long to change my mind though... Maybe it´s because I think "in christmas" right now, but I can really see (hear) the christmasish feeling in here! Its a cool song and performed good!

Adjusted Overall - 38.4

xlash - Snowman Dance
Yeah, it´s christmas sounding alright (wich is what saves it), but it is also a very simple song that honestly is quite boring. Basicly its just a loop that goes over and over. Nothing much happens really...
If you had made a short loop, like 15-30 sec out of this instead, I´m sure this would have felt alot better.

Adjusted Overall 10.1

RyeGuyHead - In The Woods
I really like the wood-samples you´ve used here, but to start out with, it doesn´t bring me to santas home, but rather to a dark forrest with a forgotten cemetary, filled with bad memories and ghosts and stuff.
Don´t get me wrong, the song is awsome, great production, arrangement, quality... With a big fat hiphop beat and an 808 BOOM it´d be royale, but it´s going down alot since I can´t find the christmas spirit anywhere in it...

Adjusted Overall - 17.7

BLACKNOISE - The First Sled Ride--_--
This song is really cute, the choise of instruments are a hit and miss though... the flute thing along with the string and piano brings christmas in, but the beat... nah. I just think of some pixelated 8-bit nintendo characters celebrating christmas when hearing this song... That´s a good thing tough!
But at the same time, it feels like it could have been alot better. Not so many things happen, it´s allmost a littel boring. But I sence the christmas spirit :)

Adjusted Overall - 24.8

MrPariah - DJ Santa´s dance club
One thing with electronic music is that when it overrides, the digital distortion will make it sound very bad. The basedrum you have really ruined alot for my musical experience. I would like to say that you should work some more, check out what "musical components" you might need to make a song sound "fulfilled" (for example, there´s a reason you´ll often find a guitar, a bass, drums and a vocalist in a rock band...). What are the premisses for electronic music?
Anyway, the melody sounds random, you should give it more structure I think... There is a distant and very stiff christmasfeel in this song however, wich makes ithe score pop up a little higher.

Adjusted Overall - 6.3

As for MAC6 - November, there won´t be any. Me and LJC are focusing on december, or if perhaps it might take until january even... We´ll see, we´ve started to discuss themes, and have a few old unused themes that might get revived...

Until then, I stronlgy recommend you go check out HouseMastah´s mRac, monthly R3mix audio contest, wich is being held now in november! For more info, follow the link!

Why you still here reading? Follow the link, GO GO GO GO! :)

At 11/10/06 12:47 AM, Triskele wrote: Pehaps I'm misreading your post, Rage, or perhaps I'm simply too tired, but I feel personally attacked by your comments. Forgive me if I'm way off.

Triskele my comments were in no way an attack to you, I was merely using you as a judge on the opposite spectrum of WinTang, there were others I could have used, but your reviews were the first to hit my eye, please don't think I was out to get you.

I rated RyeGuy's song all tens except for the overall score, which I docked considerably for not being blatantly christmasy. But I don't see anywhere in the rules where it says exactly what is required for a song to be considered appropriate, and I hear several aspects of that song that could be related to christmas or the season.

But he still got a much much higher rating then he should have gotten, you see this is what I meant. You rated the song mostly for the song, and then with the christmas theme on the side. Should WinTang have been assigned to that song, he very well may have just gone "This isn't a christmas song - REMOVED!" or severely lowered the mark. Clarity, Diversity, effort and all those other fields really shouldn't have been the heavy weight here, I am not attacking you, I am pointing out how differently you and WinTang were looking at things.

I see that my scores are very high compared to Win's, and accept that fact. That having been said, i stand by every one of my ratings. For the most part I was extremely impressed with the quality of the submissions I reviewed, and congratulate every single artist on their hard work. In my mind, they each earned the EXACT point totals I gave them. I'm sorry you don't approve.

And this is what I meant as well, you see, you speak very leniently too, in truth I respect and encourage that, for there WERE quite a few artists who have not yet mastered their own styles or craft, and so words of encouragement are preferred, but your words of encouragement were also a huge factor in overall scores for many artists who deserved better.

LJCoffee, please don't think I wrote that all just to complain, I wanted to first provide what I saw to see if these were indeed problems or I was just imagining conspiracies "Da AP code", now that I am aware I am not the only one to think this, I WILL send you all of my ideas that i've been brewing up, AND I will post some of them here to get feedback.

Attemptedperfection, giving judges a set amount of points to disperse won't work, what if a judge runs out on the last song he has, does he have to go "well... I didn't have much points left so I give you 1.3 !!!!!"

I realize no judging system is perfect, but even in the Idol reality show, there are three judges for EVERY person.

I would be willing to become one of those to go through EVERY piece if that is going to help in anyway, and forfeit my right to compete effectively.

I think it may help if we assign judges to categories.
Let's say a soon-to-be-judge lists the types (corresponding to the various portals, e.g. Classical, Drum 'n Bass, General rock) that he/she is proficient with - if not in creating it, then at least in listening to it often. Rucklo and LJC can then assign every judge to 2 or 3 categories, and fill up the gaps.

I also think that you should only judge if you KNOW you have good stuff to say about music, not just because it "might be fun". This is not to criticize any of the judges of this MAC but just a general thing to keep in mind.

At 11/10/06 08:22 AM, MaestroRage wrote: Attemptedperfection, giving judges a set amount of points to disperse won't work, what if a judge runs out on the last song he has, does he have to go "well... I didn't have much points left so I give you 1.3 !!!!!"

no, I meant let the judges listen to all of their assigned songs, and afterwards deliberate over which songs are most deserving of their points and which songs should receive less

At 11/10/06 10:15 AM, WinTang wrote: I think it may help if we assign judges to categories.
Let's say a soon-to-be-judge lists the types (corresponding to the various portals, e.g. Classical, Drum 'n Bass, General rock) that he/she is proficient with - if not in creating it, then at least in listening to it often. Rucklo and LJC can then assign every judge to 2 or 3 categories, and fill up the gaps.

I also think that you should only judge if you KNOW you have good stuff to say about music, not just because it "might be fun". This is not to criticize any of the judges of this MAC but just a general thing to keep in mind.

I'm not sure how effective this would at solving the problem. Although it's a good idea to have people judging genres they are familiar with, it still wouldn't help against scoring fluxuations.

For the most part, it looks like the judges felt the same way about the pieces, it's just some judges were lower scorers than others. I think the idea brought up a page or two back by Attemptedperfection is the best so far. By giving each judge a limited # of points to distribute, then you don't have to worry about scaling issues. For example, you could add 50 points per submission to the total points, and then tell them a score rage (0-100). Having a rubric could help, but I think this is one of the better ways of keeping things fair.

At 11/10/06 05:01 AM, DarKsidE555 wrote:

Greensleves...Water/Wave sounds? Do I have to say more!? Also, the bloody original is a ballad not a christmas tune...

The tune of "Greensleeves" has become associated with Christmas over the years through the lyrics of "What Child is This?" to the point where it's hard to find an instrumental Christmas CD without it. So what if I used its original name? That doesn't change the music, which many people now associate with Christmas. As for the "water/wave sounds" I was trying to be creative as well. At the time I was working on this, I didn't suspect that greensleeve's Christmasness would be brought into question, and since I was doing a remix, I didn't feel it necessary to make the music itself particularly joyful or saturated with bells and chimes. I thought the wave-static effect contrasted nicely with the flute and ambient sounds I was using, and so I used it, as it also adds to the effect of breaking from the song structure for a moment. On the whole, I was hoping for this to be used in a flash with a harsher Christmas theme, as there are sure to be many violent renditions of the jolly holiday. At any rate, I don't think it's quite fair for you to talk about creativity like that after downplaying mine. Yes, the scores are unfair, but what's done is done, and hopefully those who were judged unfairly this time around will get their deserved scores in the next mac. Please understand I mean you no disrespect; I'm just defending my song.

Okay based on the vast differences between each judge’s scores, I agree with a lot of the points that have been made by MaestroRage and others regarding such huge gaps in scoring

I would like to put forward a few suggestions of ideas I’ve been trying to formulate, some of which may be agreeable by some of you and some of these ideas may not!

Well the idea that attemptedperfection came up with, I feel could perhaps work, not exactly how he put it, but in a kind of way

I feel that each track should each start with a particular score, rather than the accumulated score that the judges have used thus far. Possibly set it at 100 or maybe even 50 then work backward from that

With this in place, I would like to put forward the idea of the Emotional Impact each submission had on the listener/judge

For the Christmas themed MAC (as an example) the idea of Emotional Impact could work and perhaps for other seasonal pieces too (should there be any other seasonal based MACS)

Now based on the current rating system in place for music reviews (minus Overall) and add to that the “Emotional Impact” of the piece, that now gives 5 criteria for reviews, 5 being divisible by 100 = 20 as is 50

Emotional Impact
Diversity
Originality
Clarity
Effort

So using those Criteria, it should be possible to review the piece, bearing those criteria in mind

So say with this idea a particular piece gets the following scores:

Emotional Impact: 6 remainder (out of 10) 4
Diversity: 4 remainder (out of 10) 6
Originality: 8 remainder (out of 10) 2
Clarity: 7 remainder (out of 10) 3
Effort: 6 remainder (out of 10) 4

Total 31 or perhaps 62 whatever if you wanna make it out of 50/100

remainder Total: 19 or perhaps 38 whatever if you wanna make it out of 50/100

then deduct the remainder from the 50/100 Starting score

Emotional Impact could mean that the judge/listener has ideas in his mind of what exactly Christmas music should be about, what would you expect to hear? would it be lively? etc… (needs a little more thought perhaps) I’m just throwing an idea out there, perhaps some of you could correct me, add to this or whatever even ridicule the idea if you must

what do you think?

I like the idea of emotional impact, but what makes the deduction system any different from just giving them, in your case, a "4, 6, 2, 3, 4" to start with?

or "6, 4, 8, 7, 6" rather...

At 11/10/06 11:09 AM, attemptedperfection wrote: I like the idea of emotional impact, but what makes the deduction system any different from just giving them, in your case, a "4, 6, 2, 3, 4" to start with?

Ok yeah well It does need a bit more thought definitely! just an idea, the deduction system may not be a good way! as I think I see your point with that, I suppose that is really the same as the accumulative scoring, I dunno really just throwing ideas out there, the main one being the emotional Impact of the piece

Each judge/listener may have to decide and agree between them, just exactly what a seasonal piece should be about