WWW MIDI Ragtime Composition Contest Project.
Benjamin Intartaglia
I've recently discussed with some cyber - raggers via E mail on an Internet
MIDI competition contest idea.
I'd like to know opinions of all ragtime lovers who have a midi equipment
and who sometimes compose ragtime music about the viability of this project.
The main difficulties, in my opinion, will be to vote so as to designate the
judges (how much and who ?) for this intended competition and also to find
a web master which will be interested to share the submited works.
All opinions and thoughts will be useful and greatly appreciated.
Best wishes
Benjamin Intartaglia, France
Mike Knudsen
<Benjamin.i...@wanadoo.fr> writes:
>The main difficulties, in my opinion, will be to vote so as to designate the
>judges (how much and who ?) for this intended competition and also to find
>a web master which will be interested to share the submited works.
Thanks to Benjamin for starting this idea.
Some questions that we should ponder before getting too far include:
Would the musical entries be MIDI captures of hand-played performances (such as
Benjamin is very good at),
or sequenced compositions with artificially added expression (such as Hamish
Davidson and I do),
or just sequences that represent the composition?
Would the above be judged solely on the composition, or also on the
expressiveness of the performance or "realization" (as synthesized pieces were
once called)?
Anyway, I do like the idea of a composition contest, as oppsed to the usual
playing (performance) contest. Will the judges be able to separate the
composition's merits from the "performance?" Should they?
--Mike Knudsen
Oscar loves trash, but hates Spam! Delete him to reply to me.
Dan Mouyard
This sounds like a great idea! I think both types of MIDI styles
(hand-played and sequenced) should be allowed. If there were enough
entries, they could even be in two different categories.
I think the pieces should be judged soley on the composition, but
dynamics and expressiveness are both in every composer's toolbox.
In my opinion, I think that the judges should separate the composing
ability from the playing ability.
I'd be happy to help out in any way I can for this project.
Dan Mouyard
Dan Montgomery
contest a couple of times, I have some thoughts to offer. I agree with Dan
Mouyard that the judges should evaluate the composition itself and not the
performance of it. Ideally, playing ability should not be considered at
all, although entrants should realize that the better they play their piece
(or sequence it), the more favorably it will be judged. In other words, if
a piece is simply sequenced in perfect rhythm with no expression, one can't
assume that the judges will recognize all of the opportunities for dynamics,
tempo changes, etc. on their own.
Given that this would be an Internet based contest, I would suggest also
that rather than have a very small number of "expert" judges, a relatively
large group be involved in rating the entries. The reason for this is that
musical taste, even within a single genre, varies greatly from person to
person and having more judges minimizes the impact this has on the final
rankings. I don't know if the international ragtime community could survive
its own "Canadian pairs skating" controversy (TIC)! I would think that a
contest run over the Internet should have a relatively easy time getting
even as many as 50 judges lined up (not that it has to be that many).
I am in the midst of writing a new piece which I already suspect would not
"play in Peoria" simply because I couldn't resist the urge to put in some
elements that are both nontraditional as well as hard to play! So I like
the idea of this contest because I see the opportunity both for a broader
judging perspective as well as more exposure (so even if you don't win, lots
of people get to hear your rag, as many times as they want).
"Benjamin Intartaglia" <Benjamin.i...@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
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