Music Weeklies Challenge is an activity and a community for weekly musical challenges organized around social media channels, currently mainly organized through the project's Discord.
The initiative intersects with the world of games on a few levels:
- it is itself a game-like activity — by challenging music-makers with tasks,
- gathers a considerable amount of participants from the area of video game music ("VGM"),
- a few featured prompts relate directly to games,
- occasionally initiates additional methods of coordinated interaction between the participants (cooperative or competitive).
Compose a brand new original song in keeping with the theme and constraints.
VGM — Video Game Music. Soundtracks of computer games.
By default Music Weeklies are for fun (or art, or networking), but sometimes an additional motivation is provided by prizes (awarded from a raffle on entries).
The challenges
Calls for a live recording do happen in Music Weeklies, but the activity is clearly aimed mainly at working in a studio (notice that the tagline says "compose … a song") and entries made with digital emulations of instruments are quite frequent. Many of the themes provided for interpretation are single words or phrases. These prompts are all naturally possible to be performed in a live and improvised context (as with any word)… but the words are not a random draw from a dictionary as they provide the music with intentional character or a situated reference. It's also clear that the main strength of Music Weeklies does not lie in the cues themselves, but in other opportunities of a more social kind.
Until 2025 the themes were neatly tracked on the project's webpage — a telling effect is that some of them were already present within the wiki's database independently as part of other activities — they are after all sometimes just names of a genre or a common object. Here is a small selection of especially evocative, but generally representative themes (generously agreed to be integrated into our wiki's systems by the MWs steering committee):
6. Release The Beast
15. Childhood Memories
17. Atlantis
23. Corporate
24. Rainbows and Unicorns
29. 11/16 Time Signature
30. Sound of Colors
32. Summer Vibes
77. Audio Vacation
94. Exorcism
111. New As Old
112. Old As New
115. Vampires
123. Bubbles
126. Cheesy
162. Then VS Now 👹 // Describe musically your hometown first as the child you were, then as you see it now
169. Not A Fan // Write a piece in a style/genre you don't normally enjoy
Apart from direct themes, some of the weekly challenges may include: collaborating with other Muwee participants, learning about a social cause, engaging with pre-existing media, or generally following some more complex scenario (often marked as "big boss" challenges, which alludes to games, again). Sometimes additional activities are proposed that run parallel to the weekly challenge, based on listening, guessing, voting, suggestions, etc.
Occasionally, music may also be released as a compilation:
https://musicweeklies.bandcamp.com/releases
Editor's notes
This entry is due to a celebration of four years (2018—2022) of Music Weeklies Challenge. Congratulations to the initiator, runners, and the participants! :)
See also other prompting initiatives:
- Disquiet Junto — a prompting series with a "high concept" approach
- The Daily Create — frequent cues for different media
17 cues from this source
Random scores with cues from this source:
A Single Random Cue ♢ GOTO Score ♢ Bubbles ♢ Horizontal Vanilla
If you think anything should be added to this subpage, please drop a hint or a link for future editors.