Music Banter - Update: The official musicbanter voices thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so, I didn't want to have to do this, but here's the deal. Submissions technically ended 18 hours ago. I have recieved only a single, solitary entry.

I know at least one other person was thinking of entering, and I think its better, even if it means waiting, if we wait until we have at least a few people in on this for the inaugural round.

Therefore, I am EXTENDING THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES TO THE END OF THIS MONTH.

Below is quoted the details of the competition, for people to peruse.

Quote:

Here's the brief. Once every two weeks, I'm going to pick a theme, and the task for anyone who cares to contribute, is to record a short piece of them speaking in a manner that befits the theme. This must be submitted in the first week.

In the second week, I'm going to create a thread with a Poll, and upload a zip file of all the submitted recordings to mediafire or somesuch. Anyone who cares to, can come in, download the zip file, and vote for their favourite recording. I will be renaming your entries to obscure whose each entry is. You'll know which yours is, but not whose anyone else is (Unless they tell you).

The theme for any week, can be just about anything. I might pick a certain phrase and ask for a a dramatic reading, I might ask you to improvise a voice over to a certain scene, imitate a radio announcer, etc etc.

TO SUBMIT, PRIVATE MESSAGE ME A LINK TO A DOWNLOADABLE COPY OF YOUR ENTRY.

But GeeBee! How do I do this?
Easy. Record your voice. Submission guidelines are as follows:

1 - Length Matters: Try not to make things too long. If the theme is something nonspecific, like "Imitate a radio announcer", I'd appreciate it if things could be kept under a minute. Obviously if the theme requires more length, go for it, but we want to keep people excited and interested. Use your best judgement.

2 - Golden Ears: Again, keeping things flexible here, but within reason. If you have good recording gear, use it. I'm sure we'll all love it. If you don't, submit anyway, but do your best to make it listenable and entertaining. What I don't want to hear is the two ends of the scale here. Unlistenable noise isn't fun, and while its fine to add a little studio magic (Hell, even preferable), but I'd think very carefully about anything more drastic than EQ, noise reduction, and a little reverb. You can use anything you like, but make sure its justified in that it ENHANCES, rather than overshadows.

3 - Keep the Ball Rolling: In the interests of making sure this thing keeps going once it starts, I'm going to make this a rule - you MUST submit a suggestion for the next topic, along with your entry. It doesn't matter if you don't intend to enter the next competition, or if you think its a bad suggestion, or even if its a suggestion we've had before. I want to make sure there's new material each time, and that means I want your input.

4 - Voter Apathy: Don't vote for your own submissions. If your entry really is the best, then you should be able to trust that other people will think so. I will be making the polls public. If you vote on your own entry, I will remove your vote from the tally during counting.

5 - Have fun! If you wanna imitate kermit, go ahead. If you think the part demands your best AHNOLD impersonation, go for it. Fast, slow, whatever. At the end of the day, we're voting on the best ones, not the most similar to the source material.

NOTE: People seem to think this is some serious thing. Its really not. If you have the chops to do a really good, serious entry, then go for it, but if you want to do a stupid accent, a comedy entry, or other weird stuff, then that's fine too. I'm not going to penalise anyone for doing their own thing.

FIRST WEEK THEME

This week only, as its the first week, I'll be choosing a theme myself.

The task this week is to recite one of Schwarzwald's epic speeches from The Big O. It has several rather long silences, I strongly suggest you omit these from your submissions.

You'll be needing the following.

1 - A copy of "Stoning", Schwarzwald's music from the series.
2 - The text of one of his speeches.
3 - A microphone
4 - A recording program. Audacity is a decent free program.

You are required to read as best you can, a Schwarzwald speech, over the music in question. Audacity will allow you to record your voice independently, and then place the music under it. If you can't do this yourself, send in your vocal, and I WILL PUT THE MUSIC TO IT FOR YOU. The only reason I recommend you do it yourself is because it allows you to hear your voice over the music BEFORE you submit.