compo (n., abbr.)
competition. something not mentioned in the other nodes is some specifics of
music compos on
IRC.
IRC music compos were popular in 1996 when, on
efnet (now
scenenet)
#trax held
20mc's (twenty minute
chip compos) run by
amusic--you had twenty minutes to write a
chip song. if you don't
track, you might not know how little time that is. for some people today, that's barely enough time to even think of an
idea and
compose a
drumline maybe. *
sigh* back then, things was different, they shore was.
for awhile these compos died, being replaced by
weekly compos, organized by one person and a
web server. people on IRC from more than one
server (efnet, scenenet,
ircnet, whatever net). some of these compos you might remember as being '
the trackering' run by
axl, '
cruelization compo' run by
cruel creator, and '
groovy compo', run by
yannis/
mickrip.
i later revived/started the one-hour compo trend in the summer of 1997 on scenenet #trax .. we held compos as long as 5 minutes, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, and an hour.. though 45 and 30 seemed most popular (an hour seemed too long at the time). people like
iv,
mild,
exokai, and even
radix once, entered these.
these died out after awhile and on efnet, two-hour compos began, run by
lizard. at the time, two hours to write a song seemed amazingly long to me, at the time, but it's not surprising that they leaned toward a two hour limit because most of efnet #trax at the time were a bunch of
newbie trackers, removed from the
demoscene / not knowing what the demoscene was at all.
for awhile in 1998, on scenenet #trax, amusic revived his 20mc (you might know the song "
winter's dream" by
necros--it was a remix of his 20mc tune, "blah blah" or something).. these only lasted for maybe a month, then he ran one
20dc (20 days compo) to write a massive
chip tune. that only happened once, then all 20mc and 20dc compos died.
today, compos are still probably run on efnet #trax, though a whole lot are run (probably around 7+ a week) on
espernet, in various channels. there is no #trax on espernet, though there is an
#sstrax (about
squaresoft music),
#hellven (an espernet-based
music group), and
#traxinspace. so compos here are held in various locations by various people. they're just about all one-hour compos (see
ohc), with a rare 30-minute compo run from time to time.
urls:
- the trackering - < http://www.hornet.org/music/contests/tt/ >
- 20mc - < http://www.hornet.org/music/contests/20mc/ >
- groovy compo - < http://www.ukscene.org/gcmirror/ >
- espernet compos - < http://www.dmrmag.com/Issue03/traxtalk/traxtalk2_3.asp > (and the page after that)
further reading: