Season 9

Video Games we love💖, re-imagined as original works for performance!

Season 9 - Beloved Games

This season we will be giving everyone the chance to revisit some of our most beloved video games franchises.

The challenges will run monthly and each month we will be focusing on making music for a different game franchise. You will be able to create original tracks inspired by your favourite games, and covers of your most loved existing tracks. The idea this season is to make the challenges accessible to everyone... so if you wish you can just keep it this simple and make some beloved game music, but if you would like to stretch yourself, you can level up your challenge submissions to a whole next level by also participating in "Writing for Performance", a chance to see your compositions transformed into music performed live!

Thank you to Our Sponsors who are joining us for Season 9 and providing Amazing
Participation rewards!

A huge thank you to our joint sponsors for Season 9!!

Orchestral Tools and Best Service will be generously providing VGML with a number of amazing rewards for our challengers to pick up, just for participating in the original composition and arrangement/orchestration challenges.

Salu

Experience an inward journey into the finest details of sound — Salu offers a unique assembly of close, intimate, experimental instruments and textures for sensitive, inspired musical expression.

Opaline

Hazy guitar trio

Whisper

Gentle wind instruments

Note: To qualify for the reward draws you must submit a track to the challenge and leave at least one feedback for another challenger in that round.

Looking forward to our Season 10 Rewards

For season 10 we can again thank our amazing sponsors for providing some incredible rewards for our participants.

Radome

Experimental cello

Sinoid

Mutated sine waves

Tallinn

BALTIC VOICES AND STRINGS

Pure, minimalist sound with a distinctive character

Challenge Rounds:

There will be 10 challenge rounds in Season 9, with one round per month. Each round will be themed around an iconic video game franchise. You can participate in as many or as few rounds as you wish this time. There may be additional elements to each challenge to spice it up. Also, there will be a parallel set of challenges running for the "Making Game Music Course" challenges. The course related challenges will be focused on shorter music theory and craft exercises, while these Season 9 challenges will be focused on creating fully fleshed out tracks - the challenges will alternate every two weeks or so.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is:

Original Composition Challenge

Each month we will be celebrating one iconic game franchise, chosen from the list down below (you won't know which one until it is announced). Using the iconic video game of the month as your guide, you are to create a wholly original piece of music that could sit comfortably within that game franchise. This is not a cover, or arrangement of an existing track, but a completely new (and copyright/trademark safe!) theme in the style of the game franchise.

What does success sound like for for the Original Composition challenge? The track must be original, though it may have references to motifs from the original (think back to Season 8 Round 1), but it must pass the copycat test... as in it should not sound like a copy of any particular existing track from the franchise. It should sound like it is a track that could have been on the OST but wasn't, so people would say... oh that sounds like xyz OST but... I don't see that track listed? Or it could be your take on the next installment of the franchise - what you would write if you were approached to make the next release for that game! So there is plenty of scope for you to put your own stamp on it.

2. Cover/Remix Challenge

Using the iconic video game of the month as your guide, create a cover of any track of your choice from the game franchise and submit that for the server to enjoy. Be warned, there may be an additional limits or requirements added to narrow the selection in some way, which won't be announced until the start of the round! ;-)

3. Arrangement/Orchestration Challenges (Sheet music)

The arrangement challenge is specifically for people interested in taking one of the selected original tracks from the previous months Original Composition Challenge and orchestrating/arranging the track to be suitable for an ensemble recording and/or performance, with VGMLOVE being the default choice, but you can arrange of other groups if you wish. You will need to collaborate with the original composer to get the source music (midi files and stems) and from this create an arrangement in sheet music form that the chosen ensemble can play.

4. Art challenge

We want to provide a space for our artist community to also get involved in our challenge rounds.

Your challenge is the use the iconic video game of the month as your guide to create a wholly original piece of artwork that would sit comfortably within that game franchise, while not impinging on any copyright or trademarks for that franchise. So... not copying a character or location that exists, but imagine creating a new character or location that would fit into that world. Artwork that is deemed clear of potential copyright issues could be utilised (with your permission and crediting) in a performance and any related video productions or albums associated with this project.

Albums

At the end of each month all the submissions for the original challenges will be released as a Bandcamp album, and requested tracks will be distributed on MyVGM.com as an EP. The most popular artwork for that month will be the album cover for the album (where permission has been granted).