Compos
From the ThaSauce compo portal:
Compo is a slang word for "composition competition" commonly used by the arrangement community. It is derived from the demoscene competitions by the same name. Contrary to this, compos are less of a competition and more of an excerise in composition abilites. Each compo has it's own unique format and guidelines and while some are as short as 1 hour, others can last anywhere from a month, to a few months. It's important to remember that the primary purpose of compos are to hone your skills and abilites by working within, sometimes very constricting, guidelines. These techiniques have proven essential to the growth of countless musicians.
One Hour Compos
One Hour Compos, more commonly referred to as OHC, is a compo I've been doing regularly since OHC077 back in March of 2010. We meet every week on Thursdays at 6PM PST, when a compo theme is announced. Following that, we get exactly 1 hour to produce a song based on the given theme, and then around 20 minutes to finalize and upload our song to the site. Following the deadline we usually have a "listening party" on IRC where we listen to each entry together and give feedback and comments. Voting is done and the winners are posted next week, but really the whole thing is more about improvement rather than competition. My own production skills have definitely improved A LOT because of OHCs--it's the perfect excuse to practice producing music once a week, and the one-hour time limit is just about right. It also teaches you to streamline your music-making process, which can be important to staying "in the zone" as you're churning out a tune.
Downloads
All of my compo entries are available for free download via the compo sites themselves.
Alternatively, I also include all of my compo entries as free releases in my "Monthlies" free album release series, which you can find at my Bandcamp site.
"Making of" Videos
I've filmed the production process for two of the OHC entries I've made so that you can get a better idea of my workflow and process. You can view them on YouTube at the following URLs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFlnt-xT5mQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw2nyPTXt7I
Compo Stats
Below are stats for every single compo entry I've ever submitted.
Also see my thasauce.net compo profiles (I have multiple):
http://compo.thasauce.net/profiles/view/DDRKirby(ISQ)
