Introduction:Welcome to another roulette from me! This is something I sort of decided to do on a lark. Since I started doing roulettes, I've gotten to the place where my comfort zone is having more artists I'm excited to check out than I know what to do with, and I feel that the well is drying up a bit, so, well, here we are!
On a personal note, my last roulette was nearly two years ago, but I canceled it because of a serious personal tragedy. I've never been someone to open up much on DTF, but I'll just say that I'm starting to reach something like a new normal in my life, and I think running a new roulette will be part of the healing process in some way. Don't take that as me having any expectations of you, just a statement of gratitude to anyone who wants to participate in this or ends up following along.
Okay, what kind of roulette is this? My format last time was driven by two things I wanted to change about the way I was doing roulettes. First, I wanted to hear more than one song from a particular artist, because I'm primarily looking for artists I can dive deep into, not individual songs that I might like. Second, I wanted to judge winners by a comparative standard, not doing a score out of ten, because trying to assign numerical values is one of the most frustrating aspects of running a roulette to me.
Last time, I tried to accomplish those goals by doing an album roulette where people faced each other in a rotating series of head-to-head matchups. I don't regard that as a failed format; it's probably worth someone trying again, but it's not what I'm doing this time. I don't have the time for albums, and I want to provide a little more of a spectrum of outcomes for each round beyond "win-loss." So here's what I came up with...
Format:Some of the format specifics will depend on the exact number of participants I get, so stay tuned for a precise layout. But in essence I'm planning to use a pool format to score submissions against each other and gradually eliminate participants over the course of the roulette. I'm anticipating high demand for participants, considering the way things have gone lately for roulette, so I've planned for that and am looking to include somewhere from 15-20 participants. I also don't want it to be 17 or 19, so I'll try to invite new people if we get left at one of those numbers. If demand is lower than I thought, I'll figure out how to run it with however many people want to join.
The basics are each participants will be randomly assigned to a pool of 3-5 people. The submissions within a pool will be ranked and receive points accordingly. So if the pools have 4 people, then my favorite submission of a round will get 4 points, my second favorite will get 3, etc. The pools will stay together for three rounds. Then, the bottom 1-2 people from the pool (depending on the size) will be eliminated.
New pools will then be created with the surviving participants, and we'll follow the same procedure for rounds 4-6. After round 6, there will be another elimination, and we'll have 4-6 people left. These people will do two ranked EP rounds, and the most EP points will win.
If this is hard to follow, don't worry. I'll post some more specifics once we have a participants list.
The basics are, you're competing directly against 2-4 other people. You need to score points by having submissions I like better than theirs. If you're doing poorly, you'll be eliminated after three rounds. If not, you'll compete for three more rounds against a different group of people. If you do well against them, then you'll compete against everyone else who's left in two EP rounds.
All the complexity should be on my side. All you have to do is follow what to submit and when. That's what this next part will tell you:
Submissions:Submissions need not just be single songs. I want to hear a sampling from an artist, not just one few-minutes-long piece. So, for each of the first six rounds, you have a 15 minute limit to send me as many songs from a single artist as you want. You can send one 14-minute epic. You can send four 3:30 songs. You can send a 10-minute song and a 4-minute song. It's all up to you. It just needs to be 15:00 or less in total.
There's no minimum length. Yes, you can send one 3-minute song if you want. I don't advise it, but you can.
"Single artist" generally means that if I was going to sort the songs in my music library, the words listed under "artist" would be identical. Features are fine, but side projects and solo projects count as different artists. If you have a weird case, let me know and I'll make a decision. Generally, a band that changes name counts as the same artist, a spin-off band counts as a different artist.
Banned music:What can't you send? I'm keeping this as simple as possible. Below is a list of artists that are totally banned. There is also a link to a Google Doc that lists individual songs that are banned. The songs list comes from two sources: Artists where I know one or two albums but am uncertain I want to explore further, and past roulette submissions. I encourage cheating where permitted, but I'm not going to permit you to submit something I've already scored and written about in a previous roulette.
So, if you want to know whether your submission is good, do two things: (1) Ctrl+F the artist on this page and see if they're on the banned list. (2) Ctrl+F the song on the Google Doc linked here and see if the song shows up. If the answer to both is no, go ahead and send.Banned artists:Amaranthe
Amorphis
Anabasis (not The Anabasis, which is allowed)
Anathema
Angra
Arcane
Arch/Matheos
Avantasia
Ayreon
Beyond the Bridge
Big Big Train
Blaze Bayley
Blind Guardian
Bon Iver
Caligula’s Horse
Circus Maximus
Coheed and Cambria
Coldplay
David Maxim Micic
The Dear Hunter
Death Cab for Cutie
Delain
Devin Townsend/Devin Townsend Project
Dio
Dream Theater
Enchant
Epica
Evergrey
Fates Warning
The Flower Kings
Flying Colors
Frost*
The Gentle Storm
Haken
Headspace
Helloween
IQ
Iron Maiden
Kamelot
Leprous
Liquid Tension Experiment
Lorde
Markéta Irglová
Megadeth
Metallica
Mystery
Neal Morse
The Neal Morse Band/NMB
Nightwish
Opeth
Orphaned Land
Pain of Salvation (because I don't like them)
Pink Floyd
Porcupine Tree
Pyramaze
Queensrÿche
Redemption
Rush
Seventh Wonder
Sonata Arctica
Spock’s Beard
Steve Harris
Steven Wilson
Symphony X
Taylor Swift
Teramaze
TesseracT
Threshold
Thrice
Transatlantic
Tuomas Holopainen
Unleash the Archers
Voices from the Fuselage
The Warning
Yes
Artists sent during rouletteAmahiru
Angel Dust
Anthonie Tonnon
Anubis
Ardarith
Autumn
Borknagar
Carpenter Brut
Cave In
CHVRCHES
Conception
Concrete Blonde
The Cyberiam
Dead Letter Circus
Deftones
Destiny Potato
Dim Gray
dredg
Echolyn
Fellowship
First Aid Kit
From Monuments to Masses
Ghost
Glass Beach
The Intersphere
Ivar Bjørnson and Einar Selvik
Jakub Zytecki
Jellyfish
Jolly
Katatonia
The Killers
King Crimson
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Kingcrow
Kingfisher Sky
King’s X
Kip Winger
Lost Domain
Mandroid Echostar
Mile Marker Zero
Myrath
Nevermore
Nils Frahm
Ola Englund
The Pineapple Thief
Public Service Broadcasting
Pure Reason Revolution
Rishloo
RX Bandits
Serious Black
Seven Spires
Soilwork
Sufjan Stevens
Sweet Billy Pilgrim
Sylvan
Toto
Triosphere
Twin Temple
Valis Ablaze
Vanishing Point
VOLA
Von Hertzen Brothers
Vylet Pony
Waken Eyes
Waylon Jennings
Wes Montgomery
Tastes:I'll keep this short-ish because I think people mostly ignore it and send what they want anyway. Plus, I've done enough of these and been on this forum long enough that you can figure it out.
Basically: I like music that feels like it's about significant things. Music that is often grand or epic. Great melodies are a must. Prog metal and prog rock are definitely home genres for me, and the safest plan in this roulette would probably be to stay at home in those genres, but music from other genres can still score very well. Some of my favorite music is more in the areas of indie rock or modern pop. I think it's just that it's rarer for me to fall in love with an artist from those genres.
I think it would be dangerous to send something that's going to make me think "that's weird and discordant" or something that's going to make me think "this is about how drab and gray life is" (see: Porcupine Tree). I think it would also be dangerous to send me something with morbid lyrics (such as the serial killer lyrics that many metal bands like to do), lyrics focused on drinking or drug use, or lyrics that are sexually explicit.
It would be dangerous to send me Pain of Salvation or Bent Knee. These are frequent roulette submissions that I have tried and do not like. Not going to ban them, but you've been warned.
People ask about harsh vocals. It's hit or miss. Some are going to be a-ok, some are going to be a turn-off. In a certain sense, I think I turned a corner on, like, certain kinds of melodeath and prog with harsh vocals in the last couple of years, but realistically I'm still going to be pretty selective. I'd generally say the more it's a deep, thick growl (like Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis) and the more melodic the music otherwise is (again, Amorphis), the better your chances are. If there is also clean singing that also vastly improves your odds compared to music where the vocals are all harsh.
Also, you can just ask me what I think of an artist if you see that I've heard some of their work before. I'll just tell you my current take on them.
I... think that's it. I'll put links to past roulettes here in case you want to check those. Otherwise, looking forward to this!
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Topic: 425's Roulette v5: Short break (Read 38677 times)
