CODENAME: CHIPS CACAOPHONY

Welcome to the signups for the CHIPS CACAOPHONY, a goofy, anonymized, multi-round music competition to test your mettle as a composer!

To sign up, post here saying you’re interested. It’d also be nice of you to sign up here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_DQnh_iB5KPB_7NlKFeyJCIOyjYpIrzFfUmB_rf_sqs/edit

ROUNDS

Your goal in the CACAOPHONY is to write amazing music, qualify into the final round, and win!

The way that you qualify is to submit songs that score over 100 points in the QUALIFICATION ROUNDS.

In the qualifications rounds, you’ll write a song. Once the deadline is up, everyone will listen and vote on everyone’s songs. I will announce the results after the deadline is over, and the top 15 or so scorers will receive points based on how well they did.

You do not need to participate in every round! If you’re busy, or need a break, you can skip out without penalty.

ROUND TYPES

There are two types of rounds:

1. NORMAL rounds. Weekend to weekend rounds where you write any unique piece of music. These give the majority of your points and will be the meat and potatoes of the Cacaophony.

2. BONUS rounds. These will be short (5 or less days) and will require you to write music with weird rules. For example, maybe you'll have to write a piece that's the same forwards and backwards, or a piece that only uses white noise for percussion, or maybe something totally different! The actual rules won't be announced until the start of the bonus round. 

SCHEDULE

Main Round 1 (3/3 - 3/11)

Bonus Round! (3/12 - 3/16)

Main Round 2 (3/17 - 3/25)

Bonus Round! 2 (3/26 - 3/30)

Qualification round 3 (3/31 - 4/8)

Bonus Round! 3 (4/9 - 4/13)

Final (Bonus) Round (4/16-4/19)

FINAL ROUND (4/12-5/5) (two weeks!)

Points will be distributed like so:

1: 100 points

2: 90 points

3: 80 points

4: 70 points

5: 60 points

6: 50 points

7: 40 points

8: 30 points

9: 20 points

10: 10 points

11-15: 25 points

Bonus round scores will receive half points.

ANONYMITY

All songs will be anonymous until judging is over. This is to ensure judging fairness.

JUDGING

Everyone who enters a song in a round will be required to vote on 20 of the songs in that round. All votes will be made public at the end of the round. Failing to vote will be a -20 point penalty (of course, you will not go into negatives on any round).

On top of community voting, a panel of judges will vote on all tracks. Their votes will be 3x as strong as community votes.

REWARDS

I might send the winner some cacao beans or something. As usual for me, the reward of these contests is the joy in participating!

MINUTIAE

All songs must be original! You may not have started on a song before the contest begins. That will get you permanently banned from the contest, and all future cacophonies.

You may enter as a team of 2.

All compositional, arrangement and production work must be done by you and your teammate. However, you may ask other people to play instrument parts or sing.

You may only submit one track per round. It’s also okay if you skip a round! If you already have over 100 points, you can sit back and relax, if you’d like. ;-)