Well, that went well.<br><br>It went well because there were lots of nice people, the competitors were friendly amongst eachother as well. It went well because nobody had seen ChucK and the mini in action before and now people were interested. In the last place it went well because I won, that's still nice, even if competition is less fun then duets, I think.
<br><br>I was up against two MAX-MSP users who were very talented. They should be because they won previous rounds, this was sort of the finale of the comptition but due to the format that was about three people I was thrown in as a surprise challenger. It was a bit sad for my second oponent who was clearly handicaped by having had to borrow a laptop and was thrown off by the different cursor behaviour, that's probably a huge factor in a graphical system like MAX.
<br><br>I was using the Mini with a external keyboard. The audience was just used to MAX which had been used by all (I think) contenders in all previous rounds and at first they gigled at my batered old keyboard and non-pro typing speed but with chucK a few lines go a long way.
<br><br>One fun moment was showing off "if(maybe)....." which -as I expected went over very well as it realy is quite funny. Because of the 6 minute format and my typing speed I tried to go for eficiency so I didn't dare to spend time on something like "while(float rubber_ducky) {//loop goes here}" which would've been even more funny (try it, it works).
<br><br>For the first round I used the Shakers as something like "Std.rand2(0,22) => shakers.preset;" seemed like the most economical way of quickly generating a nice rithmic yet changing foundation. Then I added a algorithmic bassline based partially on modulating the amount of harmonics in Blit instead of a filter. At one point, due to a misplaced "greater then" which should've been smaller sign my algorithem spun out of controll towards the high end but I was able to remidy this in time and it turned into a pleasant surprise that sounded good This round was a very narrow win, I thought my oponent Luc performed a very strong set of paterned noise and the audience agreed, aplauding at length for both of us, creating a need for a tie-breaking hand-vote-count.
<br><br>I the second round I improvised based on sending Impulse into ResonZ and then treating the result by sampling the dac using LiSa. This didn't go completely perfect but I think the audience picked up that I was considdering all my parameters on the fly and apreceated this.
<br><br>Overall it was a great experience and a huge thrill. I'd definately recomend it to those on the fense. Clearly you'd need to practice but that's only good for your ChucKing skills. I look forward to "defending my title" next season already.
<br><br>Yours,<br>Kas.<br>