Back thanks to unreasonable demand, it’s the best way to get frustrated by other people’s questionable taste in music. Walrus!
It’s a contest where participants submit one song (youtube/spotify link) to each of a bunch of categories, and the ‘Walrus Master’ ranks those songs, reveals them one-by-one in the results thread and awards points. When the dust settles and all the categories are correctly scored, the one with the most points lost the least.
This time it’s a ‘Grab Bag’, so everyone taking part picks a category, gets the songs submitted to it and does a ranking.
Anyone welcome, especially new blood. Coming next will be a post about all the detail courtesy of the great @seities.
(Admin note, you, the following, have expressed interest so alerting you to the thread. Please confirm your participation.
Each participant hosts and reveals a category of their selection.
So that means if you enter you will have to choose a category for everyone else to submit a song to. More details on categories below.
Please make sure you can meet your commitment to doing a reveal before entering. It will take hours of your time to listen to all the entries, likely multiple times, then do a writeup for the reveal.
I think we need to cap this at around 16 entrants maximum . That means 16 total reveals, and everyone will have to submit 15 entries.
We will set a timeframe by which everyone needs to do their reveals. This will depend on how many entrants there are.
Since there will be quite a few songs for everyone to think of, it will be best to not get too specific with your category. For this format it is better to have a broad category where people can easily recall songs they like that will fit, rather than defining a really specific category where people feel like they are just searching for something they don’t care much about to meet the category. For example:
“A song in any language other than english” is probably ok. “A song in French” is too specific.
“A song from the 90’s” is ok. “A song from 1991” is too specific.
If you are unsure about your category just ask for feedback in this thread. People will be happy to help.
Here is a template to use for posting your category :
Category host name: I would put seities here. Because my name is seities. Category: Words to explain your category Musical tastes: Optional, but I like to give a very general idea of stuff I like or don’t like. Any other judging notes: For example, some hosts penalize for overly familiar songs, some don’t. Let us know if you have preferences.
Scoring Rules:
In general in each category bottom place gets 1 point, second bottom 2 points, and so on.
Exciting additional scorung rules:
Your 2 lowest scores will be discarded for the final total, to allow you to go for some some high risk / high reward submissions (e.g. Melt Banana)
If there’s fewer than ten contestants we’ll probably only discard one score, but I trust that won’t be the case.
You will pick one of your submissions to be your ‘joker’, and it means you’ll actually score 1.5x your points for that category in the final reckoning.
Next steps:
Signups. Just post here.
Your category should be submitted in this thread by end of day Monday (24th of May), but the sooner the better. Once that deadline passes sign-ups are over and everyone is LOCKED IN.
At that point I’ll follow up with a time frame for us all to send our entries. Generally I am going to recommend sending a youtube link for your submissions if you can since it’s more accessible to everyone, but many of us also appreciate a spotify link.
Last, despite the mundane, rule-laden post that this is, Walrus is meant to be fun. Try not to take any results seriously, and do yourself a favour and don’t take the reveal for your category too seriously either. The fun in this game should be found in the fact that musical tastes vary wildly. Whether your submission gets roasted or toasted take pleasure in the fact that you made them listen to it!
Category host name: superuberbob Category: Songs with spoken word lyrics Musical tastes: Pretty diverse range but I tend to lean towards rock and similar sounding music. The category will likely lead to a broad range of genres due to the unpopularity of spoken word lyrics. So it’ll be hard to restrict people with genre. Notes: Rapping is not spoken word. Sprechgesang is not spoken word (sorry B52s). Def poetry is not spoken word. Speaking as a way to introduce the live playing of a song or interrupting a song to interact with an audience is not acceptable. The entire song does not need to be spoken word though the amount that’s spoken word may play a role in close decisions between songs. Long songs are a rough area if they have way too many or very long interludes. Song popularity won’t necessarily count against you but like spoken word amount it will be used as a tiebreaker of sorts between close songs.
I’ve selected three songs that are somewhat well known, but also help illustrate what I am currently looking for new music similar to. Think of each song like a point on a triangle. Submit something that you think “belongs” at any point on, or inside, that triangle.
Musical tastes: Seems less relevant for this category, but to explain further what I am looking for: I’ve said previously I like music on the faster/harder/louder side. I enjoy all three songs above, but they were primarily selected because they are relatively well known and illustrative of how my general preferred style persists across different genres.
Any other judging notes: Anything overly familiar will be penalized. Also, I am not scoring higher based on where in the triangle your suggestion would fit. That is to say, some hybrid rap/hardcore/grunge/electro someone is able to dig up would not necessarily score any higher than a submission that would fall directly on top of one of the above songs on the triangle.
Any questions are welcome, and any feedback on the category choice is welcome. I’m still trying to improve on making submissions for me fun and easy while still getting the sort of music I am looking for.
Finally, I get to unleash my meta category on walrus grab bag.
Category host name: MJiggy Category: A song from a band or artist that you haven’t submitted to walrus before. Also cannot be any of the musicians who are frequently submitted including but not limited to: Rage Against the Machine, Bad Religion, System of a Down, the Pixies, [leaving this space for other artistsI think of] Musical tastes: Indie or alternative rock, hip hop from the 90s, pop punk/emo from the 2000s, various other types of music. Probably similar tastes to Pauwl except think more mainstream. Not a big fan of metal, country, electronic, or songs longer than 5 minutes. Any other judging notes: When I listen to current music it’s usually “alternative” rock like The 1975 or Walk the Moon before they blew up, so probably try to avoid stuff that’s relatively well known. Less popular stuff from the 80s is high risk, high reward.
I will be out of town for a long weekend over Memorial Day weekend but that just means I’ll have to do my reveal a bit later since I won’t be able to do much listening until I’m back.
Does everybody hate country music? or like country adjacent? I was considering that for my category, but will pick something else if everybody hates it.
Never entered one, I am interested but a little worried about time commitment.
I might enter if there are only 10 or so categories, but not if there are 15.
May have to reconsider if there are country and spoken word categories…
Nah, those bands have been submitted by a few other people as well. I figure with the amount of walruses that have been done on here this would be a fun change of pace.
I won your category a while back with a country adjacent song (Ruby Friedman Orchestra - You’ll never leave Harlan alive) that you loved. If I go ahead with it, I’ll expand the category to better define country adjacent. Maybe add like Americana or something.
On second thought I should probably wait for one that is mostly for rookies. I’d probably have to do too much research for this one. Feel free to @ me if one for first timers comes up. Insert sad walrus face here.