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mae
11-06-2015, 09:18 AM
So I'm a big fan of all the various tournaments we've held here on our great forum and as I was just driving around, listening to the '90s station on my XM Radio I heard a bunch of great songs I probably haven't heard in over a decade. That got me thinking what a wonderful tournament it would be if we could do one based around music.

I tried to think of some of the ways it could be structured, and there are many possibilities, but one way I could see it playing out would be for everyone to nominate pretty much any song or track from any genre and from any time, and these would all be collected, then sorted by decade, each decade would then get its winner, and finally we would have a round-robin with all the best songs from each decade to determine The Best Song of All Time.

I'm not yet sure how many nominees this would entail, but it would be a pretty significant tournament in theory. To make it truly all-time, I propose we include songs going back to 1945 and up to 2015. This will give us 70 years of post-WWII music, from classic tunes, to the latest hits.

What do you say, music fans? Let's rock? :rock:

RainInSpain
11-06-2015, 09:51 AM
Cool idea! I'm all for it.

Question: any geographic/language restrictions?

Other than the obvious fact that if I nominate some song that I grew up with, but which is pretty much unknown outside of Russia, it won't get voted for.

I was just talking with a dear DT member about this a while ago, and we realized that our music knowledge is so very different (despite similar ages) - I grew up hearing a lot of Italian pop music and for a long time was mostly oblivious to English-language songs.

But this could be a VERY interesting tournament! I'm excited :lol:

mae
11-06-2015, 09:55 AM
We live in a global world so I don't think this should be restricted in any way (I'm sure someone will nominate Psy - Gangam Style). Plus I'm thinking each entry can be supported by a video (I doubt there's a song that cannot be found on YouTube), so even if a lot of people have never heard a particular song, be it due to age, language, or genre, they'll be able to quickly play the video and listen, and see if it's worthy of their vote. I can see a lot of lesser known but good tracks moving on in this fashion, though in later rounds they'll surely start falling off.

RainInSpain
11-06-2015, 10:54 AM
Yes, that is exactly what excites me about this idea - I am sure members here have pretty varying tastes, so a lot of good music can be discovered this way.
Except that some of the music videos on YouTube are not available for viewers in Russia due to copyright restrictions or some other unnamed reasons (oh, the dreaded "This video is not available to viewers in your country") :( But then again, I'll have no problem looking for an mp3 of a particular song, if it interests me.

mae
11-06-2015, 11:40 AM
If that does happen, a different video could be easily substituted. Also, I think it would be best to divide songs into five-year groups. I think it's natural that songs from the first part of a decade always sound different from songs in the other half of the decade. This would give us 14 main groups (and we wouldn't be stuck with the 1940s and the 2010s having five less years to pick from than the rest of the groups). So all we would need is just a whole bunch of nominations (not just the popular stuff, but various deep cuts and good things like that), not quite sure yet how many exactly - but doesn't really matter, the more the merrier. And after several rounds we will end up with the 14 best songs of the last 70 years, each one representing one five-year period from 1945 to 2015. That would be amazing!

RainInSpain
11-06-2015, 01:04 PM
Mmmm, five year groups make sense - definitely from the fairness to the 40s and 10s standpoint. Also, that way each of us can nominate almost twice as many songs than if we were breaking it down by decade! :lol:

Are you thinking of grouping by genre as well as some other criteria? I'm just pondering whether going really deep into the genre stuff will work - especially as new ones have been appearing over the years that we'll be looking at.

mae
11-06-2015, 01:14 PM
Any genre should be good to go.

Merlin1958
11-06-2015, 03:00 PM
I can envision how this will play out, but what the hell, I'm in. In the meantime, folks may want to visit some of these threads which have been previously ongoing in order to get a feel for the ranges and tastes of some of the folks here. May also help folks with the nominating process as these threads tend to cover a fairly large range of tastes.


http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?11137-Rock-n-Roll-Song-Game

http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?19285-Colossal-Collaborations!!!!

http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?17643-Music-what-makes-you-tick.-high-energy-favorites

http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?12290-Rock-n-Roll-Music-Video-s-Thread

http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?147-Songs-Stuck-In-Your-Head

Also, some things to keep in mind from experience. First, while I totally agree and support requiring video's of the nominated songs and such, you must bear in mind that this will slow down load times considerably. I'm not sure what if anything can be done in anticipation of this fact (maybe shorten groups as much as possible?), but I thought it worth mentioning for your consideration. Second, while I fully understand your reference to "Global" tastes and I am not trying to exclude anyone's preferences, but you may want to restrict the song origin/release state to keep a more level playing field that everyone is more or less familiar with. Otherwise the voting may be severely unbalanced. Maybe a restriction for the U,S, and/or U.K. charts would be appropriate. Going completely "Global" might not only skew the voting, but also make administering the process unwieldy. Again, just a thought to consider. I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do, or not to do. Just offering some points to consider is all.

I look forward to participating in this if and when it gets off the ground!!!

ladysai
11-06-2015, 04:48 PM
Sounds like an awesome idea, pablo!

I like the 5 year global music span plan...
if nothing else, the global aspect will introduce me to new music. That could be cool.

Mattrick
11-06-2015, 08:08 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llB7NaWLUc4
The winner


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZocIkG4TydQ
Runner Up

mae
11-07-2015, 01:51 AM
Bill, as for your concern about videos overload, the videos would be hidden under spoilers (I did that during the Comedy tournament and it worked fine, the video would only load once you clicked on the spoiler). As far as global and charts restrictions, as a big fan of electronic music that typically does not chart anywhere but maybe very specific of charts, I would be nominating a few of my favorites. If they bomb, at least some folks will get to hear them.

And thanks for those links! I know members here are all of diverse ages, backgrounds, locations, and music tastes, so my hope that when the nominations begin, everyone considers their picks carefully and try covering the field as wide as possible. I'm thinking we'd need about 1,000 nominations overall or so, so we all should think about these as the best pieces of music (be it the poppiest of pop, the hardest of metal, the smoothest of jazz, or the obscurest of indie artistry) of the last 70 years.

Wikipedia has Billboard Top 100 singles listed going back to 1940, and Spotify has a lot of these lists curated into playlists, for anyone doing research on what to nominate. I'm still not sure of the best way to do the actual nominating process. Do we do them by groups and do we second? I'm afraid due to the number of nominations needed seconding would prolong the process too much.

mae
11-07-2015, 08:19 AM
So I was doing a little math and I think I've come up with a good tournament structure that makes sense. This would always be a pretty epic tournament, given the time-frame and the goal, but I believe it would be so much fun and worth the effort. Plus we all should get to hear some awesome tunes.

So what I proposed above would be to have 14 groups of five-year periods from 1945 to 2014, covering the last 70 years of music (up to but not including 2015, as that would make it 71 years, my initial math was off):

Era 1: 1945-1949
Era 2: 1950-1954
Era 3: 1955-1959
Era 4: 1960-1964
Era 5: 1965-1969
Era 6: 1970-1974
Era 7: 1975-1979
Era 8: 1980-1984
Era 9: 1985-1989
Era 10: 1990-1994
Era 11: 1995-1999
Era 12: 2000-2004
Era 13: 2005-2009
Era 14: 2010-2014

Each group would need 112 nominations, with the first group perhaps needing half that (56). Altogether, this will give us 1,512 nominations (or about 20 nominations per year, which seems very reasonable). Each "era" of 112 nominees will go through the following rounds:

Round 1: 16 groups of 7 with the top 5 moving on (80)
Round 2: 16 groups of 5 with the top 3 moving on (48)
Round 3: 24 groups of 2 with the top 1 moving on (24)

All nominees would also be ranked by their overall percentage and after the third round the remaining 24 will be seeded 1 though 24 and go through five rounds of playoff as in this sample bracket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:24TeamBracket-Byes2

The first group from the '40s would go though the same process, but with half the size, as I doubt we would be able to come up with that many titles from that era.

When we get a winner in each of the 14 eras, we could do a round-robin, or go with just another 14-title playoff, like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:14TeamBracket-BigTenBasketball

So yes, it would be a large and lengthy undertaking, but this would indeed be the ultimate music countdown. And we're in no rush, right? A separate forum for this event may be necessary and polls would most likely need to be going up quicker and in larger volume than in our past tournaments. It is my hope that many people would participate, making this truly representative and fair and fun.

mae
11-07-2015, 11:12 AM
For more in-depth research, check out this great resource: http://tsort.info/

Mattrick
11-07-2015, 12:08 PM
So Pablo, what you're saying is most of the greatest musicians who ever lived won't be in it, and there won't really be any Cole Porter? What kind of tournament is this?

Tchaikovsky is not impressed. Look how unimpressed he is
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Youngtchaik.jpg/170px-Youngtchaik.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeQ3DmKU7A

I'm going to need some of Grieg's Peer Gynt suites to help me forget this won't be a part of the great music tournament :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2gDFJWhXp8

mae
11-07-2015, 12:24 PM
Well, this would restricted to the last 70 years. As much as I like classical music, I don't see how we can have Tchaikovsky square off against Michael Jackson.

Mattrick
11-07-2015, 12:48 PM
Tchaikovsky would destroy Michael Jackson lol

...In a perfect world lol

mae
11-08-2015, 10:56 AM
For more in-depth research, check out this great resource: http://tsort.info/

Another cool site: http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/

Iwritecode
11-10-2015, 11:59 AM
How would you deal with covers of songs? Can the same song be nominated more than once if it were performed by multiple artists? That also might affect the year depending on when the original was released and when the cover was released.

Mattrick
11-10-2015, 02:44 PM
There better be at least one Dallas Green song in here somewhere since he's the greatest, though not most successful, musician of the 21st century so far.

Now that is talent. TALENT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E7gOluzpo0

mae
11-10-2015, 08:56 PM
I don't think there would be issues with covers, we'd be nominating specific songs by specific artists from a specific year. And I can think of a few covers better than the originals.

mae
11-11-2015, 10:28 AM
Mattrick, that albums sounds great, if we go ahead with the tournament, I hope you nominate one or two of his songs. As stated above, this will be a great way for everyone to discover new music, too, along with the classics and well-known hits.

Mattrick
11-11-2015, 02:31 PM
Dallas Green is a master. I could listen to his stuff over and over and never get sick of it. Hard to believe he was originally the creative force behind a metal/screamo band.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy3HFwBJBN0

I'll definitely nominate him, though not sure if he'll advance.

BROWNINGS CHILDE
11-14-2015, 10:29 AM
I tried to get this going several years ago, and was shot down by a couple of admins. I couldnt start a tournament without approval and yadda yadda etc.

ladysai
11-14-2015, 05:06 PM
Let's hope this time the powers that be are more open to the tournament idea.

mae
11-15-2015, 05:58 AM
Well, I really hope we can get this off the ground and we'll need lots of people to participate for it to be any fun.

mae
11-17-2015, 01:48 AM
For more in-depth research, check out this great resource: http://tsort.info/

Another cool site: http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/

In researching various songs I'd nominate I found two great databases where to look up weekly chart positions. One is of course Billboard and you can go back to the week of August 9, 1958, it looks like: http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1958-08-09

Another is the UK charts database OfficialCharts, which you can walk back all the way to November 14, 1952: http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-charts/19521114/7501/

Jon
11-19-2015, 04:40 AM
To be clear about "videos." Some "deep cuts" and older songs have no video; just stills or lyrics...even a single still. I fear songs will be judged by their video rather than their musical content. This would obviously favor contemporary cuts.

mae
11-19-2015, 05:35 AM
No, the videos would be simply to support the music. No official videos necessary and in some cases should not be provided if they (as often happens) have a whole pre-song scene and such. These should be substituted with a simple video of the album version. Also, no live videos please, unless a specific live version is being nominated (of which I can think of very few). Because of course not everyone will have heard every song, videos will be important actually, as a way for everyone to make an informed judgment. Even if you know all the songs, listening to each nominee will provide a way to have a better understanding of just what you are voting for or against.

Jon
11-19-2015, 05:52 AM
Ok... to be clear...when we vote the video is to have NO bearing on our choice...right?

mae
11-19-2015, 05:58 AM
Exactly. It would only be there as a quick refresher about the track, or to listen to it for the first time, if it is new to you. When the actual voting starts, I would ask that everyone give every nominee a listen to be able to give a well-informed vote. Since most songs aren't that long, 4 minutes on average, it shouldn't take too long and will give you a nice eclectic mix of things to listen to while you contemplate your vote. Even the well-known tunes, like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hopefully will get a proper spin alongside the other nominees in a bracket so that a person can make their best decision based solely on the music.

Also, not every song, sadly, is available on YouTube. For instance, there are pretty much no Prince tracks on YouTube. There may be on other services that are embeddable with our forum, such as Vimeo, so in these cases we would still need either an alternate video from these services, or at least a link to another freely-accessible site where you can see the video or listen to the song. But there are very few such cases, I would imagine. Prince is just being a dick, I guess. His stuff isn't on Spotify either. :(

mae
11-19-2015, 05:58 AM
I'm very much itching to begin the process and the only major thing we still need to hash out is the actual structure of the official nomination process. I am leaning toward a chronological process.

Jon
11-19-2015, 06:07 AM
So a "song" with a single "still" is ok?...such as the one below.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5R7G6GCpM

mae
11-19-2015, 06:11 AM
Absolutely. And very much preferred over an official video.

But for nominations and the polls the videos will need to be hidden under the SPOIL tags (not http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/images/icons/radioactive.gif but http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/images/icons/spoiler.gif). Like so:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5R7G6GCpM

This will not overload the page and make your browser weep for mercy, since the video(s) will only load when you open the spoiler.

Jon
11-19-2015, 06:18 AM
But dude...we WANT them to listen. LOL

N/M I see no need to load all the songs you have heard.

mae
11-19-2015, 06:19 AM
Yes, but again, the instructions will be explicit that to vote you will need to have listened to each nominee (honor system, of course).

Jon
11-19-2015, 06:23 AM
Yes I see... but no need to load it all down the page.

I am on board.

What other issues remain?

mae
11-19-2015, 06:28 AM
I am on board.

What other issues remain?

Just how to proceed with the nominations. If you look at one of my earlier posts, I laid out how I would like the structure to be, so we would be basically having 14 tournaments back to back :excited: Sounds crazy, but I'm sure it will work out great. I will need help and a few folks have already stepped up. So the question remains, do we all just nominate whatever songs from any time period and keep a tally of everything, or do we nominate things in a particular order (such as chronologically).

And I should mention regarding the videos, during the nomination process you would be able to second a nomination without having ever heard of the track, but if you watch the video and like what you hear, you can second. My big thing would only be that people nominate and second only those candidates that they feel are very much worth being in a select group of some of the best songs of the period, and representative or unique to that time. Because while the tournament is shaping up to be pretty huge and a new sub-forum will be created for it, 224 tracks per decade is nothing. I bet everyone could easily come up with 100 great songs per year without too much work.

Jon
11-19-2015, 06:39 AM
Yes...I read your earlier post. My thoughts...


A thread titled

"Nominations for the period of 1945 -1950."

A separate thread titled

"Nominations for the period of 1950 - 1955."


ect


After a stated time period, the top nominees can be collected and the nomination threads sent to the clearing at the end of the path.


Then Bill can tally it all because we all know how Bill LOVES these tournaments!!

mae
11-19-2015, 06:43 AM
That's actually rather perfect. It will be pretty chaotic, at least at first, but should be super fun. Just to reiterate, the first period of the '40s would be limited to 56 nominees only. Each other 5-year period will be at 112. I think making it any larger will be too much and we'll be here all year :)

Jon
11-19-2015, 06:47 AM
You may want to limit ALL periods...to some degree. I fear, though, a good song may be lost simply because someone is busy.

Just thinking out loud here.

mae
11-19-2015, 06:55 AM
Well the limiting is always a big subject. I was thinking of implementing a rule where you must wait for several nominations before making another nomination, not being able to second more than one nomination at a time, and having to wait for several secondings before seconding something else. The exact numbers I'm not sure about, because on the one hand we'd want this to go pretty swiftly (we will need 1,512 seconded nominations overall, which is a lot), but on the other hand, too many or too long of a restriction can stall the process too much.

Jon
11-19-2015, 07:20 AM
Well a time and number limit is possibly in order. I suspect you will not reach the "number of nominations" limit in some periods. I have only one intention or the entire '50's. (Sleep Walk - 1959 by brothers Santo & Johnny Farina.)




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1st_9KudWB0

mae
11-19-2015, 07:28 AM
I'm sure we can come up with oodles of '50s songs. That's when rock 'n roll was born! And yeah, that's an awesome song!

Jon
11-19-2015, 07:24 PM
Yes... it's just my taste.

Jon
11-19-2015, 07:48 PM
I want to be clear in a particular circumstance... cover tunes... An example of an odd situation is the popular The Lion Sleeps Tonight.


If I understand your earlier post...
First recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda and The Evening Birds in 1939...




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrrQT4WkbNE


It would be disqualified by virtue of it's original release date of 1939 despite the WILDLY popular 1961 version by "The Tokens".



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LBmUwi6mEo


The two cuts are VERY different!
In a another case....Whiskey in the Jar is an old Irish folk song. No one knows the composer and EVERYONE covered it.This version by The Dead is very different from Thin Lizzy's version.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amLungGziP0




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZN82U5Jyok




I posit a cover song stand on it's own during it's own time period.

mae
11-19-2015, 08:51 PM
Of course. Covers are songs like any other. Some are much better known than originals.

A nomination would need to be made in the format: ARTIST - TITLE (YEAR).

mae
11-19-2015, 09:59 PM
Also, there should be no limits for the number of nominations per artist or album. So if someone wants to nominate every song from Nirvana's Nevermind, and they all get seconded, that's fine. And it's only one of the best albums of all time.

mae
11-20-2015, 10:12 AM
So we should be all set to begin shortly then. RF has already opened up a dedicated sub-forum here, so it's all neat and tidy. With Thanksgiving coming up, I think we can begin after that. Prior to that, I'll create a big overview thread that will be stickied and serve as the main discussion thread of the whole enterprise and will also lay out in detail what it is we are doing and how to go about everything. Then there will be the 14 nomination threads for each of the periods. Once all nominees that are required have been selected, the real fun begin, but I doubt this will be before New Year's. So January/February 2016, I'm thinking. I still need to work out the actual schedule, but it will most likely be the usual 7-day polls, but probably larger in number than in our past tournaments.

Jon
11-20-2015, 06:29 PM
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! - Glascoe




http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae214/denny111/Tom%20Petty.jpg

mae
11-21-2015, 05:01 AM
I have only one intention or the entire '50's. (Sleep Walk - 1959 by brothers Santo & Johnny Farina.)

But what about this immoral classic, also from that same year:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q72jAN2F5Cs

Br!an
11-22-2015, 08:47 AM
Yes, that is exactly what excites me about this idea - I am sure members here have pretty varying tastes, so a lot of good music can be discovered this way.
Except that some of the music videos on YouTube are not available for viewers in Russia due to copyright restrictions or some other unnamed reasons (oh, the dreaded "This video is not available to viewers in your country") :( But then again, I'll have no problem looking for an mp3 of a particular song, if it interests me.

Use TOR or another proxy.

Br!an
11-22-2015, 08:54 AM
I like the spoiler idea.

Perhaps we could use that on the Rock & Roll Song thread. :orely:

mae
11-23-2015, 10:08 AM
See the announcement thread now up in its own little sub-forum!

mae
12-05-2015, 07:15 AM
We're underway, folks, don't be shy: http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/forumdisplay.php?207-The-Great-Music-Tournament

:rock: