Welcome to my roulette!
I'm not sure how common this is, but I'm actually a roulette organizer who has never been a roulette participant. That's because, as you'll see when you look at my banned artists list, I simply don't have a big music library. I have followed a lot of roulettes on this forum, though, partly for fun and partly out of keeping track of things in waiting for my turn to come up. So I think I know how to run one, but if any of you veterans take a look at my rules or at something I'm doing as we proceed and see that I'm doing something that you think won't work, please don't hesitate to let me know.
I’m rather excited to see what kind of new music y’all will have to send me. I'm sure that all you people with huge music libraries have a lot of great stuff that I've never heard! That said, I feel I should say I’m interested in expanding my musical taste to genres outside of the prog rock/metal sphere, so I've included a couple of rules that are specifically designed to give a tangible benefit to people who send me songs that aren’t prog or metal. And also if you introduce me to a new genre or something I'll really like you, so there's that. I’ll certainly be happy to take any good prog or metal submissions you may, but you'll gain a slight advantage if you send material outside those genres from time to time.
I suppose I should try my best to describe my musical tastes. I’m a fan of melody above anything else. "Experimental" music is likely to be a miss if it is amelodic in nature.
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence is my least favorite Dream Theater album, if that tells you anything. I also tend to prefer bands that have a distinct sound (for example, I never really got into any of those really-DT sounding prog-power bands like Circus Maximus), though that’s certainly not a hard and fast rule—you’re welcome to try me and see, and it might work out for you. Beyond those generalizations, I like a wide diversity of music, as you’ll see in my banned artists list.
I know everyone likes to ask the growls question… I guess I’d say I’m not opposed to them if they work with the music, but there's also a chance I'll find them ill fitting and find them to detract from the music. I like Opeth, so there’s that, I guess, but… it’s also certainly possible that growls could turn me off of a song, so be wary before you send anything with growls.
That’s pretty much all I can give you (besides my banned artists list) on my musical taste. I don’t know how much it helps, but I imagine I will write long and rather detailed write-ups when I grade the songs for each round, so hopefully that will give people a chance to get a better understanding of what specific things I like or don’t like.
Round Themes: ROUND 1: Open
ROUND 2: Open
ROUND 3: Open
ROUND 4: Sad
ROUND 5: Happy/Uplifting
ROUND 6: Epic
ROUND 7: Tiny Epic (less than 6 minutes)
ROUND 8: Open
ROUND 9: Make me an EP (30 minute max, 15 minute max per band)
Participants:- Scorpion
- Parama
- Evermind
- Shadow Ninja 2.0
- lonestar
- TAC
- kingshmegland
- OpenYourEyes311
- Big Hath
- Sacul
I don't have a set number of participants that I'm looking for. I guess that 8 is probably a good number, but if a 9th person wants to join, I wouldn't lock them out. I will probably want to cap it at around 10, so let's say 8-10 participants is what I'm looking for.
Rules:- Each round is scored of ten.
- No elimination.
- The lowest score of each participant will be dropped at the end. This is to encourage risk-taking; so if you take a big risk and get a 2/10, it won't kill your chances.
- I’ll trust people to not send me things that are too long without imposing a length limit, because I don’t want to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and say that a song of 9:58 is okay but 10:03 is not. That said, however, I will only spend so much time with the songs you give me, and will grade them based on how well I like them after that time, and anything too long usually takes a little while with me. So unless you are confident that I’ll love your 27-minute epic right off the bat, going shorter would typically be in your best interest. If things do get crazy, with multiple people sending me 20+ minute songs in a round or something (except the epic round, obviously), I might change this and impose a hard limit.
- Bonus half point for something I judge to be outside prog and hard rock/metal (I’m not going to split hairs between what’s rock and what’s metal; if it’s heavy guitar-centric music, you won't get this half point). If it’s a song that falls out of these styles on an album that is one of these styles, though, I won’t award the half point (for instance, you would not get the half point if you sent me Wait for Sleep).
- The final round will incorporate a wager. I'll finalize the details once we get there, but the essence will be that, in addition to your regular score, you'll be able to wager up to a certain amount on what your score for your EP will be. If you're within one point, you get the points you wagered, if not, you lose those points. If you win the wager and your EP scores a 9 or more, you'll get the points you wagered plus half again what you wagered. If you get a 9 or more and don't win the wager, you won't lose any points.
I hope people enjoy participating in this! Please send me good things!