MRC Italo challenge

Well here it is, the suggested Italo challenge! In this challenge you're invited to create genuine Italo music on your (emulated) MSX, using your preferred MSX soundchip. From an exeggerated MSX point of view, Italo could be seen as tracked MSX music, long before MSX users started doing so. This is quite stunning as most of us didn't realise this in our scene years! It appears however that Impact 'imported' the style to the MSX scene, other groups adapted this style, and so the MSX-Italo sound spread. Regardless of these roots, this Italo genre is now almost second nature for MSX composers.

Before you start, mind the following: this is an Italo challenge, not an MSX music challenge. While the MSX music from our scene could be seen as a subset of conventional Italo you're strongly adviced to first study a wide range of conventional Italo music. Artists like Koto and Laserdance are a good start.

Rules and things to keep in mind:

• any soundchip may be used. While the MSX-Audio/Music Module was the de facto MSX-scene soundchip back then, a Moonsound is strongly adviced, production quality counts!
• only original compositions are allowed.
• a maximum of 640KB SRAM may be used for the Moonsound.
• a maximum of 32KB sampleram may be used for MSX-Audio/Music Module.
• you may present your song as part of a trackmo/demo, only the song will be judged however.
• use any public musicsoftware or supply your song with its own player. If the used software doesn't do VDP equalizing while it uses the VDP for its tempo, then state for which frequency your song was made (50hz/60hz). MBWave uses the Moonsound for its tempo, so it always sounds the way it should.
• MRC will create MP3's from all the entries for the jury and all of you, which will be recorded from genuine hardware. If you make your song using an emulator where for instance the Moonsound envelopes lack accuracy, then there's nothing we can do about that.

The jury consists out of poke -1,170 and wolf_. Poke being the one to bring his Italo enthousiasm to us and wolf_ being the challenge initiator.

Of course there's no challenge without an award, just like poke's earlier Airwaves challenge the top 3 will be featured on Enschede FM where he is a DJ. In addition, the 1st prize will be awarded with an MSX T-shirt!

The deadline for this challenge is the same one as for the MSXArt'06 challenge: November 11th, 2006, 23:59 CET. Send your entries to: italo@msx.org. Happy composing!