Season Rules

[brandondrury]

The Slate Digital Cup season lasts exactly one year (12 monthly contests).

Slate Digital Cup Grand Prize
Every Slate Digital Plugin For Life

Slate Digital Cup Monthly Prize
The winner of the mixing contest will receive on Slate Digital product of their choosing. Currently, the options are SSD4, FG-X Mastering Processor, The Console Collection, and RC-Tube.

How To Win
I've come up with a system that analyzes....

1. how well you ranked in each individual contest
2. how actively you participated in the contest and helped others
3. the quality of that participation and help

The Secret To Winning
The secret to winning this big time contest is to score as high in the mixing contest AND give as much good, friendly, and CONSTRUCTIVE help to others on as you can.

Point Accumulation
Points for each monthly contest will accumulate throughout the season and the winner will receive the grand prize at the end of the year.

In the even of a tie, there will be a tiebreaker mixoff.

Judge Scoring
Judges are awarded points equal to that of the 11th place member for that particular monthly contest. This is to encourage people to volunteer to be a judge and stay competitive in the season without giving too much incentive to be a judge.

[brandondrury]

Only One Entry
1) One entry per person. No revisions. No exceptions.

Deadline
2) You must submit your March mix in March and your April mix in April. I'm going by Central Time here, btw.

All entries must be received before the contest is closed (tentatively scheduled on midnight on the last day of the month). If the contest closed, too bad. No exceptions.

How Do I Win?
All entrants are expected to listen to other member's mixes and give CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and comments to them. The idea is for everyone to improve their mixing and have fun. Anything that doesn't directly improve mixes or add to the fun is subject to moderation.

Phase #1: Members rate each other's mixes
Starting from day 1, the “democracy” style voting begins where you rate your peers entries.

Phase #2 The 16 highest rated entries go to the Sweet 16
The last day to rate each others mixes is 14 days after the contest closes for entry. ( For the January contest, on Feb 14th , for the July contest, August 14th, etc) On the 14th, the Sweet 16 will be selected.

Phase #3 The judges take over
This is where the “electoral college” begins.

In an NCAA Final-Four style tournament bracket, the #1 seed will face the #16 seed, the #2 seed will face the #15 seed, etc in a head-to-head “game”. The winner moves on to the next round. The loser swims with the fishes.

Updates will occur periodically depending on the judges' schedule.

Phase #4 That Month's Winner Is Selected
The winner selects one Slate Digital plugin as described above.

[brandondrury]

Only-Friendly Policy
It's 100% required that an overtly friendly tone be used. People work hard on these mixes and so they are often sensitive to criticism. When offering constructive criticism, you must treat your fellow member like you would treat a singer in a session. It's too easy for comments to be taken out of context. So frame them within context. Use lots of smileys if you aren't sure.

Obviously hateful posts should be reported ASAP. I'm rather merciless to people trying to undo my hard work on the site.

Note: This doesn't mean you have to talk like a sissy. I have no problem with you saying “this mix is better than bouncing boobs”. You look like a buffoon, but you'll gain quite a bit of points with me. (Note: I've never heard such a mix....EVER.)

Making Critiques Constructive
Simply listing everything wrong with a mix is useless. Telling the member how you'd try to fix them is priceless.

Critiques We DO NOT Want: The snare drum sucks.

Critiques We Still DO NOT Want:: I don't like the snare drum.

Perfect Critique: The snare isn't snapping the way I'd like. Try bumping up 8k up a bit with a fairly wide Q and see if that adds some crack. SMILEY Sometimes you can smack the snare bottom to give it just enough sustain to help with snare cut through.

What If I Don't Feel Qualified To Critique A Mix?
1 – Get over it. No one every “gets qualified” at this gig. You just kinda do it.
2 – If you don't have an opinion about audio, why the hell are you are in an audio recording forum? There are plenty of gardening communities out there.
3 – It's okay to be modest. In fact, it's a requirement. This crap is all opinion and the user SHOULD take it or leave it. If your vocabulary isn't the greatest, do your best.

[brandondrury]

What Am I Rating?
You are rating song excitement just like you do when you listen to music for fun. While you may or may not have technical ability, we all get excited by “good” music and we all understand that there is mixing component to that. If there are distractions to this excitement, rate it accordingly.

The Ratings Scale
#5 – EXCITING Mix!!! Full blown major label quality MEGA mix. Feels great, really great.
#4 – Exciting Mix. Really, really good home recording-type mix. Feels pretty damn good.
#3 – Not bad. There are some great elements, but there some sizable flaws that detract from the songs intensity.
#2 – Good try. You'll be a lot better in a year.
#1 – You REALLY need Killer Home Recording. Killer Home Recording

How Do I Rate Entries/Thread?

[brandondrury]

Loopholes
In the event of tricksters and politicians trying to bend the rules with ridiculous loopholes, I reserve the right to deal with these people as needed. As I like to say, "No Cheating". If you have to ask if if what you are doing is cheating, it probably is, but when in doubt don't hesitate to PM me.

Members attempting to cheat via methods that are obviously against the fun spirit of these contests will be disqualified. This is a catch all so I don't have to write a constitution.

The No Insult Policy
The second you find it necessary to insult another user by name calling and other bs behavior, I'm going to find your membership unnecessary. This site is for adults or kids who can fake it. Feel free to tattle by sending me a PM.

The Whoops Clause
In the event that a flaw in my programming miscounted the results, I will not strip any previous users of their prizes.

In other words, if Jerry's entry wasn't counted and that led to Tom winning, I'm not taking away Tom's prize. Instead, I'll do my best to quickly fix the problem and make sure it doesn't happen again.

While I've worked very hard on this script and have tested it thoroughly, I'm not perfect. Errors on my part should be looked at similarly to losing count of the outs or score in a backyard softball game.

[brandondrury]

How Do I Enter

-- Make sure you are a logged in member. Register here.
-- Find this months contest here and click on it. You'll see a sticky with instructions.
-- Download the tracks to mix your song. (You'll have to go through tortuous propaganda )
-- Make sure to sign up to stay updated on all Slate Digital Cup updates here.
-- When you've got the best mix in the world do the following....

A) Head over to the appropriate forum category. You can see them here.

B) Create New Thread

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C) Enter your username, a dash, and some dumb short phrase. In the body below write a brief little thing. No need for a book. Just talk about the direction you went, problems you had, whatever. No big deal.

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D) Scroll down to the "Additional Options" and Click on the Manage Attachments Button.

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E) A new window will pop up. Click "Choose" and upload your 320k mp3.

You won't get any great notification that your file is uploading. A 10MB mp3 may take several minutes to upload on a slow internet connection.

Be Patient.

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F) When the file is uploaded, you will see this in the pop up window.

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On the "Create Thread" page, you'll see this:

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G) Click "Submit New Thread" on the right side.

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[wankerone]

Look out for my bouncing boobs mix - woohoo!

[brandondrury]

I'm closing this thread. If you have any questions, comments, or bouncing boobs mixes go ahead and create a new thread here: Rules, Details, Prizes, Questions, and Comments

This will make it much more efficient to answer people's questions.

Brandon