Wednesday, August 02, 2006

How To Make A Music Tournament

Recap of the end of the last one: Superstition defeats Bohemian Rhapsody in the Final Four. Don't Stop Believing defeats Piano Man in the Final Four. In the Hands On Music Tournament Final, Don't Stop Believing loses to Stevie Wonder's Superstition. Well played.

Fresh off the week hiatus, we've contructed a brand-spanking new music tournament. Part II. The fresh style.

In case you in the future want to hold a music tournament and are wondering how to go about collecting nominations and seeding, this is my suggested protocol:

1) Allow everyone to nominate one song. Dissuade double voting, as you will remove such votes and ensure everyone's song gets as much of a chance against the aggregate group as any one others.

2) Do not fall prey to the idea of an elitist secret music committee to pick songs before the fact. There was a time when committees turned a perfect ideal upside down and terrible, and there is no reason to ignore the sufferings of Alexander Romanov and Chiang Kai-Shek. Plus, while this may in fact be a good idea in theory, there is no objective music analyst. You'll just end up nominating your own songs.

3) Hold a public music drawing out of a bucket in front of the whole group and select 32 songs for consideration. At this point you'll have to exclude explicit lyric type songs if you can't find a clean version.

4) OK, now that you have the whole group of songs in the tourney, then recruit some of your friends to put all the songs on a table and group them into four tiers. Tier 1 includes the 8 strongest songs in the group's opinion, 2, 3, and down to 4. Write the Tier Number on the back of the song and put them back in the bucket

5) Bracket filling time. Four brackets, each looking like this:

1)
8)

4)
5)

3)
6)

2)
7)

Pull songs from the bucket. The first Tier 1 song goes into spot 1. The second Tier 1 song goes into spot 2. First Tier 2 song goes into spot 3. Second, spot 4. So on and so forth, pulling randomly to fill up the bracket and creating matchups that reflect the seedings. If you pull a third song from one tier (which will inevitably happen), just put it back in the bucket and keep pulling until you've filled up.

6) Once you've got your four brackets, randomly assign them quadrants of the tourney board somehow.

7) Then, single elimination tournament. No holds barred.

And that's how the second Hands On Music Tournament came to be, as it is on the board.

Commentary and songs to come.

3 comments:

Hands On Gulf Coast said...

Despite the fact that a music committee may be considered elitist, I believe the last three match-ups have provided us with ample evidence that a committee is necessary for quality control.

Hands On Gulf Coast said...

whatever

Hands On Gulf Coast said...

Maybe, instead of putting so much effort into the music tournament, and coming across like you are better than everyone, you could be friendlier to people and respond in a respectful way when they try to talk to you, instead of thinking you are all that and a bag of chips.