Vote for the Jan/Feb "Theme" festival

[64Guitars]

Time to vote for our next two festivals which will run from Jan 1 to Feb 28. Voting starts now and runs for 7 days. You can change your vote any time until the closing of the poll on December 30th. To do so, click "Remove vote" to cancel your previous vote, then vote again.

This poll is for the "Theme" festival. There is a separate poll for the "Artists/Covers" festival here:

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=9747.msg130132#msg130132

Please vote in both polls.

[Gnasty]

[64Guitars]

Voting closed. The winner is "Electronic music (no guitars allowed)" with 35.7% of the votes.

EmuFest ?

[Flash Harry]

Emu Fest. Madness.

[Geir]

64G, could you (re)post the rules for the EMU-fest? I guess most of it should be electronic in some way, but what are our options?

[64Guitars]

The idea of emuFest is to create music from electronically-generated sounds that do not emulate traditional instruments.  Sound generators could include keyboard synths, guitar synths, stylophones, computers, etc.

I imagine that most members will use a synthesizer (keyboard or guitar). If you do, please don't use patches that emulate traditional instruments such as piano, organ, guitar, brass, woodwinds, etc. Instead, choose patches that create unique electronic sounds.

The only exceptions are drums and vocals which you're free to add if you like. Although, I'd suggest that these could be made to sound more electronic with a little imagination. For example, if you're using a BR drum machine, try using the 808 drum kit instead of a standard acoustic drum kit. The 808 kit models the Roland TR-808 drum machine which was popular in the eighties. It produces a more electronic sound.



And for vocals, you could try using the BR's effects to make them sound more electronic. Or use a vocoder if you have access to one.

Of course, these are only suggestions. You're free to record your vocals dry, or use one of the BR's acoustic drum kits if you prefer. But everything else must be generated electronically.

If you don't have a suitable keyboard or guitar synth, consider using your computer. There are lots of programs available that can create electronic music. One that I can recommend is LMMS. It's free and available for Windows and Linux. Here's a short example created entirely in LMMS.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxeCnPMQUfc

If you have a BR-864, you can use its built-in guitar synth. Although it can only play single notes, it is a true guitar synthesiser, not an effect. It does not use the sound produced by the guitar except to determine the pitch and duration of the note. It then generates a sound electronically at that pitch for the same duration. Unfortunately, none of the other BRs include the guitar synth. It is unique to the BR-864.

When I think of electronic music, the artists that come to mind are Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Larry Fast's Synergy, Walter/Wendy Carlos, Isao Tomita, Vangelis, etc. But a lot of new wave and synthpop music from the eighties was electronic, from keyboard-based bands like The Human League, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, OMD, Art of Noise, Eurythmics, etc. And, of course, much of the modern dance music since the nineties has been electronic. Feel free to cover the works of these artists or create your own original electronic music.

The songs submitted for emuFest so far have been good examples of the kind of music we're looking for. I hope we'll get lots more. It seems that nearly all of Songcrafters' members are guitar players. So this festival presents a great opportunity to stretch our boundaries and try creating music without any guitars or other traditional instruments. I think it will be a lot of fun and will produce some great music.

[64Guitars]

Lots of electronic music videos posted here for inspiration:

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=9849.msg131435#msg131435

[Greeny]

I'm going to enjoy this! I've already been working on something in anticipation(!), so great voting everyone, lol