What's a fragment? It can be a chord progression, a melodic motive, or a scale. Your piece doesn't have to revolve around the fragment, but it must be included in your composition at least once.

What's a theme? A semi-vague phrase that will (ideally) guide your creative process when you're thinking about your made-up game's concept & the sound you want to go for with the music you compose. It's purposefully left up to interpretation & is meant to be as un-restrictive as possible.

You'll be using that fragment to write music for a hypothetical game, which can be anything as long as you can connect it to the theme.

For this jam, we ask that you compose at least 5 minutes of music, consisting of however many tracks you'd like to write.

• If you want to write multiple tracks, it'd be preferred that you connect them in some way! (The fragment would be a great way to do this btw) (just saying)
• I am leaving this open ended because I'm not expecting anyone to go over 20 minutes.

There are no restrictions on genre or style, meaning that you can compose whatever your heart desires. Orchestral, heavy metal, jazz... Anything goes!

Your files must be in .wav, .mp3, or .flac on itch.io, but we'd also highly encourage you to upload your project somewhere else for ease of listening. Options include but are not limited to:

• Soundcloud
• Bandcamp
• Youtube

Here is a fantastic resource if you want to embed a playlist directly into your itch.io project: Blamscamp.

Please submit a screenshot/screen recording of your DAW with your submission! If you have a score and want to submit a PDF of that as well, that'd be cool. I just want proof that you actually made the thing you're submitting.

I will remove your entry if I catch plagiarism in any part of it. This includes generative AI use, which is not allowed for this jam. That rule extends to your project thumbnails/covers.

Can't draw? Don't know any artists? Here's a website full of free-to-use photos for you: Pixabay. Canva is also free, you can edit some really fun covers on that!

THE FRAGMENT: Canon

Canon is a compositional technique where a melody, introduced by the “leader”, is imitated by one or more voices, or “followers”, that enter at different times.

There are several different types of canons, including but not limited to…

• Simple: Also known as a round! This type of canon starts with one voice (the leader) and all of the voices that follow it are imitating it perfectly at the octave. Row, Row, Row Your Boat is a really well known simple canon.
  • The follower voices can also follow at a specific intervallic distance! That’d create a canon at the [interval voice]. An example is one of Josquin des Prez’s motets, De Profundis. This is a canon at the fourth.
• Canon by Inversion: In this type of canon, the follower moves by contrary motion to the leader. So if the leader goes up from a C to a D in the melody, the follower would go down from C to B (or Bb). It’s like a mirrored version of the leader’s line.
• Retrograde Canon: Also known as a crab canon! The follower voice accompanies the leader backwards.
• Mensuration/Prolation Canon & Tempo Canons: This is a canon in which the follower imitates the leader by some sort of rhythmic proportion. They can cut the rhythmic proportion in half (diminution), double it (augmentation), etc. In other types of canons, you don’t want the follower to start at the same time as the leader. For these, that is perfectly acceptable.
  • Mensuration canons are really uncommon in the modern day, but were composed a lot in the Renaissance! An example is Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa prolationum. The whole thing is like that.
  • There are some contemporary examples too! Arvo Pärt has a few, and Arbos is my favorite.
• Double canon: Two canons unfolding at the same time. Bach does this a lot.
• Phasing: Some don’t necessarily consider this to be a type of canon, but I personally think it’s relevant enough to add here. Steve Reich described it as a “continually adjusting” canon where the time intervals are more important than the harmonic and melodic bits of the music. Check out his piece Piano Phase to see what this is all about.

This video gets more into the different types of canons (and explains them better than I do!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siHMpS8TStM

Here are a few tunes that use canons across different genres! If you’ve got any you’d also like to share with the community, send them in our Discord server :]

1. Brahms, Intermezzo in F Minor, Op. 118, No. 4
2. Stravinsky, Canon on a Russian Popular Tune
3. Mozart, Der Spiegel
4. Bach, The Musical Offering
5. Britten, A Ceremony of Carols (Op. 28): This Little Babe
6. Franck, Violin Sonata Mvt. 4 (not a strict canon but still a canon)
7. Rigney, The Garden of Forking Paths (canon in five parts at 4’07)
8. Erutan, The Willow Maid (bridge)
9. Ghost and Pals, CULPABILITY AND THE PANOPTICON (specifically the opening)
10. Phish, Reba (there’s a canon near the end of this tune)

THE THEME: Refusal of the Call

This goes without saying but everything you submit to this has to be wholly original.

If I confront you about AI being used in your entry and you refuse to update it, I will remove it. This includes but isn't limited to generative AI use for thumbnails/covers, which is not allowed for this jam.

What can you do instead? Go outside and take a picture, use an existing public domain piece (with proper credit!), ask your friends to draw something for you... Lots of options out there!

There are five categories that your entry will be rated by: General impression, creativity, quality, adherence to theme, and inclusion of fragment. They're defined as follows!

• General impression: How striking or memorable was the entry?
  • Did you feel compelled to listen to the end? Effectively, did you like it?
• Creativity: A really subjective category!
  • How much or how little you feel the composers were thinking outside the box. Is this a fresh and new soundtrack or something that you feel like you've heard before?
• Quality: This refers to the quality of the composition itself
  • How well orchestrated is the music? Is the music idiomatic to the instrument it was written for? Is it interesting?
  • How balanced is the mix? If there are multiple tracks, do they sound good together?
• Adherence to theme: How well did the entry fit the theme?
  • Ok, this one's self-explanatory
• Inclusion of fragment: How well was the fragment incorporated in the soundtrack?
  • Was it just copy/pasted in or was it manipulated and reinterpreted throughout the composition?

The rating period will last for a week after the jam ends and is restricted to just people who submitted something. This is to try to prevent rating manipulation.

You can edit your project page after you submit to the jam but please know that your files will be locked until the ratings period ends.

Note: Teams of up to four composers are allowed.

Want to meet fellow composers? Want to form a team? Want to lurk in chat without ever sending a single message? Join our server! _{(Click on the image to join)}

If you're having issues submitting or have any questions that this page doesn't answer, don't hesitate to contact me! I'll probably take a moment to respond, but I will get back to you as soon as I can.

• Discord: residentcrypt1d Email: residentcryptid@gmail.com

This also goes for any business inquiries. I tend to respond the fastest to email & discord messages.

Good luck, everyone!