New Idea for Steemian's Original Musicians
I was trying to come up with a way I could contribute better to Steemit's growth, after all like many of you I'm here for the long haul, and I would like to see this community one day dwarf all other social media platforms.
I've said before that as a songwriter who found Steemit recently I feel that I've stumbled on gold. The Open Mic family hosted by the loved @luzcypher and @pfunk have revamped that dreamer side of me, that I've been neglecting for a few years now. After all, its hard to find a musician's community where we can share our art and get paid to do so, without having to deal with the headache of today's music industry.
In the short time I've been here, I've not only found some great songwriters who are inspiring to listen to, but also a camaraderie from them that truly warms my heart. This last realization has made me think of how I could give back to this community. How I could not only say thank you and give my new friends my tiny upvote, but also attract more and more musicians to come join us, and make our community close to unstoppable.
I contacted @luzcypher today and ran this idea by him. Hosting Steemit's first ever songwriter competition. A platform for original music to take center stage, for Steemit's songwriter who spend hours upon hours pouring their hearts into paper to not only be recognized for their contribution, but also win a special prize for it.
I'm still thinking about the details of such a competition and how we could make this happen with the biggest positive impact for our growing family. Which is why I wanted to make this post and listen to your ideas.
We would need of course to pick judges and come up with the best format/structure as to give all participating songwriters the best chances of winning. I would be donating an acoustic/electric guitar for the 1st Place winner of the event.
Yes, you read that right...
Grace Habor Electric Acoustic Guitar with a Hardshell Case
The first prize of the competition would be receiving this guitar from me in the mail only days after we would announce the winner. In any case I would like to invite you to post your ideas about such an event. All I see here is a win/win for everyone, but I'm asking my fellow Steemians to help us polish the plan.
What do you think? Does this sound good? Would you participate?
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Love the idea. I agree art or music as a competition is lame in a way. Although I think most of our musicians on here understand that and just put there best foot forward for the sake of the art. Anyway, love it and insofar as ideas to add, I have nothing.
Exactly. Even though OpenMic picks some winners each week, we don't look at it as competing. It's more like you say, for the sake of community and art.
Just thought of something, perhaps do song subject every week. Like for example love songs, death songs, steemit songs, etc.
Thanks for commenting brother... I was thinking along the same lines... one subject to write about per week... it seems to be the best way to keep it fun for everyone... and get the creative juices really flowing...
Thats a great idea and a good opportunity for anyone that writes original songs and also to anyone who has thought of doing it and never got to it.
Things to consider in my point of view would be:
Anyway, all the best to you guys and very generous of you to donate the guitar @meno.
Can't wait for this project to come to fruition!
I think this could be a GREAT Idea!
Just to play devils advocate, the criteria you mentioned here about using "quality of content..." is a bit problematic when discussing "songwriting" in a sense vague enough to cover all styles that might be submitted. Who's to say what's actually good and what actually isn't? I study music theory and composition daily academically and can tell you exactly what's going on with any piece of music you show me. I can't exactly tell you what's better. I can tell you what 18th or 19th century composers would say is better, I can tell you what a culture thinks is better, but I can't tell you with any certainty that any one song is better than another. There are even pieces that were written simply for learning concepts that have proven to be overwhelmingly moving the masses. With a performance, the criteria for quality is easier to judge due to the fact that mistakes may be noticeable. Yet even then, what a judge may find to be the best to them, is only their perspective.
I might suggest that you find judges that are emphatically passionate about genre set.
For instance, one judge may be either a huge fan or expert in the field of world music, another rock, another new pop, perhaps you could lump classical, jazz, and instrumental into one. This might make the judging fairer? No idea.
What do you think?
PS.
Also, I don't think recording quality should be counted unless it's so bad that it's un-listenable due to the fact that songwriting is a completely different subset of skills from recording. This is coming from someone who has that skill and some okay equipment who would love to enter the event.
I agree that the recording quality is not as important than the song itself.
Good points there mate. But as this is a songwriting competition emphasis must be given into content. If you read what I've written after that then you should've probably understood what I meant. By content I mean, the content of the song.. like - the composition, arrangement, the lyrics, the feel (how it makes you feel after you listen to it) etc. and there's many more. I am not talking about stylistic choices. Any style should have equal chances of winning.
And your question to "Who's to say what's actually good and what actually isn't?" - Thats the whole point of having a judge! They're the ones that will decide whats good and whats not.
Well, in a competition mate someone has to decide what song is better than the other. If you're not sure then maybe you're not the right one to judge? regardless if you've studied music theory or composition. I have judged competitions before and I have to say with a certainty that one must have full authority in the decision making process and have to distinguish the good from the bad or average. No, academic qualification is not a necessity but experience definitely counts.
And to stress on another point. As a judge you have to put your interests and favourite genres' to the side and have to decide on the set of guide lines and act professional, hence again coming back to the content I was telling you about. There needs to be some sort of guide lines to every judge where they decide and maybe give points and at the end pick the winner. Thats why I think we need more than one judge.
Lastly, good recording quality is not a must but thats why I said it would be a bonus. For me if the quality is better, then of course I'd enjoy listening to it more, than if it wasn't.
Anyway, I think it's for @mono and @luzcypher to decide how they wanna run this competition and set out the criteria.
I wish you all the best.
You really nailed it in this comment and make some strong points. One of the hardest things about having to pick three winners for Open Mic each week is, well, picking three winners. LOL
There's so much talent to choose from it's very difficult narrowing it down to just three. Some people make it easy to eliminate them because they didn't follow some simple rules, but it's hard to choose.
Thankfully, we have more judges so we can pick from their picks. Any of those judges will tell you though, it is not easy to narrow it down to their top 5 picks, let alone narrowing it down even further from there to only three. That is a good thing though. Better to have a lot of talent to choose from than not enough.
This is exactly the approach we, as judges, have used to pick weekly winners for Open Mic and we try to spread the prizes around. There are so many worthy entries but only so many rewards to go around so we have a set of guidelines we use to narrow it down.
This new idea that @meno (meno, not mono) came up with would have him generously gifting a guitar to the winner. In a case like that I would feel comfortable letting him have the final say of who he thinks should win or even being the only judge. That's up to him.
We can easily find some more qualified judges for this contest though if that is the route we take.
One last thing. The whole point of these "contests" is not to win or lose. There are no bad songs. The whole reason we do contests like this is to build the community on Steemit around topics of mutual interest, in this case, music, and encourage a place where that can be shared.
The larger we grow the music community here the better it is for everyone and we all win when that happens. Plus, we get to listen to some good music.
Anyway, after reading your comment I think you would make a great judge.
I agree to your points too. Music should never be a competition, there are no winners or losers. For me everyone who is in music is a winner, whether the creator or the listener. But ya competitions like the opemic and songwriting do bring people together and brings a little joy in everyone to take part and have their say. So, I'm all in for everyone having fun and at the end maybe getting something back for their time, creation and dedication.
Thanks for you comment. I'd love to be a judge but don't think I'll have enough time right now, maybe in the future. For now, I'd love to take part and bring out the creativeness that has long been hidden :)
Yes definitely, we would have to come up with a fair way to judge the compositions... taking into account that some people might not have access to the same quality equipment of course... everything within context, would you not agree?
Definitely mate.
The quality of the recording should be totally irrelevant. Sure, it's more enjoyable to listen to a good recording, but a great song is a great song even if it's played on a crappy, out of tune guitar.
My friend Bill, who wrote and produced Leaving Las Vegas by Sheryl Crow wrote it as a country song originally. When he sings it, it sounds like Meryl Haggard crossed with Bob Dylan. When he played it for me the first time it sounded nothing like the recording you know today, but it is still a great song.
Yeah, I think it's a songwriting event is a fantastic way to draw out more original music from participants of the #openmic. I'm with you in sharing great appreciation for @luzcypher, @pfunk, and the others who make the Open Mic possible, and I appreciate your good courtesy in reaching out to them first. I am one enthusiastic amateur musician who would gladly enter a singer-songwriter event as a way of exercising my creativity. Dig your idea, dude!
awesome to have your support @cabelindsay ... well reaching out to me is what makes the most sense, the open mic community not only has a lot of participants already but it has nurtured the right attitude, that of camaraderie, love of music and even thought we might call it a competition no one really comes out a loser... we all win in the experience...
Oh fo sho! :) I'm with you in this, brother. You're right that it's a win-win-win, between the artists, the audience, and the host.
This is how we do it. : )
Comments like these make me feel like people understand what we are doing on Open Mic. Warms my heart to hear that.
The more musicians and the more music contests, the better. As simple as that :-)
I completely agree, I hope with this competition to cross promote it on fb and instagram with the intention of bringing more like minded people to this platform...
I like it. Simple. Easy to remember.
What a cool and generous idea! I haven’t written a song in a couple years so maybe this will be an inspiration ;) And if not, I’ll definitely be following to see how this develops and to check out everyone’s entires. There seem to be a lot of songwriters on here. I love the openmic community!
I'm glad you like it... i think we might be on to something great here...
Might be inspiring
Thank you for the fantastic post..
I appreciate your kind intentions! The only thing I have trouble with is the competitive ethic, I feel it's destroying the earth and would prefer some kind of co-operative structure. But true, I really have no idea how to make that move.
This post is in no way a criticism of you.
Peace:)
I get you @andrewmarkmusic , I think however that the spirit of the open mic community will retain its nature on this event, after all its really the same family trying to kick it up a notch. To drive my point home, when people don't win in the open mic event, they are not losers in any sense... there are only winners... everyone gets their music heard, everyone makes some steem... it would be the same here... its just that by promoting it with a guitar.... those who don't understand crypto will me more likely to come join... at least that is my opinion...
I agree. This is a long-term position I've held on art in general: that it really shouldn't be part of the sports ethic. So it's not personal to you.
But I conceded I don't really have a better idea for a new model.
Cheers!
I think of Open Mic as a way to tip musicians for their performances. Thanks to support from @pfunk, the judges, and the whole community, we can tip so much a week and some weeks some people get a bigger tip than other weeks.
Just because someone wins doesn't mean others lost. That's what's so cool about Steemit.
I don't view open-mics as competitive, at least historically. Battle of the bands and such, yes...Not really for that format for art.
But my view on entertainment today is colored by two vectors: we are on the Titanic environmentally and yes, our concern is entertainment; I see that as a problem, but I also see Steemit as part of the solution in that regard.
The other is historical and relates to the fall of empires. The final stages of empires in decline are often concomitant with undue influence by entertainment (Hollywood today). These are philosophical positions, though, and are not targeted at any given individual.
I see what you're saying.
An interesting side note is historically the final stages of empires in decline have also made celebrities of their chefs.
Exactly.
Love the idea. Anything to bring synergy to the platform and help make this community epic.
I host the #beatbattle and #smlchallenge for the music community of Steemit, so definitely would love to judge and help out where every you need me.
Much respect for the idea and wanting to inspire real, positive change.
awesome to have your support brother... lets see how many people we can count in on this...
Sounds good buddy,
I think it's a great idea if we have enough interested songwriters to enter. Very generous of you as well @meno.
I resteemed this post, added it to my post asking the community the same thing, tweeted it, added it to Steemit Musicians on Facebook, added it to multiple Discord channels and, of course, upvoted it. Let's see what the community thinks.
awesome brother... I know what kind of night this is going to be for me... I'm going to be waking up and checking your post and mine a few times... hahahha but I'm optimistic... you are already getting some traction on your post..
Great idea, I think the best part if creating topics, that gives us the challenge to keep writing new material. I studied songwriting online at Berklee and one of the best things was the requirement to constantly create new material. It helped that it cost a lot of money to do the studies, but one of the col things was that all the students had to critique (in a supportive way) each others' writing. Often we were given random topics like a grocery store or an airport. I went through my recording studio recently and found about 150 songs or parts of songs that I had forgotten I had written. There is always a huge satisfaction in completing a new song but often it easier to do other things than keep writing. Let's do it!
Awesome brother... I will start working on a list of the people who say they would participate and tally up how many we have so far...
Definitely count me in.