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[Aamp]

Bold are the parts you need to read

Whether it's 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 32 degrees Celsius, the beach is a cool place to be!  It's where land meets water; oceans and seas spanning across countries and continents, or maybe just a lake nearby.  It can be hot, sand and sun - or cool, cloudy, misty, and breezy.  A place of partying, celebration and excitement, or a place to relax, and meditate.  Maybe you simply go there to yell at the clouds!  This challenge is about putting into music what the beach means to you!

In that sense any genre goes:  Pop, California surfer rock, a Hawaiian groove, rave, something of a score encompassing the sights and sounds of the Polynesian Islands, or Doom metal,, if that's your type of beach thing!  Whatever you like..

..And for the part that's a beach:

Restrictions:

Your piece of music must have only 4 instrument tracks during playback at any one given time.  For example, if in a measure, you have playing, 3 guitars and a set of drums (4 inst. tracks playing), and you feel the insatiable urge to add a banjo for the next measure, you would then be required to remove either the drums or a guitar for the banjo to take its place.  Clear as mud!?

So that means you can have as many instruments as you like, just only 4 playing at the same time (chords on an instrument track are okay though).  A new instrument will need to replace an old one; BUT, if you do some of your own sound design, be it field recording, or even vocals that you record yourself -OR- if you collaborate with someone, you may earn a 5th simultaneous track as incentive to do so

So:

-Sound design or vocals gets you a 5th track dedicated to it (cannot be used for another instrument).

-Collaborating with another artist(s) gets you a 5th simultaneous instrument track (does not go up by one more per additional collaborator)

-Do both the above combined and have 6 simultaneous tracks total; 5 for collab + 1 dedicated for sound design or vocal!

A winning pair or group would have to co-host the next challenge or appoint one person to do so.

These limitations should hopefully spark creativity and level the playing field a bit through a little simplicity.  The idea is to encourage focus on good chord structures, melodies, instrumentation variety, and rhythms; bridge the gap say between a dedicated DAW powerhouse and a smart phone with a music creation app. 

Great for beginners and advanced composers alike.  You can use just about anything for this challenge including but not needing limited hardware devices.  With this in mind, your submission should be made specifically for this challenge, albeit if you already have something that completely meets this criteria, you may use it or even modify an existing piece you've made to meet it as well. 

Here are some beachin' video game examples that are not all that complex in terms of instrument layers:

(The last one is maybe not a beach tune, but listen how the instruments switch up and take place of another)









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRjEBqGsI2o


Now time to get creating and making some sweet beach music!  The deadline for submissions will be Monday July 21, 2014.  Winner(s) will have to host the next challenge.  All the best and good luck!   

[Jasmine]

Ooh, this one looks FUN!

[amushel]

Agreed. I'm looking forward to putting something together for this.

[Gabriel Naro]

Bad week to be without a computer, but lets see if I can manage!

[The Translocator]

Okay, after 2 hours of work, I'm finished.
https://soundcloud.com/the-translocator/flashback-beach
  Not sure if I've crossed the gap of mediocrity yet, but I hope so.

[Bakuda]

This looks fun!  I love the simplistic limitations.  Just to clarify though, when you say you can "only have 4 tracks", that doesn't mean you can't have less than 4 tracks playing, right?

[Lauchsuppe]

Woah! This is amazing! Pretty accurately 20 years ahead of its time. I can't stop marvelling 

[Aamp]

This looks fun!  I love the simplistic limitations.  Just to clarify though, when you say you can "only have 4 tracks", that doesn't mean you can't have less than 4 tracks playing, right?

A song can have 800 tracks but only up to four playing at once, but it can totally be less.  So yeah, a solo track would be okay - you are correct.

[Guitarmatt21]

Woah! This is amazing! Pretty accurately 20 years ahead of its time. I can't stop marvelling 

Agreed, that song blew my mind with how good it was. Always forget that game had an amazing soundtrack (despite looking janky as hell). I'm definitely doing this contest, my entry is almost finished and I'm loving it so far. I kind of cheated in two spots so I have a question about that. Can 1 track be considered one instrument, but two styles. For example, I have a pedal steel for single notes that slides and a pedal steel volume swell for chords and stacked them on top of another and called it a track. Is that okay?

[Aamp]

Hey no cheating haha. Ok, it was intended to imagine as something that one person could play on an instrument, so if it can be played as chords and single notes at the same time like a piano, then it's okay; if it would take two people (or recordings) to play that then it's two tracks stacked like you say. 

But..  I didn't specifically say anything against a software instruments ability to exceed a performance limitation in the rules like with two overlapping styles, or having a "4 armed" drummer on a kit spanning bongos and all (like a SNES might be able to do that with one inst. track and some software synths have layered voices etc.) just "one instrument per track". 

Ultimately you'll all be the judge, just keep it simple (enough to discern) and if it feels like "cheating" then try doing something else creatively at that point - like dropping the bassline and bringing in a variation in the beat, just for that moment or something

[Aamp]

Where is everybody? at the beach   Should we add another week?

[Guitarmatt21]

My submission is like 90% done, just gotta add some touches here and there and master it. Really liking how it's turning out

[Jasmine]

I had hoped to enter but I managed to get myself caught up in a couple of collabs!

I guess I'll be sitting this one out.

[Jon Sysyn]

Working on it   should be up by this weekend.

[amushel]

I've started working on something that I think is coming along very nicely. It should be ready to go pretty soon.

[Glyph]

All I could imagine was a lonely beach with a dark storm on the horizon. But after the storm clears, there's no reason to not have a party before sunset

The Cloudy Beach

(edit: fixed up a bit)

[amushel]

I think I'm pretty much done with this. I ended up going with some laid back night time jazziness. I just stuck to four instruments. Rhodes with some delay, electric bass, drums, and a lead made with Commodore 64 saw, filters, and reverb. I think worked out quite well.

https://soundcloud.com/andrewmushel/dusk-sands

[Tejas Shroff]

Hey guys! You might know me as MusiCore Studios, but I thought I was done with being all secret-like and it was time to use my real name!

Found out about this competition a few days ago and right away went to the beach for some inspiration and sound recording. Here's what I came up with! Since the beach meant different things to me at different times of the day, I thought why not express it all! So, here's my take on my day at the beach, from sunrise to sunset :D

https://soundcloud.com/tejas-shroff/sunrise-to-sunset

Enjoy, and as always, feedback and comments are welcome!

[Jon Sysyn]

Here's my interpretation, Beach Night.
https://soundcloud.com/sysmus/beach-night-1

accompanied by a few lines to paint the scene:

Where the sand is
crystal,
and you can peer into the
seemingly infinite
on which you stand.

[ZackParrish]

https://soundcloud.com/zack-parrish/you-are-my-beach

Kind of a last minute deal... so not much to it sadly. :p