VGMix held a kwakfest Friday night/Saturday morning in which I, and 34 other mixes from around the community participated. Other mixers include Ubik, virt, injury, Spamtron, SnappleMan, tumult, and many many moreeeeeeeee.
This was actually my first kwakfest, even though I’d listened in on
quite a few before. It was a LOT of fun and I can’t wait to join in on
the next one.
kwakfests are a 1-hour midi compo held in #kwakfest on VGMix’s IRC channel. They include a theme which…is more or less a suggestion. Afterwards everyone listens to the tracks produced together.
A Kwakfest is, simply, a one-hour General MIDI compo. Compos are timed contests in which musicians, artists, or programmers create the best possible example of their work — from scratch — within a given time limit, under a specific set of limitations. The most common compos are hour-long tracked module competitions, where musicians use a composition tool called a tracker to write a song in 60 minutes. Surprisingly, many musicians are quite good at this, and can write several minutes worth of music with time to spare. One-hour music compos are typically referred to as OHCs, and have a long history with many notable participants. Most of the VGMix crew work primarily with MIDI sequencers as opposed to module trackers, so we’ve adapted the OHC tradition to our working method, noncompetitive spirit, and general rejection of any seriousness at all.
Last week’s theme was…well it was lookin’ something like JPOP + Sports, and you can find the tracks here: