GNOME Song Contest

WARNING: THIS IS A DRAFT!

Do you want to have your name in the history of GNOME as the greatest poet hacker? If your answer is "Yes!" then you should participate on the GNOME Song Contest. Our plan is to launch the GNOME Song at the same time of GNOME 2.18 release in March 14th 2007 or at GUADEC2007 at Birmingham (UK) in July 15-21 (still to be defined). The GNOME Song will be collaboratively recorded by the famous musicians of the Drooling Macaque band and other contributors.

Phases

The contest comprises two phases: one for the Lyrics and another for the Melody. We defined diferent phases for lyrics and melody because we aim to stimulate participation from people with diferent competences and aptitudes. Also, we hope that this aproach will lead to the best lyrics in combination with the coolest melody.

Lyrics Phase

The goal of this phase is to define the GNOME Song lyrics. The Lyrics Phase begins on October 15 2006 and finishes on December 1 2006. Submission deadline is November 15 2006. The results (the chosen lyrics) will be published on December 1 2006.

Rules

  • Participants must submit lyrics with around 70 words;
  • The lyrics must (of course) talk about GNOME;
  • The lyrics must be in english;
  • All submissions must use a free license that allows free distribution and derivative works (ie. GPL, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike, other).

Instructions

Send lyrics to gnomesong@gnome.org in plain text format with the following information:

  • Complete Name
  • E-mail
  • Lyrics license
  • Short description

Melody Phase

The goal of this phase is to define the GNOME Song melody. The Melody Phase begins on December 1 2006 and finishes on January 15 2007. Submission deadline is January 2 2007. The results (the chosen melody) will be published on January 15 2007.

Rules

  • Participants must submit an audio file with at least a keyboard or guitar and voice playing the song only once (no repetition);
  • Participants must submit tabs for guitar;
  • Submitted audio files must be in Ogg Vorbis format;
  • All submissions must use a free license that allows free distribution and derivative works (ie. GPL, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike, other).

Instructions

Send audio files (Ogg Vorbis) and the guitar tabs (plain text) to gnomesong@gnome.org with the following information:

  • Complete Name
  • E-mail
  • Melody license
  • Short description

Board

In both phases, the submissions will be evaluated by a artistic board and audience board. The artistic board is composed by 5 people from GNOME community, 3 directly involved with music (instrumentists, producers, etc) and 2 directly involved with other arts (theater, design, painting, dance, etc). The audience board will be composed by 10 random GNOME entusiasts who apply to be part of this board for each phase. People interested in being part of the audience board must send a message to gnomesong@gnome.org with complete name, e-mail address and contest phase.

Comments

General discussion comes here.

LucasRocha: I'm still not sure about the best GNOME Song release date. GNOME 2.18 or GUADEC2007? I think GUADEC2007 would be nicer because we could perform it there and we'd have more time to prepare everything.

iain: Do the requirements for it to a) have at least a keyboard or guitar, and b) guitar tab not limit the musical styles? What if someone wants to do an aphex twin style IDM tune behind the words? Or even just wants to play the tune on the violin

Un-separate lyrics and melody?

Hey there -- as a songwriter and GNOME user and programmer, I'm psyched about this idea.

The only thing I'd say is that I'm not entirely sure about the separation of the melody and the lyric stage. A fundamental part of a lyric is how it fits to a melody. People who write lyrics without hearing a melody inevitably make poor choices about rhythm and scansion that they correct naturally when they set the lyric to music (especially inexperienced people -- perhaps expert lyricists naturally make the right moves even without music).

I do get the idea of using different aptitudes, and obviously there have been many a great pairing of lyricist and composer in the world of song... but perhaps rather than having two phases, you could have people submit any of the three combos -- lyrics, melodies, or lyrics with melodies. Then others could tweak, refine, or recombine any subset of the three until the best song was created.

-- ThomasHinkle

Attic/GnomeSongContest (last edited 2013-11-26 20:29:05 by WilliamJonMcCann)