Vocal Survivor: Rules & Regulations (749 views)

[Alex61]

Hello everyone!

This is an idea I proposed with the other staff a few days ago, I'm just posting it to the wider board to see if a test run of this would be a good idea/would get an adequate amount of interest. I've titled it "Vocal Survivor" for now (though this is subject to change).

For those of you familiar with r/music_survivor (linked here for an example), this contest works a similar way:

Round 1: Clip Selection
Every round, there's a category. For example, "Best G4(s)" or "Best Diction", or maybe more meme-y one like "Worst Sustained Note". Everyone who wants to take part submits a clip of what they believe to be the best example of the category. You can select any clip, the only prerequisites are that it can't be by a singer someone else has already selected a clip for and you can only select one clip, although this clip doesn't represent you or anything. Additionally, some categories I'm thinking might be a bit larger (something like "Best Diction" might apply to a singer as a whole and not one specific vocal performance), in which case a clip representative of the category will be submitted.

Round 2: Voting
After everyone who wants to partake has selected a clip, a complete list of clips will be posted. Everyone who votes is required to listen to every clip selected and then vote off what they believe is the weakest clip. These rounds will last 72 hours, and only those who submitted a clip can vote. People can keep their votes anonymous or not (it's up to them), and can vote the clip they submitted as the weakest one if they believe it to be so.

Round 3: Repeat & Results
The clip that received the most votes will be eliminated from the competition. The remaining clips stay in the competition and the process repeats itself again - if the clip you voted for in the first round wasn't eliminated, you can vote for it again to be eliminated here, or if you've changed your mind you could vote for a different one. Subsequent rounds repeat this procedure until there's only two clips left, at which point the clip with the most votes will be announced the runner-up and the other clip will be announced the winner!

Hopefully that all makes sense - if anyone has any questions, please go ahead and post them below. If anyone is interested in taking part as something of a trial run for the first go, either like this post or post below and I can get started organising when the first round can commence

[ellie]

I feel dumb for not getting this but what’s the difference between what you say is a larger category applying to a singer as a whole and like a normal category? What does it mean for a category to apply to a singer as a whole? Does that mean likes submitting multiple clips for a singer?

Wait does it mean that singer gets shot dead and can’t be used going forward

[Alex61]

So let’s say the category is "Best Falsetto" or something. If that was the case, you'd be voting based on which singer had the overall best falsetto, not like a one-off showcase. Likewise, you’d submit a clip by this singer you think is an accurate representation of their falsetto - the clip is more for reference for people who don’t know the singer, if you get me.

[BassSquared]

Just my two cents, but it seems a bit odd to specifically put singers' entire voices in competition rather than just the clip itself. It'll basically create unnecessary differences between people who are familiar with the artist, and are therefore judging based off the full context of their body of work, and people who aren't, who just vote based on individual clip quality. It's not as if someone who's never heard of a singer is going to go listen to their entire discography (or even a decent chunk of it) solely to better evaluate their falsetto/diction/etc. for a single vote. Sure, people's differing understanding of the singer's work as a whole might somewhat color their vote regardless, but I'd prefer to keep the comparisons as apples-to-apples as possible and just say that clips are clips, vote based on what's posted, end of story.

[Alex61]

There were a few reasons I was thinking of those as categories. For one thing, I was more so thinking to use that as an option to differentiate it further from the clip-off, otherwise a lot of the clips/performances/whatnot will probably be identical. I was also trying to somewhat replicate the online music survivor competitions I had seen, which seemed a bit larger in scope as they never really only submitted/suggested one song or performance (usually it was an entire album or entire two albums) - I thought it unfeasible to expect everyone to have to do a lot of listening to one performer, so I assumed one clip would be something of a compromise.

I suppose there are other ways to go about it though (using multiple clips, having categories be contained to "Best Falsetto" but in one performance, etc. etc.). I'm open to suggestions anyways :whistling: