Orchestral Shootout, Part 4: The Winners and Discussion

With the exception of #54 all were on my "short" list...

Thanks again Bit & Randy

Congrats to all the winners and a big Thank you to Bit and Randy 

<<hugz>>

Yes, Bit and Randy ditto on the thanks and congrats!  Like Twigman, I would like see the final results.  Unlike Twigman, I did not vote for my own , so I may have whiffed!  But I consider myself a winner.  This was my first project using GPO, and the amount of stuff I have learned doing this (and continue to learn due to spinoffs from this project) is priceless.  The cost, however, in coffee consumption was nearly prohibitive.  On the upside, I am now on a first-name basis with Juan Valdez' donkey.

Hey  Great!  Cool!  Love this...

Great job to the winners,  and i have to say that the difference between the best and middle of the road was not that much different.  Pretty much everyone did a good job.

And now - SEVENTY TWO PAGES of info on all the entries - Libraries used, contributor, and production notes.

Go visit the newly updated site:

ORCHESTRAL SHOOTOUT WITH FULL ENTRY INFO

Randy B.

After a quick visit to the update web page this was indeed a "labor of love" on the part of Dave and Randy.

I too will include some <<hugz>>!

However, please do not misconstrue this as meaning I want to take long hot showers with you.

I never finished listening, and did not vote, but here are my notes on the winning and runner-up entries from my first listening pass:

The grand prize goes to Dave Chick (chickn8tor), whose entry #30 was created with EWQL Gold. 

"High Tempo" (did not make my top 6)

1. Michael Miles (#50) 
Michael comes to us from the GPO forum, where he is known as Michael135. Michael also used EWQL Gold. 

"Nice sounds. Heavily panned, lopsided mix." (did not make my top 6)

2. Jonas Aras (#47) 
You know Jonas as jsaras on the forum. He submitted several entries using various libraries, all of which garnered respectable votes. But for the winning entry, he used stock Kontakt 3.5 libraries. 

"A little bombastic (over-compressed?)" (did not make my top 6)

3. Michael Lizotte (#34) 
This Michael is our own LPMike75. Mike used EWQL Gold for this entry. 

Cool, punchy mix. [undecipherable] realistic patches. Some weird timing alterations" (made my top 6 in no particular order)

4. Steve Cocchi (#54) 
Steve bucks the Quantum Leap trend and managed a prize using only stock instruments included with SONAR: Dimension Pro and TTS-1.

"Sounds like the original. +1" (made my top 6 in no particular order)

5. Tod Stillwell (#64) 
Tod, known around here as T.S., created his entry using a combination of Kontakt 2 libraries, EWQL Gold and "custom made sounds". 

"Snare too loud and up front, otherwise pretty dang good." (made my top 6 in no particular order)


Others in my preliminary, un-ordered top 6 that did not make the cut here were:

14 "Clear mix with good sound library. (same as 13, but better?)"
40 "Good horns, mix and tempo. +1 for listenability"
63 "Pretty good"

Jose7822


Congrats to all the winners!!  Awesome job everyone :-)

My personal favorite was #47, but I'm impressed with #54 being that it was done with the TTS-1 and Dimension Pro, nice!

Jose, your entry is one I voted for.  I think it's outstanding.  I especially appreciate your dynamic use of brass. 

Another reason I prefer your entry over some others is that you created an interpretation of the music, not a safe, slavishly reproduced emulation of the original.  I feel that music should always be interpreted, not simply re-done.  Yours is one of the few entries that accomplished that.  So, applause to you.

Randy B.

Those are VERY surprising results.

Not really too surprising, at least to me - but I've been watching the votes unfold for a couple weeks.

Yes, there were some very good entries that didn't quite make the cut. Two examples are Chris Edwards' #14 and Jose Cabrera's #5, which deserve honorable mention because both of them were submitted before there were prizes announced and before it turned into a competitive exercise. (Randy's own #2 did well, too, but of course he was excluded from the contest anyway.)

However, it's clear that judges were listening for different things because the votes were broadly distributed across the entries (btw, Twig, yours wasn't the only vote you got).

We have decided to not post the vote counts so as not to embarrass anyone. Trust us that the prize recipients are all legitimate winners and clear favorites. We went to great lengths to assure that the polling was on the level.

We felt it was important that the listening be blind, both as to what tools were used and to who made it. Knowing that information would have almost certainly affected voters' objectivity, I think.

bitflipper


We felt it was important that the listening be blind, both as to what tools were used and to who made it. Knowing that information would have almost certainly affected voters' objectivity, I think.

Agreed, but for better or worse?  I can see both sides of the argument.  Anyway not trying to come off as critical, you guys did a great job and I enjoyed following the project.  Thanks!

I'll weigh in on this question about keeping it a "blind taste test."

"...I would have changed my vote to #54 had I known it was done only with Dim Pro and TTS..."

To me, Matt, that's exactly why having the vote be blind was the way to do this.  We were voting on entries that impressed us most judging by what we hear, by that bottom-line result, not by any info which would sway our opinion. 

Knowing that #54 was done "just" with Dim Pro and TTS-1 is impressive, but you're saying it would have impressed you more to have that info, because of the supposed limitations those synths have. 

With the info on the entries posted beforehand, it would have been a "best use of X synth" contest, which it wasn't.  Logical to me anyway!

Notice that a lot of the entries used TTS-1 to fill things out.  It's as Bitflipper said to me just as this thing was getting started - he predicted that a greater respect would be garnered for the TTS-1 after the contest was over. 

I do think people tend to have less regard for synths that are included in packages like Sonar - and that's actually a bit of snobbery, as if only the synths we pay a lot for by themselves are going to be worthy of serious attention!

Randy B.

MattI would have changed my vote to #54 had I known it was done only with Dim Pro and TTS, that is truly impressive.

Goes to show you that having sounds that play well together in a mix (and a good mix that takes advantage of that) can be more important than the "realism" or "richness" of any individual sound. Sometimes "thinner" is better.

DeeringAmps


Guitarpima,

"Those are VERY surprising results"

Care to elaborate? Just curious?

Tom

I think that the winners mix was awful. There were far better mixes. That's how it goes though so congrats to the winners.

Guitarpima


How come all the notes are not there?  

?  What do you mean, Robert?  Your notes don't show up?  --I'll go take a look.

RB