Arrangement Contest No. 10 - Brainstorming

[mastersuperfan]

Hello, hello! After more than four years, we are finally bringing back NinSheetMusic's next arrangement contest! I would say "you know the drill," but it's been so long that y'all probably don't even, so here's how it's gonna work!

The gist: Arrange a VGM track of your choice for a larger instrument ensemble based on the theme that gets picked by popular vote!

Timeline:
- Brainstorm and vote on a contest theme (~1 week)
- Sign up to arrange or judge (~1 week)
- Arranging happens! (~6 weeks)
- Judging happens! (~2 weeks... ideally)
- Results!

In this topic (or in the corresponding Discord channel): Suggest themes for the contest! In my eyes, the best themes will ideally be those that:

1) allow arrangers to select from a wide variety of VGM tracks

• So a theme like "take a vocal song and make an instrumental arrangement" would not be ideal because it severely limits the tracks that people can choose from. But something like "take an instrumental track and make a vocal arrangement with your own lyrics" would be cool!

2) don't completely constrain the instrumentation or form of the arrangement

• Choosing the instrumentation and form of the arrangement is part of what makes the arrangements all unique and memorable. So, while it's perfectly healthy and probably likely for a particular theme to work better with some instruments or musical forms over others, it might be best to stay away from "arrange for string quartet" or "arrange in sonata-rondo form."

3) and encourage re-arranging many different musical aspects (tonality, chord progressions, instrumentation, melodic and rhythmic lines, form, dynamics, and so on) that all work together to enhance the theme.

• Some of the previous themes like "bossification" (contest 6) and seasonal variations (contest 7) were, in my opinion, some of the best themes because they didn't constrain any one musical aspect, but rather encouraged arrangers to make lots of different creative decisions to create a new, cohesive piece of music. If you want to make a track sound like a boss theme, or like a winter theme, there are so many ways to do that—let your creativity run wild!

Here's the running list of themes so far, starting with the ones that were suggested before in the Discord's #arrangement-contests channel. I'll update this list with more themes that people continue to suggest, although at my discretion I may not include all of them to prevent the list from getting too long.

UPDATE: Voting is open now! To vote, DM me (either forum PM or on Discord) with a ranked list of ALL seven contest themes listed above, i.e. denoting 1, 2, 3, etc., 7 for each one (1 being the one you want the most and 7 the one you want the least). Only people who are interested in arranging/judging in the contest should vote (it's okay if you're not yet sure, this is mainly to ensure that the selected theme reflects the preferences of those who are participating). ALSO: In your DM, please also include whether you like the featured instrument idea (see below), dislike it, or are indifferent to it.

Voting will close at 11:59 PM EDT, Friday, July 1, barely less than 5 full days from the time of this post!

List of themes to vote on:

• Re-arrange a track in the style of another track/composer/soundtrack/series
• Make a relaxing arrangement of an intense track (i.e. de-bossification?)
• Take a track associated with a particular biome and re-arrange it to sound like another biome instead
• Mash up a track with a non-VGM Christmas song
• Arrange a track in a jazz style
• Arrange a track as a rock ballad
• Arrange a track as a mash-up between two different genres

One more thing! One idea Insig and Maestro had before when brainstorming for the contest was that, at the start of the arranging period, the judges announce a featured instrument that every arrangement must include in some capacity. This would be in addition to the normal contest theme. So, for instance, it might be that every arrangement must include a violin. This would be a way to constrain the orchestration styles a bit (but not too much) to make the submissions easier to compare during judging (as opposed to comparing a string quartet vs. rock band instruments). It might also be interesting for arrangers to figure out how to incorporate the featured instrument into the contest theme. Thoughts on this? Please discuss if you have opinions for or against this idea!

[Dekkadeci]

Honestly, I'd support stripping the "Latin" from "Arrange a track in a Latin or Latin Jazz musical style" and just ask for a jazz arrangement! There are tons of jazz sub-genres, ranging from slower and relaxing to lightning-fast and hard-swinging to even more avant-garde ones.

On a related note, we could ask for a two-genre mashup, rather like "Pokey Means Business" and the fairly sharp contrast between its more Baroque/typical 8-bit introduction and its heavy metal looped portion...and both sections' use of some of the same musical material.

[Fantastic Ike]

(Jazz would give me a good excuse to finally finish my Saber's Edge arrangement...)

[mastersuperfan]

Honestly, I'd support stripping the "Latin" from "Arrange a track in a Latin or Latin Jazz musical style" and just ask for a jazz arrangement! There are tons of jazz sub-genres, ranging from slower and relaxing to lightning-fast and hard-swinging to even more avant-garde ones.

I support this! Latin jazz is maybe more narrow than I would like for a theme, so I just changed it to jazz and people can feel free to arrange something in Latin jazz if it gets picked.

[Kricketune54]

I support this! Latin jazz is maybe more narrow than I would like for a theme, so I just changed it to jazz and people can feel free to arrange something in Latin jazz if it gets picked.

Yeah Latin Jazz was my original idea but I understand it is a bit narrower that way. I have a pretty "special" idea if jazz gets picked...

[mastersuperfan]

UPDATE: Voting is open now! To vote, DM me (either forum PM or on Discord) with a ranked list of ALL seven contest themes listed above, i.e. denoting 1, 2, 3, etc., 7 for each one (1 being the one you want the most and 7 the one you want the least). You must rank ALL seven choices. Only people who are interested in arranging/judging in the contest should vote (it's okay if you're not yet sure, this is mainly to ensure that the selected theme reflects the preferences of those who are participating). ALSO: In your DM, please also include whether you like the featured instrument idea (see below), dislike it, or are indifferent to it.

Voting will close at 11:59 PM EDT, Friday, July 1, barely less than 5 full days from the time of this post!

List of themes to vote on:

• Re-arrange a track in the style of another track/composer/soundtrack/series
• Make a relaxing arrangement of an intense track (i.e. de-bossification?)
• Take a track associated with a particular biome and re-arrange it to sound like another biome instead
• Mash up a track with a non-VGM Christmas song
• Arrange a track in a jazz style
• Arrange a track as a rock ballad
• Arrange a track as a mash-up between two different genres

One more thing! One idea Insig and Maestro had before when brainstorming for the contest was that, at the start of the arranging period, the judges announce a featured instrument that every arrangement must include in some capacity. This would be in addition to the normal contest theme. So, for instance, it might be that every arrangement must include a violin. This would be a way to constrain the orchestration styles a bit (but not too much) to make the submissions easier to compare during judging (as opposed to comparing a string quartet vs. rock band instruments). It might also be interesting for arrangers to figure out how to incorporate the featured instrument into the contest theme. Thoughts on this? Please discuss if you have opinions for or against this idea!

[mastersuperfan]

Voting has closed and the theme has been decided! Please hold for the sign-up post coming shortly...