Zynthian Snapshot Contest Extended: 2 x V5 unit for the 2 winners!

[jofemodo]

We are very happy with the development of V5 and would like to celebrate with the community the upcoming release of our new flagship device.

After some thinking, we found the perfect way: to invite you, brave @zynthianers, to generate a collection of curated snapshots tthat serve for demo purposes and hopefully the soundtrack for a new intro video.

Of course, such an effort must have a reward to match, so why not offering one of our V5 prototypes?

So here we go!!

1.) You can send your snapshots to this thread until 2023-06-01. You must include:

• title
• description
• the snapshot
• demo audio track
• mid file, if it’s been sequenced externally
• optional screen captures (mixer, zynpad, etc.)
• If the snapshot uses specific user presets or soundfonts, they must be included too.

Snapshots must be original and unpublished.
Not more than 3 snapshots from the same author.

2.) A troika of recognized @zynthianers will make a pre-selection of 10. The list with the 10 preselected snapshots will be published before 2023-06-04. Although musical quality is first , other aspects are important too, like complexity level and usability (i.e. using good names for the pads, etc.).

3.) The winner will be chosen by the community among the ten finalist using the discourse’s voting system. Each member can vote once. Voting time will end on 2023-06-21 23:59:59 (UTC). The author of the snapshot having more votes will win a V5 prototype fully finished & functional. In case of tie, i have the golden vote. The second and third positions will have a 50% off for buying a V5 kit.

4.) All the collected snapshots could be included as demo snapshots in next zynthianOS releases. Also, we could use them for generating soundtracks for zynthian-related video contents. Apart from these right concessions, the author is the owner of their work.

ATTENTION ATTENTION!!
The contest conditions have changed and the date has been extended. Please read the addendum here:

Zynthian Snapshot Contest Extended: 2 x V5 unit for the 2 winners!

Ohhhh yessss! This is getting interesting now, really interesting. I want more I’ve been requested to extend the period for the context, and certainly i would like to do it, but it wouldn’t be fair for those who have already worked hard for appliying on time, so … … after thinking a little bit i’ve decided to extend the date and also double the bets, jejeje! I’m pretty sure you would love the new conditions: 1.) The date is extended by 1 month more, up to 2023-06-30. Those who alrea…

And that’s all!

Enjoy … and shall the muses inspire your chains!

[riban]

If you want to take part but don’t yet have a Zynthian, you can build one with just:

• Raspberry Pi 3 or later (4 is recommended)
• Raspberry Pi PSU
• uSD card
• HDMI monitor
• HDMI cable (mico to standard)
• USB computer keyboard (not required if using Pi 400)
• USB mouse (not required if using Pi 400)
• Personal computer (only required to flash the image)

See the build guide on the wiki.

[Lanfranco]

Surely I’m not up to it… but I would make a dream (Have a genuine Zynthian) come true and so I’ll try…

Is it possible to make a song of any genre or is it preferable to have a more commercial song that, listening to it, makes you want to buy the Zynthian?

[Aethermind]

That is exciting and really tempting!

It is expected for the competition entries to be written completely “in the box”, i.e. with the internal sequencer, or would it allowed to drive the Zynthian via Midi from an external DAW?

Just asking, because in the latter case the musical content wouldn’t be embedded in the submitted snapshot.

[Lanfranco]

UPLOAD UPLOAD UPLOAD Thanks to @Jofemodo I found the way to create only one MIDI file and the screenshot (Thanks)

I’ll arrive last in the contest (I’m too old ), but I want to be the first to publish a work… Composed and recorded on this rainy morning.

Title : Joe (dedicated to Joe Amoruso)
Description: Song composed by me with a slight South American air
Snapshot:
005-Contest.zss (32.7 KB)
Demo audio track:

MIDI track:
Joe.mid (10.5 KB)

Screenshot:

All parts are played (not written to MIDI) apart from the Drums which I wrote (do you hear that I’m not a drummer or percussionist? )

[Lanfranco]

UPLOAD UPLOAD UPLOAD Thanks to @Jofemodo I found the way to create only one MIDI file and the screenshot. (Thanks)
UPDATE MP3 FILE after PAN adjustment (Thanks @ToFF)
I imagined the Zynthian V5 in a video that rotates on itself illuminated by a beam of light … I took out my musical memories ( Synths playing my favorite bands… from Pink Floyd to Yes and all those bands that invented synths in songs where none existed…) and gave birth to this thing …

Title: Remembering the old school
Description: A “powerful” music born by imagining images
Snapshot:
006-Contest2.zss (35.6 KB)

MIDI track:
Remembering old school.mid (11.5 KB)

Audio track:

Screen capture:

Now that I’m working with 6/8 tracks on the Zynthian, I’m really understanding its power…it’s a real gem.

If someone wants to improve it, the initial bichords (plus the bass note) are these:

All parts are played (not written to MIDI) apart from the Drums which I wrote (do you hear that I’m not a drummer or percussionist? )

[jofemodo]

Thanks for your snapshots, @Lanfranco !!

Please, try to be a little bit more detailed. Every snapshot presented to the contest should have this structure:

• title
• description
• the snapshot
• demo audio track
• mid file, if it’s been sequenced externally
• optional screen captures (mixer, zynpad, etc.)
• If the snapshot uses specific user presets or soundfonts, they must be included too.

Please, @Lanfranco, edit your 2 proposals to fit this format.

Thanks!

[Lanfranco]

Thanks.
All these things are in .rar files, now I edit the posts.

[jofemodo]

Please, no rar, zip, tgz, etc. files. Let’s use discourse capabiliities. If you have doubts, i could help you to format the posts properly. It’s not difficult at all.

Thanks,

[jofemodo]

You can take quick and nice screenshots from your zynthian by using the command line like this:

export DISPLAY=:0
scrot nice_mixer_view_01.png
scrot nice_zynpad_view_01.png
scrot nice_control_view_01.png

Then you can take the png files from your zynthian using a sftp client. I do this all the time

Regards!

[jofemodo]

Hi @Lanfranco !

Any possibility of getting a single mid file with all the tracks? The idea is loading the snapshot and playing the mid file from the zynthian, so every presented piece is self-contained. Remember that we want to use it as demo snapshots.

Thanks!

[Lanfranco]

I’m too old for this stuff…
Did you see the effort I put into putting my 3D case design on Github…
When you can check if the changes are correct thanks…

[Lanfranco]

I reinstalled Filezilla… software I haven’t used since I took my Raspberry server apart to build the Zynthian… I’m getting the screenshots. Thank you

[AutoBass]

Count me in! I really enjoy Zynthian as a platform, and just helped a friend build one on a Pi3.

I’d happily share the snapshots I’ve built for my AutoBass, and for this contest, I want to build something really cool and useful.

[ivanmonterosso]

Ok, i tried to do something:
Title: Doubthful
Description: Little sequence with snapshot using default presets from 5 different engines, from the inspiring Zynaddsubfx to sampled instruments such as the beautiful LV2 Pearl Drumkit.
Added some audio fx to drum layer and a compressor in master output.
Sequenced with Ableton Live.
(didin’t have a precise explanation about this, free to destroy it )

020-Doubtful.mid (14.8 KB)
020-MT-Doubtful.zss (73.4 KB)

Mid file is multichannel, succesfully tested playing inside zynthian with its snapshot loaded
(so audio recorded internally too)
Meantime i try to see if something else pops out of sequencing.
Sadly i would try to dive inside internal sequencer but with a 2.8" display, even helped by vnc and with some encoder issues as you know, it would be not an easy task.

[Lanfranco]

@ivanmonterosso

LV2 Pearl Drumkit

… a me piace un sacco…
I really like it.
The “LV2 Pearl Drumkit” is interesting… too bad I’ve never programmed electronic drums and I don’t consider myself up to it

[le51]

@ivanmonterosso

i would try to dive inside internal sequencer but with a 2.8" display,

Hi,
In your custom (?) Zynthian build, can’t you access the RBPi HMDI output anymore ?
This could be an excellent alternative for that purpose (playing with step seq) except the lack of touch interface in the ZynPad view …
But, yeah, for sure it’s even worst on the 2.8 inch resistive touchscreen display.

[ivanmonterosso]

You make Me think about a possible alternative: i own an old yoga 11" touch screen notebook, this should mean using vnc (taks i already did with this pc) but this time trying to change resolution remotely to increase workspace … The fact is I also have to spend time learning how it works and adapting my workflow.

[le51]

@ivanmonterosso

i own an old yoga 11" touch screen notebook, this should mean using vnc

… and add some overload to Zynthian + VNC client UI latency

@ivanmonterosso

The fact is I also have to spend time learning how it works and adapting my workflow.

that’s why direct HDMI connection is good: simple, fast and work as is