Canadian Singer - Songwriter Contest

musicmonsterw

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Hello, hello. To celebrate 300 subscribers on Youtube and 3,000 posts on UU, I'm hosting my first contest! The challenge - play the music of Canadian Singer-Songwriters on the Ukulele. The accompany video fills you in on the basics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk3N86n4KD8



For reference, here is a brief summary of the rules again:

1. You must be a Ukulele Underground Member
2. You have to say this is for musicmonsterw's Canadian Singer/Songwriter Ukulele contest.
3. The song must be written by a Canadian Singer/Songwriter.
4. The ukulele must be prominently featured.
5. Post your contest video as a video response to the video on Youtube and also post the video in the contest thread here:

Prizes:
1st Place: My CD of original instrumental compositions, A Comet's Tale and a lovely O Canada toque.
2nd Place: A Comet's Tale only (no toque)
3rd Place: A toque.

Only one entry per person or group.
Deadline is Monday, Oct.4, 2010, Pacific Daylight Savings Time.

Hope you enter the contest. Good Luck! Looking forward to seeing your videos!!

Now, for those of you interested in the detailed judging criteria and procedure, here goes:

Judging Criteria
You will be judged on three things: Ukulele Performance, Vocal Performance, and Interpretation. Each category is worth 5 points.

Ukulele Performance: This is not a measure of technical skill but a measure of how much of yourself you put into your uke playing.

Vocal Performance: Again, this is not a measure of technical singing skill or vocal range but a measure of how much you put into your vocals. Are you really putting your heart and soul into it? This doesn't necessarily mean loud. It can be understated and still be a great vocal performance.

Note: If you choose to do an instrumental version, your ukulele performance score will count twice. In this way, instrumentalists will be treated equally with vocalists.

Interpretation: This is a measure of how well you got across the meaning of the song. You can do a straight interpretation or change it up. You can tell a very simple story or weave something quite complex. The question is: how well did you get that across?

Your final score will be the total of the sum of your points in each category.

Judging Procedure

There will be three judges: me and two other musicians. After listening to all the entries, we will each separately use the judging criteria to narrow it down to a shortlist of 8. Then, we will share our lists with each other and discuss. Any entry that made even one of the judge's shortlists will be considered. We will state our opinions, discuss and debate, how and why we awarded points the way we did.

After we are finished discussing, each judge will separately and secretly re-evaluate the selected contestants. Based on the judging criteria, we will write down our choices for 1st thru 5th place. Each contestant then is given points based on what the judges chose in their private evaluations.

1st place -10pts
2nd place - 7pts
3rd place - 5pts
4th place - 3 pts
5th place - 1pt.

The points are totaled for each contestant. This final total will determine who places 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

Cheers,

Ronin Wong,
musicmonsterw
 
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I guess It's time to learn some Canadian songs.
 
I guess It's time to learn some Canadian songs.

hahah are you kidding me? You know all kinds of Canadian songs. And you are a Canadian. You know, you could even enter one of your own songs.

Stephen, yes it's time.
 
well...there's this guy:



his musical videos are pretty much brilliance on a stick:

 
For this contest, how do you define "singer/songwriter"?
 
For this contest, how do you define "singer/songwriter"?

For this contest, I'm defining it pretty loosely. Basically, anyone who writes songs and performs their own originals. They can be a solo artist or they can be part of a band. There are probably considerations I may not have thought of in advance. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
 
Zamfir was born and grew up in Romania. For the sake of this contest, I"m going to rule that he doesn't count as Canadian. Thanks for asking, though.

ok. I want to put a video together; but I don't want to hamper my current progress I'm making learning uke techniques. Hopefully, I can find a canadian song without too much hassle.

I think this contest can generate some inspiration.
 
ok. I want to put a video together; but I don't want to hamper my current progress I'm making learning uke techniques. Hopefully, I can find a canadian song without too much hassle.

I think this contest can generate some inspiration.

Very cool contest, Ronin!!!


Thank you!! I hope this will be fun! That's the whole point.
 
I'm doing a Neil Young song but not for the contest. It might be too radical and I don't want to cause a war between Canada and Colorado.

So, I found a song and it turns out the songwriter (and singer ) is 1/32 Canadian. Somebody was canadian in his family 4 generations ago. soo... I need a ruling.

yai or nai..... what say you?
 
I'm doing a Neil Young song but not for the contest. It might be too radical and I don't want to cause a war between Canada and Colorado.

So, I found a song and it turns out the songwriter (and singer ) is 1/32 Canadian. Somebody was canadian in his family 4 generations ago. soo... I need a ruling.

yai or nai..... what say you?

I would have to say "nay".
 
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