Alright, the second guitar tone competition is FINALLY over! Congratulations to our winner, Ermin ”Ermz” Hamidovic. Hope you enjoy your new plugins 
Now that the show is over, let me say a few words what I thought about the competition.
First of all many people may not know it, but getting this competition started took a lot of time and work, so I would like to thank our wonderful host, Mark ”MarkG” van der Giessen. You made a big effort to make this all happen. Then I would like to thank Gregory ”lolzgreg” Tomao for the killer tune (dude, you really need to make that into a full song!) and Daniel ”SlipkyesBass” for the awesome basstracks. Then I would like to thank our competition sponsors, Steven Slate and Alex Siegel from Yellow Matter Entertainment, for providing the extra motivation. And not to forget, all the participants and voters for making this event yet another page in Andy Sneap forum history. And everyone else I forgot who deserves credit: Thank you too.
When this competition began, there was no cake. Greg made a thread and said he liked the first competition and wanted that we would have another one and people voluntarily said that they wanted to join the guitar tone competition, and they were in big numbers. One day I just decided to take a shot in the dark and ask if Slate would like to sponsor the competition and tada, we got a sponsor. Now there was a cake.
Basically this competition was a simplified musicproduction business situation simulation. We sent a snippet to many people and the public voted who gets gets the cake in the end. Similiar thing happens a lot with architecture, reality tv shows and even in this forum, where people submit their multitracks of a song and then pick who gets to mix their full album. We had a song, a producer (greg), an engineer (me) and two guitar tracks that needed reamping. I mixed everything according to producers wishes and then we supplied the participants a set of backingtracks and the guitartracks and a short readme what to do with these files. Apparently some people had hard time getting the few minutes needed to actually read the rules (like ”submit a 24bit wav and not mp3”, but sometimes I thought maybe we should've written the rules more tighter to avoid any confusion, but then again some people didn't have the attention span to even read 2 pages of rules we already had.
Some people complained that the backingtracks weren't optimal; Lacking lower bass or whatever. Yes, the low end was just mixed a bit thin, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. It was producers choise and just another approach to mixing. Sometimes you might get work-in-progress material instead of final product and sometimes you might get material with a soundscape that you might not like. You were there just to reamp, not to mix. If you had never done this kind of stuff before, this was a good practice exercise to try to hone your skills. In my opinion it actually was good that the backingtrack was challenging, because you had to make choises. Should I try to bring up the low end and fill in the soundscape but get more muddy tone or sacrifice the low end and get a bit thinner tone? Some people made their guitar tone so loud, that the backingtracks just completely vanished. If we would've also added vocals, it would've given us yet another challenge, because you really can't just bury the vocals under the guitars.
There was generally two approaches to the submitted mixes: The submitter tried to make the guitartone sound good or the submitter tried to make the mix sound good. Eventho the contest was clearly labeled "Guitar Tone Competition 2", in my opinion too many people didn't see the big picture when honing their tone. Even if your guitar tone is the best tone in the world, but if you can't hear the drums or the bass, or in general anything else except the guitars, does it really serve it's purpose?
The thing that I personally learned the most from this competition, was what other people liked most about guitartones and they were often very different from what I like. For example there was many tones I liked that didn't make it to the finals and even many professional engineers, who run their own studio, didn't make it to the final round. We asked for everyone who submitted their guitar tone to tell what signalchain they used, because we wanted to make this competition to support what this forum is about; Learning. You are never old to learn new tricks, and there usually always is someone who is better than you (except if you are Mike Patton).
Hope you had a blast with the competition. Please fill out the poll above, so we can see how we did and possibly learn from our mistakes
Yours truly,
Anssi ”ahjteam” Tenhunen
Now that the show is over, let me say a few words what I thought about the competition.First of all many people may not know it, but getting this competition started took a lot of time and work, so I would like to thank our wonderful host, Mark ”MarkG” van der Giessen. You made a big effort to make this all happen. Then I would like to thank Gregory ”lolzgreg” Tomao for the killer tune (dude, you really need to make that into a full song!) and Daniel ”SlipkyesBass” for the awesome basstracks. Then I would like to thank our competition sponsors, Steven Slate and Alex Siegel from Yellow Matter Entertainment, for providing the extra motivation. And not to forget, all the participants and voters for making this event yet another page in Andy Sneap forum history. And everyone else I forgot who deserves credit: Thank you too.
When this competition began, there was no cake. Greg made a thread and said he liked the first competition and wanted that we would have another one and people voluntarily said that they wanted to join the guitar tone competition, and they were in big numbers. One day I just decided to take a shot in the dark and ask if Slate would like to sponsor the competition and tada, we got a sponsor. Now there was a cake.
Basically this competition was a simplified musicproduction business situation simulation. We sent a snippet to many people and the public voted who gets gets the cake in the end. Similiar thing happens a lot with architecture, reality tv shows and even in this forum, where people submit their multitracks of a song and then pick who gets to mix their full album. We had a song, a producer (greg), an engineer (me) and two guitar tracks that needed reamping. I mixed everything according to producers wishes and then we supplied the participants a set of backingtracks and the guitartracks and a short readme what to do with these files. Apparently some people had hard time getting the few minutes needed to actually read the rules (like ”submit a 24bit wav and not mp3”
, but sometimes I thought maybe we should've written the rules more tighter to avoid any confusion, but then again some people didn't have the attention span to even read 2 pages of rules we already had.Some people complained that the backingtracks weren't optimal; Lacking lower bass or whatever. Yes, the low end was just mixed a bit thin, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. It was producers choise and just another approach to mixing. Sometimes you might get work-in-progress material instead of final product and sometimes you might get material with a soundscape that you might not like. You were there just to reamp, not to mix. If you had never done this kind of stuff before, this was a good practice exercise to try to hone your skills. In my opinion it actually was good that the backingtrack was challenging, because you had to make choises. Should I try to bring up the low end and fill in the soundscape but get more muddy tone or sacrifice the low end and get a bit thinner tone? Some people made their guitar tone so loud, that the backingtracks just completely vanished. If we would've also added vocals, it would've given us yet another challenge, because you really can't just bury the vocals under the guitars.
There was generally two approaches to the submitted mixes: The submitter tried to make the guitartone sound good or the submitter tried to make the mix sound good. Eventho the contest was clearly labeled "Guitar Tone Competition 2", in my opinion too many people didn't see the big picture when honing their tone. Even if your guitar tone is the best tone in the world, but if you can't hear the drums or the bass, or in general anything else except the guitars, does it really serve it's purpose?
The thing that I personally learned the most from this competition, was what other people liked most about guitartones and they were often very different from what I like. For example there was many tones I liked that didn't make it to the finals and even many professional engineers, who run their own studio, didn't make it to the final round. We asked for everyone who submitted their guitar tone to tell what signalchain they used, because we wanted to make this competition to support what this forum is about; Learning. You are never old to learn new tricks, and there usually always is someone who is better than you (except if you are Mike Patton).
Hope you had a blast with the competition. Please fill out the poll above, so we can see how we did and possibly learn from our mistakes
Yours truly,
Anssi ”ahjteam” Tenhunen
