Since the early 2000s, a group of friends and I have gathered in online chatrooms and participated in music composition competitions known as "compos." Each week, we would meet at a chosen time, pick the exercise theme, and make songs based on that theme within a one-hour time constraint. Afterward, we would share our songs and listen along together, sharing our thoughts on each one. As time passed, others joined, and our community grew. Now, what started as a handful of teenagers making short music clips, has grown into a community of hundreds of talented musicians of all types: Compoverse.
Compoverse is an online music-learning community. Anyone can join, and the only requirement is a free user account. The community is donation-supported, and we do not have ads. We do not collect or sell user information. Users retain all rights to their music; we will never sell it or use it in any materials without explicit permission. The only goal of Compoverse is to help musicians learn and grow.
Compos: Project-Based Learning
Compos have existed as part of a computer art subculture known as the demoscene since the 1980s. Then, artists from around Europe would assemble in-person at large parties, called demoparties. Here, groups of artists would compete to create small demo applications showcasing their music, visual artwork, and programming skills. As technology advanced, many of these parties moved online, and while the graphic artwork and programming aspects have diminished over time, the music component has continued to thrive.
On Compoverse, we host several compos, each with its own unique style and ruleset. Most compos are held as weekly events, or "rounds," where participants compose a song based on a given theme and within a time constraint determined by a compo organizer. These restrictions create an authentic project-based learning environment where artists can "learn by doing" in real-world scenarios while verifying their intellectual capacities and creative skills (Balanescu, 2015). In addition, participants receive assessment in the form of live peer feedback, as well as asynchronous comments and ratings.
Completing a Song: Satisfying Outcomes and Intrinsic Motivation
One of the primary goals of Compoverse is to encourage new artists to cultivate a process that will allow them to develop their ideas rapidly. To this end, in each round, participants are first presented with a theme to spark their initial creativity and awaken their trait-level degree of curiosity (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018). However, while simply beginning a project is a significant step in the learning experience, it is only the first in a long series. As learners become more familiar with their tools and comfortable with the rules of engagement, their confidence grows, habits begin forming, and a workflow emerges. Once participants have achieved these milestones, starting a track becomes trivial, shifting their focus toward composition and technique. With time and the feedback and support from other community members, musicians who at first could barely begin a melody learn to produce complete songs. Satisfying outcomes like these maintain participants' intrinsic motivation and reinforce self-confidence and self-efficacy (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).
Listening Parties: Immediate Peer Feedback
While each compo handles feedback differently, our most popular compos, Two Hour Track Sundays and One Hour Compos, hold live, synchronous listening parties hosted on Discord. At the end of each round, users are given a short grace period, usually only a few minutes long, to upload their songs to the Compoverse platform. Once the grace period has expired, a Discord bot downloads each submission, adds them to a queue, and begins a live internet radio broadcast hosted by our AI announcer, Chorus. As the listening party begins, Chorus will announce and play each song giving all participants an equal opportunity for engagement. Discord members have the opportunity to listen together and provide feedback and encouragement to the composer. These live listening parties allow round participants to receive immediate feedback for their submissions and facilitate social constructivist learning (Schmulian & Coetzee, 2018). In addition, the immediate nature of this feedback can be seen as a strategy to increase learner volition by providing a positive experience (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018).
Round Voting: Competition-Based Learning and Extrinsic Motivation
Experienced users often utilize Compoverse to continue streamlining their production workflows. Still, volition and the intrinsic motivation received from completing work may not be as strong or diminish over time for musicians who have already created many polished compositions. For these participants, Compoverse retains the competitive aspect of traditional demoscene compos. After each round, users can comment and vote on participant entries, selecting their top three favorite songs. After a voting period length determined by the organizer, the site tallies the votes, and the round page is updated to display each song's score and ranking, with the top-voted entries moved to the top of the page. In addition, some compo organizers allow the winning participant to select the theme of the following round.
These gamified and competitive elements offer meaningfulness to otherwise seasoned composers. Doing so also increases extrinsic motivation to maintain engagement and increase volition (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018). This way, learners of all experience levels can find value in the Compoverse experience.
Compoverse: Online Community-Based Learning
In the words of Murdock and Williams (2011): "...a community is created when a group of learners set out to achieve a common goal and learn with each other, despite the educational setting." In addition to providing a space to facilitate synchronous listening parties, the Compoverse Discord community offers users a persistent platform to continue interacting between compo rounds. Here, several hundred community members collaborate, share ideas and feedback, and contribute to the growth and evolution of the community at large. In addition, community experts offer lectures on advanced audio techniques and software implementation. Utilizing Discord as a communication tool allows learners to communicate and interact with each other from anywhere in the world (Motteram & Forrester, 2005) and create peer support networks that facilitate collaborative learning (Motteram & Forrester, 2005, as cited in Murdock and Williams (2011). Online communities such as these also allow learners to find information and explore interests beyond their local community and peers (Partti & Karlsen, 2010).
Balanescu, R. (2015, May). THE PROJECT-BASED LEARNING IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION - THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS. Proceedings of the Scientific Conference AFASES, Vol. 1, 159–164.
Keller, J.M. & Deimann, M. (2018). Motivation, volition, and performance. In R.A. Reiser, & J.V Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th ed.) (pp. 78-86). New York, NY: Pearson
Motteram, G., & Forrester, G. (2005). Becoming an online distance learner: What can be learned from students' experiences of induction to distance programmes? Distance Education, 26(3), 281–298
Murdock, J. L., & Williams, A. M. (2011, May 12). Creating an Online Learning Community: Is it Possible? Innovative Higher Education, 36(5), 305–315. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-011-9188-6
Partti, H., & Karlsen, S. (2010, December). Reconceptualising musical learning: new media, identity and community in music education. Music Education Research, 12(4), 369–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2010.519381
Schmulian, A., & Coetzee, S. A. (2018, November 2). Students' experience of team assessment with immediate feedback in a large accounting class. Assessment &Amp; Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(4), 516–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1522295
Curious for Competition
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1. Intrinsic motivation.
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