Band fest a great idea but not long enough

[kenny mac]

 HI all,
When the band fest just started as some of my fellow crafters know I had a bereavement in the family.
We managed one song as a team but in general I feel with peoples schedules being so busy and life in general, jobs ,shifts,world time differences etc
It's tough to get everyones ideas together in this time scale.
Could it be possible to leave this one opened? so we could add to it throughout the year?
Also could you be in other bands with different people as I imagine that some people would have liked to start one with someone but seen they where in another one.
I believe opening this one up could be very fruitfully and musically enjoyable.
What do you think?
I personally want to collaborate with everyone on here or anyone that sends me an idea 

[Farrell Jackson]

I totally agree with Kenny's comments about extending the bandfest.

Farrell

[kenny mac]

Anyone else  out there got any views?

[64Guitars]

Could it be possible to leave this one opened? so we could add to it throughout the year?

Sorry but I think that having an ongoing fest would be too much work for the admin team. In the early years of the site, all of our fests were ongoing. But with two new fests added every two months, it soon got to be too much work, so I decided that fest submissions would only be accepted during the fest.

But ever since the first Jemima's Kite song was posted I've loved the idea of bands formed entirely of Songcrafters members and I'd like to find more ways to encourage our members to form bands. That's why I proposed the BandFest idea in the first place.

For anyone who has formed a Songcrafters band for BandFest or would like to, I have a few suggestions.

1) Continue to post songs by your band. Just because the festival is ending doesn't mean that you can't post songs by your band. Of course you can! It's just that they won't be added to the BandFest jukebox after the festival ends this Thursday. But they'll still be in the Latest Songs jukebox and your personal jukebox, as well as the song post topic. And, although I can't make any promises, I'd love to have jukeboxes for individual Songcrafters bands where all of the songs by that band would be featured. But I'll have to give that idea a lot of thought to make sure that it's maintainable. It would have to be an automatic jukebox similar to the member jukeboxes that we already have. But to do that, there'd have to be some way that the software can recognise all of the posts for a particular band. Right now, that doesn't exist, so I'll have to think of some way that members can easily flag their posts as a band post. If I eventually find a way to make automatic band jukeboxes, then it should be possible to flag any of your previous posts as band posts. So continue to post your band songs now, and someday they might all be included in your own band jukebox.

2) Although the current BandFest is ending this Thursday, there's no reason why we can't have BandFest 2 someday (or BandFest 3, 4, etc.) So, if you like the idea of BandFest and would like to do it again, post a suggestion for BandFest 2 in the Suggestions for future festivals topic and we'll make it one of the choices in the next festival poll. Of course, it will still have to win the vote. If it doesn't, then feel free to suggest it again a couple of months later for the next festival poll. If there's enough interest, it should win the vote eventually.

3) As with any festival, if you start a new song during the festival and don't have time to finish it, just send me a PM before the festival ends to let me know and I'll watch for your post and add it to the BandFest jukebox. You can take as much time as you need - a week, two weeks, whatever. But you must let me know by PM before the festival ends. After the festival ends, it's too late to start a new song but any songs that you started during the festival and informed me of will be accepted.

Also could you be in other bands with different people as I imagine that some people would have liked to start one with someone but seen they where in another one.
I believe opening this one up could be very fruitfully and musically enjoyable.
What do you think?
I personally want to collaborate with everyone on here or anyone that sends me an idea  

Collaborations are great and I'd like to find ways to encourage more of them. For example, we had a CollabsFest back in 2012 and we could definitely have a CollabsFest 2 if someone suggests it and it wins the vote. But collabs and bands aren't exactly the same thing. When several members work on a song together and post it, that's a collab. When those same members post several songs, then they're a band. That's why I made the rule for BandFest that you could only be in one band. Otherwise, I feared that each band would only post one song, in which case it's not really a band, it's a collab. The only way I can think of that we could allow people to be in multiple bands is with the condition that the band has to post a minimum of say three songs. But that creates a problem because there's no way to know if a band will post three songs until they've actually done it. That means that we wouldn't be able to add their first two songs to the BandFest jukebox until they'd posted the third song. Not very practical I think.

In CollabFest, you could post songs by as many different groups of Songcrafters as you like. But with BandFest, I hoped to see a commitment to a single band posting as many songs as possible during the two months of the festival. Unfortunately, that wasn't as successful as I'd hoped. Only four songs so far, and only one band posted more than one song. Maybe it's the wrong time of year for it. People are busy with other things and don't have time to commit to a band. Or maybe, as you suggested, two months isn't long enough to post more than one or two songs. Although, I believe that Jemima's Kite recorded and posted all 12 songs for their first album between January 22, 2009 and February 26, 2009. That's just one month, so it's obviously possible to post multiple band songs in the two-month period of BandFest. It may not be easy, but it's definitely possible.


As I've said, I'm very interested in encouraging more Songcrafters bands and more collabs. I'll continue to try to think of ways to do that. If anyone has any suggestions for encouraging bands and/or collabs, I'd be happy to consider them.

[Hook]

Not that I disagree at all but I remember it being said at the beginning of the fest, 1 band only. If we didn't do that it would just be another collaboration fest. As far as it being left open, I hope all 3 bands that came out of the fest continue to make music. The idea was to see if any new virtual bands would pop up and they did. misssion accomplished if you ask me.
Sorry about your troubles my friend, glad your back around. You are the collaboration KING.
Rock on!

[Hook]

Couldn't we open a member account under the band name? Thus giving the band its own jukebox and you don't have to do any work?

[64Guitars]

Couldn't we open a member account under the band name? Thus giving the band its own jukebox and you don't have to do any work?

Perhaps, but only one member would have access to that account, so all songs by the band would have to be posted by the same member. And, ideally, I'd like to separate band posts from regular song posts. For example, right now if you go to the member jukeboxes, you see a list of all the members down the right side and you can select any member to listen to their songs. I'd like to be able to have a similar Band Jukebox where it would list only bands down the right side. To do that, there'd have to be a way to distinguish a band account from a regular member account.

I'll definitely give your idea some more thought. It might be the easiest way to get automatic jukeboxes for bands. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Mach]

Couldn't we open a member account under the band name? Thus giving the band its own jukebox and you don't have to do any work?

Perhaps, but only one member would have access to that account, so all songs by the band would have to be posted by the same member. And, ideally, I'd like to separate band posts from regular song posts.

I'll definitely give your idea some more thought. It might be the easiest way to get automatic jukeboxes for bands. Thanks for the suggestion!

Hook's suggestion is what was thinking also. If a band created an account under their band name couldn't all the members involved choose their one password so they all could access it or do you go by IP address?

It would be great to have Bandfest to continue in some form. Because as many of you know sometimes it takes a while to put things together and everyone in the band be 100% sure they are satisfied with the outcome.

Mach

[kenny mac]

All in all a healthy discussion that is fuelled by the fact we all dig each other and have the common ground to make music together.
Friendship,music and fun what more could we ask for?
Great to hear your views ,appreciate all that's been said.

[launched]

Yes, you have identified the key point Kenny - We all dig each other and that's awesome! Completely granular in design, that is the problem. When I suggested the name Songcrafters, which ultimately became the name of this site, I had already been intimately involved with several of the members, and everyone agreed it should be a continuing effort with song creation in mind. Collaborations, bands, etc were not mentioned. (Although collabs hit hard soon after, ear candy I tell you!!)

In my opinion, the best route for us would be the development of courage, ambition and songwriting skills. We have the best site for community musicianship hands down. The people that have come and gone here amaze me to no end.

Maybe we are making a lot of work for ourselves. Or maybe one person is and he should be let off the hook