Hey music buffs,
I believe that some of you had played, or at least had seen a sort of
in-person karaoke game, where someone will play one line from a song,
without lyrics/vocal (sometimes at accelerated speed), and you would
have to guess which song that was. I have also seen this being played
as a TV gameshow too.
Even in this very newsgroup, I myself have asked questions
using text music snippets before. [1] But as the general traffic
of tilde.art.music is very sparse, I have an idea of how to spice things up around here a little bit more, by importing what I have been doing
in another Tildeverse Netnews newsgroup: a netnews game.
So now, I hereby present an unholy marriage of a karaoke gameshow
to the textual media of netnews; and challenge you, to a "Melody Of?"
musical word-guessing netnews game: a game which challengers dare you
you to guess the right word, with hints written in musical notes.
### ## ##
## ## _######___ ## ##### ##
### ### ### ###### ## ## ### ## ###
## ## ## ## ___++ ## ## ## ## ## ##
## ### ## O"" ## ## ## ## ## ##
#### ### ###_ ###### #_####_ ##### ## ## ##
#### ### ""####""" ####### _####__ ## ###
"" ### "###" ## ## ## ##
_###### ## ### ##
######" #### ### ### ##
"###" ##### ## ## ##### "####
## ## ## ### ###
## ## ## ## ##
## ## ##### ##
## ## ## _####
#### ## "'
## ###
#### ###
(Search for next "8<" to skip the cutscene)
----- 8< ----- (Gameplay guideline starts: the melody in question)
Melody Of? is a word-guessing game similar to Draw Something-inspired
ASCII Of? netnews game [2]; but instead of hinting about the word/phrase
using ASCII art, challengers in this game would hint using musical melody written *in text*, posted in-line in each challenge article;
to stay true to netnews' textual spirit.
ABC notation format (as accepted by ABC2MIDI program) [3] is a preferred
music format for this game. For example:
X:1
M:4/4
Q:1/4=90
K:F
%%MIDI program 10
E D C D E E E
[4] But if you must, you may just write the down plain sequence
of musical notes as well, like:
E D C D E E E
Chords are also allowed, but discouraged as they can make the melody
more difficult to read. Writing notes in textual eMelody ringtone format
also is acceptable, but is discouraged too. (And no MusicXML, GNU LilyPond,
or ASCII guitar tab please)
In addition to the music notes, challenger _may_ also include link to audio/MIDI rendition of these notes (and only these notes) as well;
to aid participants who don't have ABC2MIDI tool, MIDI synthesizer,
or musical keyboard to hear the sound.
While the game is called "Melody Of?", challenge may be just
a percussion/drum pattern too; if you're certain it's recognizable
as being associated to the answer you have in mind.
However, making challenge based on sample clips of actual original/cover recordings are *NOT* allowed [5][6]; but it is okay for challenger to link
to such recordings when confirming a correct answer (or revealing an
unansered challenge)-- so people can listen to the full thing.
This prohibition also doesn't apply to posts that discuss the challenges/ answers/the game.
----- (Nature of the challenges and their categories)
Traditional karaoke guess-a-song games normally ask for the title of the song; but in Melody Of?, the word(s) in question doesn't necessarily be
the song's title (though, it's perfectly fine to do so), it could be
anything associated to, or referenced by the song too.
Because of this, challenger is encouraged to specify the "category"
which the expected answer belongs to, in the challenge article itself
as well as its Subject line.
For example:
- In Song category, challenge with notes from that very song.
- In Videogame category, challenge with notes from that game's soundtrack.
- In Film category, challenge with notes from that film's theme song.
- In Country category, challenge with notes from its national anthem.
- In Place category, challenge with notes from music associated to
or named like the place in question.
- In Vocalist category, challenge with notes from song he's famous for.
- In Composer category, challenge with notes from his magnum opus.
- In Brand category, challenge with notes from the brand's jingle.
- In Animal category, challenge with notes from song which its lyrics
or title reference this animal.
Challenger is encouraged to use as few musical notes as possible
to make it at least somewhat challenging to answer; but still
recognizable enough that when someone answered it, or it got revealed,
the association between the answer and the melody would become obvious.
The challenger *must* say how many alphanumeric characters the answer has;
and is encouraged to provide players with "alphabet chips" i.e.
a set of alphabets/numbers for player to assemble the answer from.
(See the "P.S." of this article for a program snippet to generate it)
Challenger is also encouraged to put SHA-256 checksum of an all-uppercase no-space no-punctuation no-newline form of the answer, in the post as well.
[7]
----- (Threading and article Subject lines)
Each challenge is to be posted as follow-up (subthread) to this article. Subject line of each challenge's article should *not* have "Re: " prefix,
and should end with square-bracketed category, like:
Melody Of? [City]
Each answer to a challenge has to be posted as a follow-up (subthread)
to the challenge itself (now, with "Re: " prefix in the Subject).
Players are encouraged to post answers in ROT13-encoded form [8];
although, plainly-written answers are also accepted.
^ When you replied to a challenge without providing your own answer,
it is recommended to add " *not an answer*" or something to that effect
to your Subject line. [9]
^ For replies by challenger to confirm correct answer, reject wrong answer,
clarify/correct the question, add hints, put in last-call notice,
or reveal the answer; challenger is encouraged to suffix something else
to the Subject to indicate the nature of such article, like
" *correct*", "*incorrect*", "*CORRECTION*", "+hints", "*LAST CALL*",
and " *revealed*" accordingly.
When these considerations followed, thread overview in the newsreader
would look like the this:
+ Melody Of? <- This article
`+ Melody Of? [Name] <- A challenge
| `+ Re: Melody Of? [Name] <- Answer to a challenge
| | `+ Re: Melody Of? [Name] *not an answer* <- Discussion of an answer
| | `+ Re: Melody Of? [Name] *correct* <- Confirming correct answer
| + Re: Melody Of? [Name] *not an answer* <- Discussion of a challenge
+ Melody Of? [City] <- A challenge
| `+ Re: Melody Of? [City] *LAST CALL* +hints <- Hints + last-call notice
| + Re: Melody Of? [City] *revealed* <- A reveal
+ Re: Melody Of? <- Discussion of gameplay
+ Melody Of? [Food] <- An unanswered challenge
| `+ Re: Melody Of? [Food] *not an answer* <- Discussion of a challenge
+ Melody Of? [Film] <- A challenge
`+ Re: Melody Of? [Film] <- Answer to a challenge
| `+ Re: Melody Of? [Film] *incorrect* <- Rejecting wrong answer
+ Re: Melody Of [Film] <- Answer to a challenge
| `+ Re: Melody Of? [Film] *correct* <- Confirming correct answer
| + Re: Melody Of [Film] *not an answer* <- Additional discussion
+ Re: Melody Of [Film] *not an answer* <- Discussion of a challenge
----- 8< ----- (Gameplay guidelines ends)
Anyone can be player, challenger, or both; there are neither "turns"
nor scoring. Discussing each of the challenge, their answers/reveals,
or even the gameplay here, are allowed. While I don't expect this game
to explode into a thousand-posts megathread like ASCII Of? did [10],
I hope you'd still enjoy it as much as I do.
And without further ado, I will post few challenges to get you all started.
See you in the game,
~xwindows
P.S. For your convenience, below I provided a few-liner Perl command
to generate a random jumble of (English-only) alphabet chips from the word.
It defaults to generate a doubled amount of chips; spaces in the word
are discarded:
perl -e '$n=0; for($ARGV[0]=~/./g) { /\s/ and next; $b{uc $_}=1;
push @a,uc $_; $n++; } for(65..90) { $c=chr $_; exists $b{$c}
or push @r,$c; } for(1..$n) { (0+@r)>0 or last; $i=int(rand 0+@r);
push @a,$r[$i]; splice @r,$i,1; } while($#a>=0) { $i=int(rand 0+@a);
print "".($nf?" ":"").$a[$i]; $nf=1; splice @a,$i,1; } print "\n";' --
Append with space followed by the word you would like to generate
chips for (also quote it if it contains space), and run it on your
POSIX shell. This is an example output of the word "music":
F M H S Y C K I U L
P.P.S. The above throw-away Perl program is the exact-same one
I provided at the bottom of my original ASCII Of? game announcement [2].
It is released to public domain under Creative Commons Zero 1.0. <
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>
[1] "What is this cliche 'spooky' music box tune?" [2021-07-13T09:17:34Z]
<news:
c3397739-78d3-9b4-8179-3e48fbf3515a@tilde.club>
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.art.music/56>
<
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/tools/netnews/groups/?tilde.art.music/56>
"What is this pop tune?" [2022-04-08T07:33:20Z]
<news:t2oog0$1db38$
1@tilde.club>
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.art.music/70>
<
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/tools/netnews/groups/?tilde.art.music/70>
"What is this hip-hop tune?" [2026-02-17T11:58:17Z]
<news:
e825f2c3-148b-469c-9ea4-d675cfb13c1b@tilde.club>
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.art.music/91>
<
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/tools/netnews/groups/?tilde.art.music/91>
[2] "ASCII Of?" [2021-07-14T08:22:37Z]
<
b5618b23-9af8-400e-a520-950437c740d7@tilde.club>
<nntp://news.tilde.club/tilde.art.ascii/39>
<
https://tilde.club/~xwindows/tools/netnews/groups/?tilde.art.ascii/39>
[3] For how to write music in ABC, see:
<
https://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/original/abcguide.txt>
While the official specification is on:
<
https://abcnotation.com/>
And ABC2MIDI software could be obtained from:
<
https://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/>
or the binary package repository of your GNU+Linux/Unix
distribution of choice.
[4] Once you get into the game, you will see this exact notes sequence
again soon.
[5] To avoid copyright MAFIAA storming in here and gun everyone down.
[6] In any case, DO NOT directly attach files to any article you post
in Tildeverse Netnews. No matter it was for Melody Of? game or otherwise.
[7] To aid players in self-checking their answers, without having to wait
for the original challenger to come back and confirm that the answer
was correct.
[8] To avoid spoiling the fun for people who were browsing the thread
after the fact; and would like to try to coming up with their own answer.
[9] To make it easier to for other people to find unanswered challenges
when browsing the thread overview in their newsreaders.
[10] Since being a challenger in this game often bear substantially
more hurdles than merely typing in an ASCII art.
--
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