Organized by: Mind Bender                                   GroovyCompo #4 Results

Congratulations to Loonie for winning the competition with the most points ever scored in any of the GroovyCompo's yet! Overall, I'd have to say that this GroovyCompo was very much a success, with 34 entries despite the 150k zipped song size limit. This was also the first bi-weekly
compo to attempt anonymitity, which worked very well, and produced some very nice results as far as I'm concerned. The results were
quite cut-and-dry, except for the fact that Tito and NightHawk tied for 3rd place. Tito's entry also recieved the second-most amount of
first place scorings, but as you can see consistantly scoring at the top end of the range (as MickRip did) is a surefire way to get a high placing, even if you don't get that many firsts. I hope everyone enjoyed themselves, and good luck in GC5! 

Filename        Author         1  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Lamer Score     Place

onceup.xm       Loonie         11 5 0 3 2 0 0 1 1 0  0     193        1st
control.it      MickRip         2 4 6 5 2 0 0 1 1 1  0     157        2nd
gazela.xm       Tito            5 1 2 1 1 3 4 3 1 0  0     130        3rd
trapped.xm      Nighthawk       2 3 5 3 0 2 1 2 1 0  0     130        3rd
dnitc.it        Protocol        1 1 4 2 3 2 0 1 1 3  1     101        5th
time.it         Screamager      0 1 3 2 3 3 0 1 2 1  0     88         6th
portal.it       Ozone           0 2 2 2 1 2 1 4 1 0  0     82         7th
ibiza.it        WayFinder       2 1 1 1 2 1 4 0 1 2  0     81         8th
away.xm         Smash           1 1 3 0 2 1 2 2 1 0  0     76         9th
gitup.it        YanniS          0 2 1 2 2 1 0 0 4 2  0     67         10th
2thought.it     Dilvish         0 1 0 1 2 1 1 3 3 1  0     53         11th
therunne.it     Beek            0 0 0 2 1 2 1 2 2 4  0     48         12th
n-n-g.xm        BlackNova       1 2 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 2  0     41         13th
returnin.it     Nightbeat       0 0 1 0 1 0 2 2 1 1  0     31         14th
amlf0875.it     Dr.Zachary      0 1 0 0 0 1 1 3 0 1  0     28         15th
gc4_mac.it      Major Bludd     0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 2  2     27         16th
fvision.it      Blue Zone       1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1  0     22         17th
mindctrl.xm     Decker          1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0  0     20         18th
madame.it       Husanak         0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 2  0     16         19th
sky3.xm         Nsite           0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1  0     14         20th
sux.it          Genosha         0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0  1     10         21st
divine.it       Husanak&Knekos  0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0  0     8          22nd
madeit.xm       Axl             0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1  1     7          23rd
loveme.xm       Sikamikanico    0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0  0     6          24th
sleeve.it       Zsazs           0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0  0     6          24th
undead.xm       Haze            0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0  0     2          26th
disbelie.xm     Scheme          0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2  1     0          Last
muertos.it      Ondine          0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0  7     0          Last
nwaname.it      Sp`ange         0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0  13    0          LAMER AWARD

Lamer Award: Sp`ange won the lamer award! He also neglected to vote in voting round, thus reaffirming his title as King Lamer.
Popular Lamer Award: Belgarion  (who, funnily enough, didn't even enter)

Hunz (6th place), Mild (18th place), D.T. (21st place), DGazz (23rd place), and Sp`ange (last place) did not vote. Mild has been
suspended from GroovyCompo, while the other four have been placed on vote probation. If they fail to vote the next time they're in GroovyCompo, they're suspended for 3 weeks. We suggest you vote if you're going to enter!!

GC4 Comments

  "Once Upon a Time" earned its 1st place for demonstrating versatility, technical skill, and the ability to pull out a smooth solo without becoming boring or repetitous.  "Trapped In a Bottle"'s beat moved it well, but lacked variety (not that that is necessarily a bad thing) onceup.xm showed. In particular, "Once Upon a Time" moves you in slow (like about 75% of the songs here) with a soft, but soulful piano as the strings emerge from behind. Followed by a smooth transition into the main groove, it doesn't drop pace
with a synth bass loop but runs into the melody. Other tunes in the pack tended to start up with plenty of repetition by about 1/3 the way through. Onceup.xm chooses to use the bass and percussion as its staple rhythm, opening up for the synth lead solo.  onceup.xm also chooses to fade out after the solo, leaving you with the solo in your afterthoughts.

  Let's see, why did DNITC.IT rank first.  1) Very professional sounding.  2) Good choice of instruments (especially on getting
that dulcimer-like, oriental sounding lead!).  3) Nice ambient melody, light pizzicatto effects, and very cohesively structured.
ONCEUP.XM got 2nd because it has an especially nice piano intro and bass accompanyment afterwards but the jazz melody is too
mellow :) GAZELA.XM 3rd because it just had an all-round awesome artful ambient melody (might of been a tad repetitive though for my taste). TIME.IT 4th because it was such a happy little tune (order 9-13 is especially cool) !  Happy enough to do a little jig :)
TRAPPED.XM 5th because it was very well done techno dance tune although it sounds a little like some other one out there ;p

  Chose ONCEUP.XM as 1st place. The usual reasons apply (ie good orchestration, equalization.. etc) plus a strong bass line combined with good quality,  tuned samples and a nifty theme gave it the edge. Sample quality and tuning pushed songs like CONTROL.IT, and FUR.XM down. DNITC.IT had quite a bit of potential, because of nice orchestration,  theme and chord progression. However tuning was way off which pushed it from 1st or 2nd placing down to 5th in my list. I would have expected better
tuning of samples from the skill this tracker has based on the songs other qualities.

  I thought trapped.xm was a nice tune, however it got my first place vote  simply cause I havn't heard a good synthpop tune for awhile. Control.it, Onceup.xm, and time.it rounded out my top 5. The general quality of the tunes seems to be up this time.

  "Once upon the Time" has a very nice starting with piano, which is good tracked and tuned. All melodies are catchy and the drums fit the mood. Overall sound is quite good, lead sample is well selected. I liked most the main theme in patterns 10-11 and 17-19. The combination with piano and lead gives a full sound to the tune. Bass line is simple and well tracked. "Out of Control" is a very good work, too. But the lead sample sounds very weak and gives an "empty" feeling to the listener. Eveything else is well composed in this tune, good transitions , good chords. Good piano parts, nice bass line. The drums sound a bit Wave-ish and maybe I'm right that this is Mick's work, maybe not. :)

  "Once Upon a Time" makes excellent use of the piano and long lead samples. Yes, the 303 bass is annoying at times, but the
catchy melody, smooth bass and overall well mixed nature of the tune compensates for this. It's easily the best tune of a pack
which consisted of a handful of tunes that relied mainly on the filtered chord samples in the pack (doh! don't fall into the
trap of using the chord samples if you want your tune to stand out) and a bunch of pretty mediocre ones. ONCEUP.XM has an
emotional side too - control.it tries to accomplish this too, but the hippy-dippy swingbeat fails it. 

  The top three were a bugger to judge. In the end, I picked ONCEUP.XM as my #1 because there was nothing I could sense 'wrong with it', per se. As far as songs go it was nothing outstanding, but it had quite a few good points and no bad points. The piano and synth leads co-operated well & the rhythm section was appropriate. CONTROL.IT - hmm, I wonder who did this? :-). Typical style for the author, and as usual, nothing particularly wrong about it. A good job was done on downsampling the samples to fit within the 150k limit as well as making sure it sounded good. Original uses of the samples, too, with some interesting effects done on them to make them sound less bland. No peaks in this song (although I particularly liked the combination of the rolling bass and piano lead toward the end) and no troughs either.

  i voted control.it first, because the name of the tune. system told me to do it, and i cant help it because it's not my life and not even yours for the sake. we're all dead, and we belong to the controlling system enviroment.

  Well .. to be quite honest .. Gazela r0x0red my s0x0rz .. the chords were lush .. the beats were well tracked .. the bassline was funky .. I like the jazzy stuff as well .. but nothing made me get up out of my chair in my fucking bunny slippers and dance around like Gazela did .. Oh Phattus Trackerus, you have shaken my booty.

  I placed 'trapped.xm' in first place mainly because the song blew me away.  It was that good. I could catch no problems with it, and I loved the execution of the style. This compo had a pretty good range of songs, probably because of the gigantic samplepack :)

  I feel the tune called "once upon a time" was best coz it had a good mix, nice use of samples and good structure. My guess is that it's one of Radix's pieces of work, or possibly Hunz.

  onceup.xm is a relaxing and cute little song, nice tracking. One of the many songs that had quality. It wouldnt suprise me if this one is done by radix, the melodies are very radixish.

  OK. My first-ranked tune was, and may I add high above the rest, "once upon a time". It was obviously worked through; the bass is great and the percussion is so sovereignly better than anything other in this compo that it's almost embarassing. The intro is smooth, the chords are good. I have a very hard time in remembering an other tt- or gc-tune that I've liked even remotely as much as this one. Further one I'd like to say that there were quite a lot of good tunes this time (I'm actually glad I couldn't find the inspiration to enter :), but then also some tunes which just completely made me go blind with awe regarding their stupendously low quality.
 
  "once upon a time" starts out with an excellent piano score which very grabbing. the mixing of this part is well, and the small
jazz riffs thrown in give a little insight as to what is to come. the pad backing is not too loud and mixes well with the transition
into the aciddy line that comes in. the clap line that comes in is a bit cliche but still good, the chord progression at this point
is brilliant. the main theme kicks in with a very fat and deep bassline, which mixes well with the percussion, which, i might add is also very good, excepting the snare drum which i don't think should cut out like it does. when the melody kicks in, i almost sighed due to the piano, but was relieved when i heard that square lead backing it up.. excellent mixing of the two instruments. the melody isn't too busy or active, or wide-ranged, but.. well, it's suiting :)  one mistake that is common, was, amazingly, not made here.
the melody didn't drag on forever, and the same bassline didn't repeat over and over again. boring? not quite yet. i still want to listen :) that saw lead is the bomb. although, i think a bit more heavy and sparse vibrato would be fitting, also, maybe adding a higher octave on top of this melody would be a bit better. don't overuse the three-note runs there.. another excellent transition back into what reminds me of the original chorus.. great mixing of the piano, saw, and square instruments. too bad the song didn't last longer, i would've listened all the way =) although, you did pick a nice way to end a song, a "bang" ending would leave me a bit traumatized..
        overall comments: excellent tune.. good mixing, great percussion. not too complex, which is good because the melodies are good, and combine with the rest of the song great. (melody with chords, bassline with percussion, it all fits together).  song was a tad short, but, oh well, nice job, whoever you are. =D