An open weekend challenge to produce a single piece of game music using the provided motif!

All skill levels are welcome (nay, encouraged!) to participate. Even if you've never made music before, you should take a crack at it! It's not as scary as it looks.

Check out cool music from the previous edition of the challenge.

Join us on Discord to ask any questions, share your progress in the challenge, and talk all things game dev.

Special thanks to lilou_cormic for the cover image.

Motif

The motif will be shared when the challenge begins.

You are required to use the motif in your submission. This means exploring the given sequence of notes (pitch and rhythm) multiple times, various transformations such as changes in pattern, rhythm, pitch, pattern, instrumentation, and so on.

The motif will be available as a sheet music snippet, ogg file (clean piano), and MIDI file.

Choose a Tier

When submitting, you will select a tier to describe where you are on your personal musical journey:

• Beginner: You are brand new or only dabbled in music production.
• Intermediate: You have created complete music for fun or for jams. 
• Advanced: You have previously contributed to a commercial game project.

Rules

Please read the following carefully. If you have any questions about the rules, ask in the community or on Discord.

1. At a minimum, you must submit a playable file (mp3, ogg, wav) on an itch.io page. Please give your page and file a creative name. In other words, don't call it "Music Submission" or "Music Motif Challenge." Match the file name with the title, so "My Song" would be "my_song.mp3" for example.
   1. You may also embed the music on the page as an embedded stream (SoundCloud, Bandcamp, YouTube, etc.) or include a "game" that plays the music, whether web-based or downloadable.
   2. If possible, also add meta tags to the file such as Title and Artist.
2. One entry per person. We encourage the production of multiple pieces for experimentation, but please only include one piece in the submitted page, and don't link to other new music on the submitted page.
3.  Your music must be a minimum of 30 seconds and a maximum of 2 minutes (120 seconds).
4. Your music must loop naturally, as if it's intended for use as video game background music.
   1. Note: The loop doesn't need to be at the beginning. If your loop is later in the piece, mention it on your page. Something like, "The music loops by restarting at 0:14" or "The music has a 14-second intro."
5. This is a solo challenge, so collaboration and teams are not allowed.
6. The work must be entirely new and made during the challenge. This includes planning, composing, producing, and so on. You're welcome to use DAW templates, presets, etc. but the composition should start from "nothing."
7. Your music must include the motif provided at the start of the jam.
8. Your work must be "original" in the sense that it isn't a remix or arrangement of preexisting work, or an unaltered work generated by Artificial Intelligence. Samples, etc., are allowed, as long as the work is reasonably transformative (including the case of AI), and you have the rights to use all samples for public work.
9. You can continue editing the submission page after submitting, but uploads will be locked, so you cannot replace the music or upload new files until judging is completed

Schedule

Friday 24 January at 6pm ET: The challenge starts - make some noise!

Sunday 26 January October at 1pm ET: Submissions are due and voting begins

Sunday 2 February at 1pm ET: Voting closes and winners are announced

Rating

Entries will be judged by other submitters in the following four categories:

• Cohesiveness: How well the pieces of the composition fit together. Do the various passages, instruments, and effects complement and support each other?
• Game-Readiness: How well the composition could drop into a game as it is. Does it provide the desired emotional effect?
• Production: How well the composition is produced. Does it sound clean, clear, and balanced?
• Interest: How much the composition captivates the user's imagination. Does it retain your attention, or do you get bored?
• Use of Motif: How well the composition uses and experiments with the motif. Is it recognizable? Does it go anywhere?

About Us

Hosted by 8 Bits to Infinity: a game development community dedicated to improving creative and technical skills through rapid iteration and honest, critical feedback. Join us on Discord, check out our website, and take a look at our past jams and challenges.

The man behind 8 Bits to Infinity is Retro Indie Josh (aka Joshua McLean): gaming content creator and music producer. Check out his game music (free for you to use in jams and commercial projects!) and YouTube.