Do Something Challenge Discussion Thread

[DrewJD82]

Ok, here’s what I’m thinking for the first one until we get our sea-legs functioning.

I‘m going to make a submission thread where anyone can link a drum MIDI, YouTube link to a backing track or drum track. We can use this to pool content for future challenges. These will be drawn from at random, mostly to mix up the challenges in case we have a couple Emin submissions in a row (because that’s all I ever play in). I’m also going to include some info on how to rip backing tracks off YouTube. I’ve got a Dropbox account I can use to host the files on.

There will be one new thread each week for the Challenge Of The Week and one bi-weekly thread for the Bi-Weekly Challenge. In those threads the following will be in the first post:

A link to a YouTube backing track
A link to a YouTube bare drum track
A MIDI drum file

Of course, these don’t have to be utilized, I’m just trying to make it as easy as possible for those who aren’t busting out drum tracks/recordings on their own. You can still submit whatever you want and not use them at all.

Once we get through a couple of these and see how things are working, we can start adding in some themed challenges. I just want to keep it simple at first so we can see what kind of issues we may run into.

Another thing we did at the other forum was allow people to contribute as much as they wanted. So if you have the time and inspiration, you can take part in both the Weekly and Bi-Weekly challenges, but your submissions must be different for each one. Or maybe one week you wrote a song and want to solo over a backing track.

I think there should be some distinction in the point system for an entire original song, with everything tracked and someone soloing over a backing track. If not, someone can just improv over backing tracks each night, upload them and have 20 points while others are working on one entire song, tracking the drums, bass, guitars, vocals and only getting 1 point after a lot of effort. Hell, even a cover song, recording every single instrument would require more time/effort that a single, improvised solo over a backing track. While I want people to be challenged, I also don’t want anyone discouraged.

I’m thinking something like this-

-Full original song submission; this means you played/programmed drums from scratch and recorded the bass/guitars/vox/keys/whatever else you added: 3 points

-Wrote/recorded an entire song over an existing drum track (like Ola’s Swolas): 2.5 Points

-Full cover song submission, this means you basically did the above, but did not write the song: 2 Points

-Soloing over a backing track, improvised or written: 1 Point

_________________________________________________________________________________

I’m not looking for additional suggestions right now, I just need to know if this sounds fair to all involved or if it makes anyone less interested in contributing.

Savvy?

 

[la szum]

Thanks for taking the time, Drew.

How about just 1 point for anyone who makes any kind of contribution----and that way we
are not weighting the "game" to those who have more skills, acuity, or capability with
writing and recording.

I know you are not looking for any more suggestions!

I appreciate you taking the time. I just feel 1 point to rule them all would invite more
participation. And then it ONLY becomes about participation and nothing else.

 

[DrewJD82]

Thanks for taking the time, Drew.

How about just 1 point for anyone who makes any kind of contribution----and that way we
are not weighting the "game" to those who have more skills, acuity, or capability with
writing and recording.

I know you are not looking for any more suggestions!

I appreciate you taking the time. I just feel 1 point to rule them all would invite more
participation. And then it ONLY becomes about participation and nothing else.

This is where I used my previous experiences to draw a conclusion; I can’t remember the exact point system we used at the other forum, but I know it’s a bit of a bummer when you spend 20 hours writing/recording a song from ground up only to receive 1 point, where someone improvised over 3 different backing tracks, recorded them all in 20 minutes and got 1.5 points.

It’s certainly not meant to ‘punish’ those who aren’t doing full songs, but there’s a huge difference in the effort that goes into those. I’d think that someone just improvising over a backing track can bust out one an hour as where I know it takes me nearly a week to write a single drum track.

Edit- And in the spirit of a “challenge”, the underlying idea is that this is pushing us to do more than we currently are. While I’m not going to call an improvised solo over a backing track “low effort”, it’d be great to see people really pushing themselves outside their normal limitations, especially the self-imposed limitations.

 

[duzie]

 

[Bruce]

sounds good!

 

[DrewJD82]

They don’t, really, because the prize at the end of the week is knowing you did something. The points are more meant for the contributors, bragging rights are “I contributed!”, so in that sense, I can understand the desire for 1 point-for-all, but like I said, I know what it’s like to put in a massive amount of effort and come up short because someone smoked you in contributions by improvising over a backing track.

Just an example, here are some of my previous submissions-







The two full songs took me a straight week to complete, the last track was a Lead Of The Week I submitted because I was either running low on steam that week or had extra time after finishing a full song; I improvised over it a couple times, pressed Record after I understood the changes and spent maybe 15 minutes entirely on it.

 

[TSJMajesty]

I was just thinking this.

 

[Fireproof]

Can’t wait to be able to give it a try. I’ve been meaning to figure out recording into Logic with my FM9, import a separate track to play along to, etc., for months and months, and haven’t made the time to do it. I think this will force me to do it finally. (But as I said - I’m swamped until Feb, so that will be my start date).

I appreciate duzie’s post above - I’ll have to just let go of the competitive side of me and know going in, I’ll never be at the top of the leaderboard. For me - I think my goal will be to be ON the leaderboard, and just use this as a forcing function to learn new things, and improve my playing.

 

[Bruce]

To produce an entire song in a week, mixed and mastered where one person wore every hat is tough and definitely calls for some distinction IMO. This is how I tend to work and it took me damn near 2 decades to get to a point where I can share something not completely embarrassing that was just dead air a week ago. When you do it all yourself, your production will only ever be as good as what you are the WORST at. Its unfortunately the truth. Definitely not for the faint of heart!

 

[la szum]

I was just thinking this.

Haha! Used to watch that show all the time.


Comedians and other artists know points truly don't matter----because art, humour, and music
is not objective. Sure we can objectively measure the hours someone put in, but this is not a fucking
job. Already have a few of those!

It is supposed to be for fun and to ENCOURAGE participation.... not stunt or obstruct it.

And I am cool with being the outlier in this situation----until someone accuses me of being woke
and wanting to award participation trophies merely for showing up. Then it's fisticuffs!

 

[la szum]

If the most time invested = the best results = the most points received then Chinese Democracy is the best
album of all-time!!!

 

[Gearzilla]

My personal leaning is if it’s not a competition then every contribution should be equal point wise regardless of technical difficulty or amount of time to achieve. Everyone’s effort being relative to their abilities.

 

[la szum]

I know what it’s like to put in a massive amount of effort and come up short because someone smoked you in contributions by improvising over a backing track.

That's my entire musical career. Bands put out of commission by an acoustic guitarist with a backing track.

 

[DrewJD82]

It is supposed to be for fun and to ENCOURAGE participation.... not stunt or obstruct it.

And I am cool with being the outlier in this situation----until someone accuses me of being woke
and wanting to award participation trophies merely for showing up. Then it's fisticuffs!

Well, there’s going to be a hard rule; any unwarranted negative comments immediately disqualify your entry that week and a 2nd time disqualifies you from participating entirely. None of that stuff here.

But the participation trophy is exactly why I’m staggering points. Again, I don’t mean this as a knock on anyone who is currently at the “I can solo over a backing track and that’s it”, but in comparison to those who will be contributing full songs, there‘s a huge difference in the amount of effort being put into it.

And hopefully it inspires the people who are only at that level to push a little harder to do more than that. And if not, that’s totally cool, too. Not everyone wants to be a songwriter, absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I don’t want to diminish the efforts of those who do/are.

 

[DrewJD82]

If the most time invested = the best results = the most points received then Chinese Democracy is the best
album of all-time!!!

That had one great song on it, “Madagascar”. I just read this crazy story about how people were spending up to $20K for unreleased tracks/demos from that album….two years ago! People getting sued by the band, conspiracy theories, all kinds of crazy sh*t I never knew was occurring.

 

[la szum]

My personal leaning is if it’s not a competition then every contribution should be equal point wise regardless of technical difficulty or amount of time to achieve. Everyone’s effort being relative to their abilities.

That last sentence is huge! Well put.

A guy with kids and a family and lesser ability may struggle more putting one hour in
than a guy without as many commitments who put in 10 hours. It could require more of
him to just give that hour than we know.

Not to get borderline religious, but it reminds me of that tale about the woman with
two pence who gave it all, versus the man with more who gave less than all.

I don't know what other people's commitments are in life, and what else they have
going on. It could be less or more than my own. But if someone makes the effort to
offer anything I feel like that should be the entire point. No punt intended!!

 

[Fireproof]

Well, there’s going to be a hard rule; any unwarranted negative comments immediately disqualify your entry that week and a 2nd time disqualifies you from participating entirely. None of that stuff here.

But the participation trophy is exactly why I’m staggering points. Again, I don’t mean this as a knock on anyone who is currently at the “I can solo over a backing track and that’s it”, but in comparison to those who will be contributing full songs, there‘s a huge difference in the amount of effort being put into it.

And hopefully it inspires the people who are only at that level to push a little harder to do more than that. And if not, that’s totally cool, too. Not everyone wants to be a songwriter, absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I don’t want to diminish the efforts of those who do/are.

But you are diminishing their efforts by assigning lower point values.

I suck at ”original” soloing. So for me, to solo over a backing track that results in something I would be okay with sharing here, it would probably take me a week of working it up, planning it out, practicing it, etc., and the same amount of effort as it might take you guys to write a song.

Your proposed point system doesn’t really consider that. Just saying.

Not that you have to change it. But the current point system seems to “reward” those who are better/more skilled, and I thought that was not the point of this. (No offense meant…)

 

[TSJMajesty]

But you are diminishing their efforts by assigning lower point values.

That's a very good point. It would take me a lot of effort to just submit a solo, due to my non-existent recording knowledge.

 

[Jarick]

I like the idea of different kinds of challenges. Some might be originals, some might be a kind of remix, some might be covers, some might be solos, etc.

Weekly participation is going to be really hard for me as I've got so much stuff going on. For example this weekend, my son has a hockey tournament about an hour away, so that's four games plus driving. Then I have two games I'm playing in at night. Plus groceries, housework, etc. I'll be heads down.

Maybe there's something like, each month there's one big original and one big cover, and then there's a couple mini challenges like a solo or something to fill out the weekly part?

For the competitive part, maybe there's a poll and we all vote in a winner?

(I'm assuming this would be a subforum with separate threads per challenge)

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Maybe we shouldn't overthink this and just start doing what Drew thinks is cool. Looking forward to this! I think it will be very interesting to hear what different styles of music the forum members come up with.