Amateur Filmmaker, Author, Cartoonist, Musician and defictionalizer (Finding truth in fiction), mostly here to promote my music to indie developers that need it.
Age 33, Male
Part Time Musician,
High School Graduate/Self Taug
Parts Unknown
Joined on 12/13/20
The ONLY time I would protest is when a contest goes against the spirit of fair play, which I have before. I actually got in the auditions but quit because a number of people were excluded, who had otherwise been included in the Newgrounds Audio Deathmatch.
And I was right on that instinct. One of the people excluded in that contest got 2nd in the NGADM.
Pick your battles wisely.
If it were 7 minutes and not just I, but anyone entering were informed of the Leniency beforehand I would have agreed, but refusal over 40 seconds? Then saying I have a chance at entering if I cut it down? It comes across as sneaky and petty and grossly unfair. It's one thing to lose a contest it's another to get booted out before you even have a chance. Also while again I respect their decision it doesn't mean I have to agree with it, like it nor keep my mouth shut about it either. I have nothing against following contest rules. However, that specific constraint at the start of this contest wasn't specific enough and the motive behind that decision, comes across as suspicious to me. How would you feel if you worked so hard on one of your pieces, only for someone to dismiss you based solely on the length of them. It was crap like that, that contributed to Mozart's demise and I refuse to take that crap from anyone. I'm sorry you had to get involved in this I really am, that was never my intention. However I can't just take this lying down.
Whether the host intended to or not I just got a taste of the bad side of the music business through this and I'd rather spit it out on someone than swallow it. I never expect to win these contests, my luck is literally that shitty when it comes to it. So I take what I can get. To me they're a means of challenging myself creatively and trying to get my work out there. No different than an independent filmmaker submitting their work to a film festival.
I've worked very hard to make that piece, it took me hours just to find that right percussion alone for what I intended it for and whether the host meant it or not, he basically told me that was all for nothing. So needless to say I have every right to be angry. And to be honest I did try to move on, but when I get that feeling that I may have been wronged in some way, I have to fight what made it that way and I blame those rules.
I'm sorry, but I will continue to boycott this until the contest ends.
@Troisnyx What you said there about fair play, is pretty much one of many reasons I protest this. I tried to play fair to the best of my abilities. However due to a technicality regarding the amount of seconds over the maximum. Something that should have been put on that first post to begin with. That doesn't sound like fair play to me and the sad part is I don't even blame the host for it. Their actions are based on how they feel they should enforce the rules being made. They're just as much of a slave to it as the people that enter the contest and I pity them.
@Troisnyx One other thing. The host lied about being reasonable, because when I tried to reason with them, regarding cutting down my song for length and informing them that doing so would ruin the quality of my work, they stuck to their guns. That's not reasonable.
@CIEIRMusic Actually, I hate to break it to you: it is reasonable.
If allowances were made for you, the floodgates would open. There's gonna be no point in the constraint then, and no point in the contest. People have abused this before. It's a damn shame you felt like you were made to be the example, but believe me when I say, from experience, that people have done this before.
Also a bit of a subject change, you posted this comment twice. Not sure if it's a bug in the system, which considering what happened here, I wouldn't be surprised. However I'm deleting one of the comments.
@CIEIRMusic Fair play entails that people actually adapt. Lemme spill some tea here and you ain't gonna like it because it burns:
I won the 2019 AIM. Yes, WITH MODIFICATIONS.
sursum_corda.EXFLOW_cls.PANDAEMONIUM::STORMFALL/. — my piece — was originally going to be slower and longer as a result of that slowness. When I realised that the timeframe was 6:00, I did my utmost to make it fit, because at the end of the day, nobody but I was going to hear the work in progress.
Nobody else knew. It turned out powerful, more powerful than I could imagine. And it ended at bang-on six minutes!
Many who took part allowed the constraints to shape them to become much better, more adaptable musicians who could still deliver some hot burning tea within a time constraint. It never took away our artistic freedom. It let us look at it from a different angle.
Let me spill some coffee right back. Fair play also entails being specific on the rules before entering the contest. "Or at least close enough, we're reasonable." isn't very specific. Until I submitted it, the host NEVER told anyone about the leniency, by their own admission no less. I don't disagree with the reason behind it, I disagree with the way it was presented to me, because it comes across as being stabbed in the fucking back, when I least expect it.
And even if I swallowed my pride and followed through it's literally impossible with this one:
This song due to the nature of the picture it was inspired by has to be slow paced, because Gojira moves at a slow pace. If I increased the tempo it wouldn't be a limping monster slowly recovering from it's wounds after a long battle it'd be a running gecko that barely notices a broken leg. If I cut any part of it, to fit in with the time line it would ruin the pace of the work and make it sound choppy. If there were unnecessary parts of the piece that'd be a different story, but each piece of this work has no unnecessary parts, it's a slow paced tension building cinematic take on how I view a wounded Gojira without having to rip off greats like Akira Ifukube.
@Troisnyx It's not reasonable when I've been ill informed, based on a contest submission post that wasn't specific in one aspect of their constraints where it mattered AFTER I already made the piece. As I've said, I do not disagree with the reasoning behind it, I disagree with the way it's presented and it comes across as shady to me.
Damn shame that your submission didn't make it through the contest, it was pretty good. While I understand your viewpoint and frustration, I would have to agree with Troisnyx on this one that the rules were reasonable.
To me, the rules were pretty clear, and what would be "close enough" for me would be around 10 seconds or less over the time. So I think that the 20 seconds leniency was very generous because 40 seconds is a long time relative to the time limit set for the songs. Some contests wouldn't even let you get 5 seconds extra. If the full 40 seconds was allowed, other artists might complain and people would abuse the competition.
While I believe artistic freedom is important, this is a contest and contests need a form of thresholds and constraints. Time happens to be one of the most important thresholds to have in competitions like these and it is also one of the biggest challenges for artists to make something that would fit the specified time.
I respect the decision to not review, vote, or favorite any submission relating to the contest. But, the rules are there for a reason. While you may think that it limits artistic expression, it is still a necessity in hosting contests. Hope to see you in another contest soon though, you make really good stuff.
First off I'm glad you appreciate my work. However I disagree about the rules being clear. To me being clear means having to be specific on everything. For example, I had to ask the host if we were allowed to get our inspiration from Fan Art just so long as the songs were still original works. They said yes. I asked that because I didn't think their rule regarding any art was clear enough and I didn't want to get booted on the off chance I made a song inspired by work based on copyrighted material. In all fairness I should have asked about the 3 - 6 minutes beforehand, but at the same time, they should have been more specific on what they meant by close enough and I'm calling them out on that in public so that neither they cause trouble like this again nor do future contestants stumble into it like I did.
Okay, coffee back in your face because if you think you've lost patience with me:
THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER.
If this was a two-week constraint I would understand the chagrin. But YOU HAVE TWO. MONTHS.
I have seen people struggle to cobble their pieces together within mere days before the deadline and still find it in them to succeed. These are people whose previous pieces hadn't been admissible due to the strictness of the time constraint. There are some who have willingly endured a good bit worse to stand up for the sheer principle of the contest.
Not glorifying suffering here, but given their courage, I don't see any integrity here.
Stop being a fucking baby, and grow up. And I mean that with every fibre of my being.
Never said I lost my patience with you. Not even remotely sure where you got that from. However that tea analogy, specifically the part where you said it was gonna burn, how am I supposed to react to that without being mad?
I understand people have struggled longer than I have for this stuff, I'm neither downplaying it, nor am I trying to make myself seem better by comparison. However, you have no idea how I feel about this. What I said aside, this has been nothing more than another sign that I am destined to have nothing but bad luck on me. Do you really think it matters if I changed it to suit the music? It doesn't to me because it would have been pointless knowing I'd lose anyway. I've been making music for almost 4 years now and I've only had small success. Barely anything to qualify I only went on this site to further promote it hoping I'd change my luck and while I've gotten better reception. I haven't even sold a single track. The closest I've gotten to success through other means such as collaboration has been either delayed or cancelled on me. Made worse from this site being flooded, just when I was in the middle of one. Then the one time I had a chance to show it off, regardless if I won or lost and I blew it because I just so happen to go over the leniency lines that I wasn't even informed of until after the fact. A factor I shouldn't be the only one held responsible for. Nor should anyone in the future be unaware of. This was the first music contest I tried to enter and it went horribly wrong to me. It doesn't matter if I still have time because to me it just means another ounce of bad luck is just around the corner and I'm fucking sick of it.
@CIEIRMusic The rules specified the 3-6 minutes, so that is what participants should be aiming for and not abuse the time limitation. The "close-enough" was most likely made so that participants would not worry about needing to have their submission exactly at the 6 minute mark. Sorry but I really think that 40 seconds wouldn't be considered close enough. 6 minutes and 40 seconds is closer to 7 minutes than it is to 6 minutes. So I think that the host was very reasonable with that decision.
If the submission was 1 second more than 6 minutes and it was denied, then I would say that it is very unreasonable and I would definitely stand with what you're saying. But, this case it's more than half a minute more. That is really a lot exceeded time.
I don't mean to sound rude here but, I'll try again to clarify to the best of my ability, because I still don't think you understand:
My only mistake was not asking beforehand how close.
The host, did not tell me how close enough until after I submitted it. That was their first mistake.
What the host should have done, that they had plenty of time to do on the day they posted it on their news section and the forum, especially considering what Troisnyx said about people abusing it in the past, was to specify how close enough it should be. I had no idea of this problem until after this as I have only been a user on this site for less than a year. So in essence I feel I was denied critical need to know information. That was their second mistake. A mistake that had I not freaked out about in public out loud, would have been repeated with other contestants in the near future. Especially New Users who don't know any better. My own problems with it aside, the last thing I want to see is any users make the same mistake I did, based on the mistakes they did.
@Mikoma To make it short. I blew it by not asking more questions, but they blew it on me for not saying exactly how many seconds until after I did it.
I think you misunderstand how the judges feel about this. They're not random people who have nothing to do with music, let alone the music industry. In fact, people who become judges in music contests on this site are music enthusiasts and content producers themselves. As has already been mentioned, having limitations breeds creativity, and especially for this contest helps to make sure other people aren't trying to produce something that's 10 minutes long, which 1) it's a lot of time and effort to judge songs, and more so when they're 5+ minutes 2) there is an AIM album that is made out of the songs participating in this contest and anyone and everyone can listen to it and are more likely to skip songs that that are long, so the average listenet won't care if it needs to be the exact way it is.
Which is the real unfortunate side of the music industry. Every producer and artist wants to have a shot and wants to make waves. Everyone wants to be heard and the internet is over saturated with content. The amount of effort that goes into a song does not get a justifiable amount of listens and attention unless you have the right outlets. This site is a great help for sharpening the skills and craft of making great content with the community we have here. No where else I've found that is so easy to get plugged into groups of people who will pay attention to you and get a group of followers so easy just by being active in forums, chat groups and contests. The contests especially is where I've gotten valuable feedback when I first started and the contests always see so much good content.
My song isn't even remotely 10 minutes long. I got rejected over 40 seconds over the maximum and 20 seconds over the leniency which they informed me after the fact. Sorry, but it's that kind of ignorance on top of my own bad luck that I can't stand anymore.
How the extra-leeway of time is *supposed* to work is under the assumption that it's an extra few seconds to allow for an entry to finish off it's outro segment with a couple more notes, or to let a long atmosphere/texture finish off with a natural fade-out without worrying about having to make an awkward cut to make it exactly 6:00 or lower (which is where a maximum of 20 seconds is actually reasonable at a push). Yours was almost certainly rejected as it was *still going on* with it's filled pre-outro section beyond the 6 minute mark, followed by an extended filled outro going on far past that. Your entry is outright 11% over the time limit (which is easily enough to be an entire song section for other entrants) and also in a fashion where it wasn't immediately used to finish off the track, so that is completely unreasonable. AIM has been running for almost a decade at this point and there's been a number of tracks which have gone over the 6 minute mark, but keep things usually underneath around 10 seconds, with near enough every single one of those accepted being for reverb tail's or fade-out's. The goalposts have stayed consistent and they're not going to shift at this point (admittedly I did ask recently if we could consider a shift to 8 minutes maximum, but it was rejected with a fair-enough explanation, which is still all fine).
You could of properly double/triple/quadruple-checked anything you wanted to know before starting on your entry, asking for the specifics on the leeway-limit and what is/isn't acceptable for it before uploading your entry either publicly or through DM's (and clarified for further info if it wasn't precise enough for you). There's plenty of us on the forums or even the discord server's who could of given you a very quick response if you needed more specifics. You've still been granted the opportunity to freely edit your entry as well. It's by-far one of the most relaxed contest systems out there and hundreds of users with their hundreds of entries over the years have had no issues with how things have been running. The 'host' in this case could very easily make it a hard cut-off, but allows for that tiny bit of extra flexibility to get things done. Being given an inch and trying to make it a mile in the process isn't the way to go. Not that many go over the 6:00 mark, but they specifically know that it's best to treat it like a semi-hard cutoff and that every second over it reduces their chances of the entry being accepted (as it should be).
Also for this part at the end that you posted:
""And from a site like this that started off as Anti-Establishment, it's probably the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard""
Where did that come from? It's a community-ran event entirely reliant on donations and the hosts own finances to run accordingly. AIM is not an officially sponsored NG contest and any staff-contributions are given out as-is if they're feeling generous enough to maybe gift Supporter status to the top few entries etc. This is not a staff-ran event and never has been. What you've said above is such a stretch overall, we've left the earth's orbit entirely.
This entire thing is just incredible levels of unwarranted drama for something you really should of checked everything over and thought about accounting for, just like the hundreds of other individuals who have entered in the past. This has absolutely nothing to do with Bad Luck or anything like entry-quality, you've just approached this situation poorly and from the responses I've been seeing above, you should consider re-evaluating how you're approaching this situation before things start to turn for the worse.
The best advise I can give for you at the moment would be to take a break for awhile from this and perhaps reconsider entering the contest afterwards, there's a lengthy deadline on it so you'll have plenty of time to plan out what to do going forwards. If you still don't want to enter after that, no problems either. There's NGUAC and NGADM around the corner for other contests to think about. But AIM will still continue to run as-is it's historical rule-set.
Dude, right now I'm trying to be very calm, but what you're saying right now, others regardless if I agree with it or not have already said it already. As for my remark at the end. While I've only been a user for a year, I've known this site when it was around in the 90s. My remark about NG being Anti-Establishment was a reference to Fulp's reasoning for the creation of the Assassin Page. While it's been a while since I read said reasoning, I recall that the reason why he had celebs and politicians killed in many games, was because he didn't like the establishment. I was more or less referencing how a site that used to be all anarchistic, was now I'm sorry to say, kind of becoming conformist. Not that it's a bad thing altogether. Things change and what not, but I didn't like the idea of having to conform just so I could lose or get rejected for a different reason. Right now on top of length, the only reason they'd reject me now is because of bad behaviour due to my reaction to this.
When you put it that way 11% still isn't as bad as they made it out to be. That said, I feel the need to disagree on your reasoning regarding the track. The last 20 seconds of it was the finisher and the song is literally nothing without it. The idea is that Gojira through song starts out as limping before regaining his normal steps. If I took that whole thing out, there'd be no ending to the song. It would just stop and I'd be judged by how poor it'd be in quality because of it. It was a no win regardless. Literally none at all even if it did put me back to the leeway mark. As I mentioned before, I cannot alter this song in anyway to suit the rules without ruining the song.
Trust me when I say it though, 90% of the reasons why I don't get ahead in things like this is bad luck. Pure supernatural bad luck. Before, I was more or less content with losing the contest. I don't like to lose, but I've learned to accept that even if it is a constant in my case, but the second I was told I wasn't gonna get my foot in the door based on knowledge they slapped on me after, that just made already bad luck much worse. Said luck isn't limited to the odds of me being in the contests though. Literally every aspect of my life for the past decade has been like that. It used to just be few days to a month, but now it's every day. Before this, my internet was knocked out, after this, the site shut down just when I was trying to put this behind me and move on to my first collab. Imagine this scenario: You're having somewhat of a good day, whether it's because you got a better job, a special gift, one of a million ways your day could go good. Then some random stranger for no reason out of nowhere comes out and slaps you in the face. It's strange, it hurts, you're pissed, but you shrug and move on. Only for another one to slap you when you least expect it. That's been my luck for the past 10 years. Every time I've tried to move on or improve myself I get slapped back in the rut I tried crawling out. Only this time it escalated to a slap a day.
You are right in that I should have checked, I already acknowledged that and even pointed out that I did check at least one of the rules in some respect regarding which art to use, by asking the host a question about. However, that said I don't think I should have had to check. One of the judges made it clear why they adhere to this specific rule, however I find fault in that because if that rule is so sacred then they should have put the 20 second leeway in the new post instead of some vague words that if I could easily get confused by, then others can too.
@Spadezer That being said my behaviour the past few hours has been grossly unacceptable even if I continue to stand by this. While I was venting before it, part of why I was more mad than I should be at this, was because I was actually in the middle of moving on from this, by participating in my first ever collaboration, just when that flooding incident happened. Imagine taking a moment to yell out some frustrations and just when you feel you've vented enough that you should be feeling better, something else comes along to piss you off and add to it.
@CIEIRMusic Alright, lets have another visual look at things:
https://imgur.com/27dPK9r
- Your final outro transition doesn't even begin until 6:15
- The 'outro' takes the track to 6:40 in total and into the judge-accepted DQ zone by a double-digits figure.
If that final 25 seconds was chopped off, it probably would of just-about gotten in. Although it's perfectly understandable that you wouldn't want to do that for the contest. Although on the other hand, the contest isn't going to shift it's time goalposts either for the sake of one entry, as that will open up a floodgate of everyone else doing longer and longer entries (which the judges have explicitly stated when questioned upon track-time length that the 6-Minute time-length shall remain). If you're committed to keeping the track is right now, all cool. It's better though if you take the AIM tag off of it in that case and treat it as it's own thing, as it just doesn't comply with either the stated guidelines or the quasi-threshold by a fair margin. '40 seconds' or '11%' is all relative, figures can be rotated around to make things look like a bigger or smaller deal than they actually are to support/deny an argument. If the track 'has' to be that long to feel complete, fine, but it isn't within the rule-specified limit or the quasi-threshold's limit either, so it's not going to count.
The thing as well with feeling that you don't have to check would be that assumptions work both ways. One may think that 6-minutes is a hard limit, while others may only see it as a rough-guideline. It can and does cause issues, but historically it hasn't for AIM. It's been more problematic for certain past contests where there's stricter guidelines over what can-and-can't be done, but not so much in this case.
Don't worry about 'behavior' affecting any track's potential score, the judges are professional enough in their judging process that it shouldn't affect the results beyond their objective opinions of an entry. I'm sure if you wanted to try your hand at another entry, it will be scored according to criteria and there won't be any bad feelings affecting things. A fair few of us would certainly kick-off if we detected any legitimate case of that happening, don't worry!
The '20 second' thing is certainly a quasi-threshold which transforms into a hard-cutoff, but that has been based around the observed track-length data of hundreds of entries over the years. I think the longest one from memory was around 10 seconds and that was mainly the reverb-tail from a pluck or something like that just decaying. The issue is that if such a threshold was encoded into the ruleset long ago instead of existing in an abstract state, what you'd see happening would be individuals consistently pushing over that limit by one or two seconds every single year, to the point that the quasi-threshold itself would just keep rapidly expanding and become utterly pointless within 2-3 years. Keeping it at it's static state and enforcing it as a hard cutoff is the only way to make sure that there's enough leeway to let tracks finish off those final few seconds, but not enough to just outright make that 6-Min marker obsolete (otherwise the judges would not specify 6 minutes)
I can appreciate things are not that great in general right now and life can hit any of us hard at any point, but the track still doesn't really qualify at the end of the day, not much else I can really say about it!
I appreciate the help but I have no intention of entering this contest. On top of my reasons, I'm not gonna lie, after how I acted I'll be surprised if they let me in as an entry. If there's one thing I know about music contests be it on sites like this and even major stuff like Talent or American Idol, they judge on the behaviour of the contestant just as much as the technical stuff and the quality of the work. Plus it doesn't help that I pissed off one of the judges. Funny enough this was exactly how I imagined my music career would be like if I did succeed better. Getting into confrontations, while bad, seems to be part of the norm for musicians. People like Mozart, Roger Waters and the like have often their fair share of disputes with others. I do intend to keep it as is, but at the same time I won't take the aim tag off. Messed up as it sounds, I still want people to see a rejected song. Plus historical purposes. Granted online drama nothing new no matter the subject matter, if I ever do get lucky, get well known and even turn a profit I'd like to show what I left behind good and bad. Plus while I did it out of genuine anger and a warped sense of justice, I won't lie, when people react to the word rejected it kinda helps me with a different goal one that I never intend but would help me along the way: Cult Following. Sounds nuts I know, but a lot of greats had their fair share. It's weird, my luck may be bad, but I have this uncanny ability to make the best out of a bad situation. I'll wait for another contest, hopefully someone outside the community has a crazy idea I might be interested in.
Sadly though I do worry about behaviour, because even if it fits my image or it gets ignored in favour of new drama, I am often aware that when I lose my temper, it scares or pisses people off. They see someone like me rant in the mood I'm in the first thing they'd want to do if they're not brave enough to yell at me back is walk away and I've learned from experience and sportsmanship that even if one feels in the fight, that their behaviour does factor into it. I could be a master of all musics, but if I kept acting like an asshole, it'd lower my chances.
"The thing as well with feeling that you don't have to check would be that assumptions work both ways. One may think that 6-minutes is a hard limit, while others may only see it as a rough-guideline. It can and does cause issues, but historically it hasn't for AIM. It's been more problematic for certain past contests where there's stricter guidelines over what can-and-can't be done, but not so much in this case."
That there is exactly right and to be honest I went in there knowing that the assumptions go both ways. Not to sound prideful or even borderline narcissistic, but while the host told me they didn't hate the quality, I have this nagging feeling they didn't even listen the song. Might be paranoia but often these feelings sometimes come true.
What you said there about pushing the limit, that's what astounds me the most about this in terms of entries. These people compose and play as though they're trying to push over that 6 minute limit, without going over. I take a different approach if I feel the song's not over yet I go until it ends and I was lucky I was even able to get 40 seconds over because I've written songs in the past without even knowing until after I turn it into a media file that exceed at least 10 minutes. As for hard cut offs, this is more of a nitpick, but I don't like ending a song like that. I don't knock those that do, but it feels kinda wrong to me.
The other reason why I didn't like that constraint other than being told after, was the topic of the contest. Music based on how you view pictures. I used to go to museums back in the day and during the picture exhibits there was often some song playing with an individual painting similar to that piece "Pictures at an Exhibition." I figure if a picture is worth 1000 words, why shouldn't it be worth it's weight in music?
I appreciate you understand how hard it is. Even after I made this news post I already made peace with the fact that I wasn't gonna get in this one. I just wasn't going down without a fight. I'm pretty sure everyone on this site had their moment regarding that. If there's one thing I can take home from this. Is that the artist whom I based my song on loves it the way it is. That's a win on it's own.
Another way of looking at it is that you have a 40 second advantage over all the other entries. I appreciate it's gutting because you poured your heart into this, but the rules are there to make sure everyone is on the same playing field. 40 seconds is a huge amount of time in music, and if your piece placed higher than a track bang on 6 minutes, think how the contestant you beat would feel - they'd be pretty pissed!
It's also good skill to learn in the practical sense. I wrote an piece of music for a film, then the editor shaved 1 minute 20 off the run time and asked me to do the same. It's hard, but when you're getting paid, you find a way to edit those seconds out!
I do feel for you though, love the track!
Ya but this isn't a piece to a film. It's music inspired by art. I was not informed about the leeway until after I made the damn thing and their solution wasn't to cut 40 seconds off of it, but 20 off of it. I've made songs that are meant to be cut the way you said it, but this is not one of them. I was ill-informed and I refuse to bend to their ways because of it. It's the principle of the matter. Not to mention one of the judges who shall remain nameless, deliberately humiliated me in public over this crap. Someone I thought was a friend. I won't forget that.
@wobwobrob That said I do appreciate you like the track.
@wobwobrob Also I did try to apologize to them for my behaviour, but it's clear what they think of me considering they not only deleted my comment on the thread regarding this protest, but my apology as well. So needless to say they can take their contest and shove it.
Troisnyx
Please.
The whole point about constraints is that they are present in contests. Some have length constraints, some have others. A contest without rules 1) may as well not be a contest at all, and 2) is open to plenty of abuse, and I know this because I've had to fight hard as a judge to undo the many abuses of the Newgrounds Audio Deathmatch.
The host does care about those rules, because ultimately there are going to be people who deliver with that constraint. You have two months. You can choose to do likewise, or not.