Competitions

This is the page where I’ll be putting the information on any competitions I’m running!

The Hip Hop Composition Competition is now over!   Check out who won!

If you’re interested, here are the details for entry (there will probably be similar competitions in future, this could give you an idea of what to expect from them!)

The Hip Hop Composition Competition!

Watch the video for the info, or read the text below!

Prizes available

5 x Primeloops sample packs for the winner

1 x Primeloops sample pack each for 2 runners up

1 x Primeloops sample pack for the most active and helpful member of the forum

Competition Details

Hi, I’m Dave from boyinaband.com and I’ve got some exciting news, which involves you guys being able to get free stuff!

I’ve done four 7 day song tutorials now for Dubstep, Drum and Bass, Electro House and Trance and for my fifth I wanted to do something special. As always I’ll ask you guys to post your video responses to the songs, but this time I’ll be doing a competition!

Since I’m big on branding and catchy names, from now on you can call it the “Composition Competition!” So when you see your producer-y friends, you can be all like, “Hey, did you hear about the Composition Competition that Dave from boyinaband.com started?” and they’ll be all like, “Wow, you managed to say that without twisting your tongue, well done!” and you’ll be all like, “Thanks!” Anyway, yeah, let’s tell you what it’s all about!

The Hip Hop Composition Competition

As you may have guessed by the unnecessarily imposing title, the next 7 day song will be on Hip Hop! I’m leaving that as open ended as you want, so you can go from some industrial glitch hop all the way across to some Straight G-Funk!

Rules

- The song must be your own
- The song must be a hip hop song
- You must have some sort of percussive breakdown. This is both to stop people entering their old songs (I want to encourage people to produce new beats here) and also for you to show off your skills with arranging interesting percussion. If you aren’t sure what I mean, I’ll be making one in the 7 day song so you can get the idea.
- Each song you respond with will count as one entry – you can make as many entries as you want.

A few other things to note:

- It doesn’t have to have vocals
- It doesn’t have to be made in Reason
- You don’t have to use all of the techniques used in the 7 day song tutorial

Prizes

So now for the all important prizes! I advertise with a company called Primeloops.com who make frickin’ ace samples. I asked the guys there if they’d be up for sponsoring the competition and they offered some awesome prizes for you guys!

The winner will get 5 sample packs of their choice from Primeloops’ vast library absolutely free.

And 2 runners-up will get a sample pack of their choice each!

So that’s potentially over £200 worth of free stuff being given away, depending on what you choose for your prizes – head over to Primeloops.com to have a listen to what’s on offer!

How to Enter

One of the reasons I’ve been doing all these tutorials is that I want to build a community of like-minded producers – people who want to learn more about producing electronic music, who are open minded enough to experiment with making lots of styles and who will help other people out and offer their opinions when it comes to critiquing other people’s music.

The beginning of that community is the boyinaband.com forum. To enter the competition, just follow these 3 steps:

- Upload your song on YouTube and set it as a video response to the final video of the Hip Hop 7 Day song.
- Sign up to the boyinaband.com forum and post a new topic linking to your song in the “Hip Hop Composition Competition” section.
- Get all your producer-y friends to sign up to the forum and post your song in the “Which is the best song?” thread.

Now you could easily sign up, post your song and then never take part again, but the whole point of this is to encourage you guys to get involved in the community – to post your songs, critique other people’s tracks and make friends, hold hands and sing Kumbayah in a circle around the campfire. Okay, maybe not that last bit, unless it’s a Dubstep remix of Kumbayah perhaps, but yeah – the more you take part, the better the community will be, and the better the community is, the more free stuff I’ll be able to give you!

Feel free to ask for critiques and post updated versions of the song as you learn more from the people in the community.

To encourage community spirit, another prize of a free Primeloops sample pack of the winner’s choice will be given to the person whom I define as the most active and helpful member of the boyinaband.com forum. Active does NOT mean spamming. If you’re spamming, then you’ll be banned from the forum and ejected from the competition.

Judging

Judging will be half based on the votes in the “Which is the best song?” thread and, just so it’s not entirely a popularity contest, half based on my own judgement of how well produced the song is. This includes:

- overall production quality
- originality
- and the all-important “Sour Lemon Test” (which is how much it makes you pull a face like you’ve eaten a sour lemon when you hear it kick in)

How long is it on for?

The Composition Competition will run until 2010, because I like any excuse to say “2010″ – it makes me feel like I live in the future. So any video responses after that date will not be eligible for the competition.

The entries will then be judged in the first two weeks of the New Year and the winners and runners up will be announced on the 11th January, then e-mailed with further details about how to claim their prizes.

Uh, yeah! I’m pretty sure that covers everything. If you have any more questions, post them in the boyinaband.com forum and I’ll do my best to answer them for you!