After viewing today's Monday morning final(?) voting results of the latest semi final voting round, showing Dimitriv Greenberg and Jonathan Shuey, each receiving 58% of the total vote,, and Chony Milencki and Steven Gail, each receiving 42% of the total vote, I checked later today to discover that the contest has been "delayed" yet again. I'm totally confused what these precentages represent as summing these together yields a 200% total, not 100% as one would expect the total number of votes to add up to. As this contest has progressed, it''s brought on more questions than answers as well as more unexpected delays. In addition, we still don't really know why contestant #2 was suddenly disqualified, and for what technically, yet only 'after' the voting round he participated in was completed. If it was for an age or US residency violation, I would have expected Yamaha to have cleared that up even before the initial Yamaha judges contestant selection round. With this latest Final Round Delay now, and seeing the Semi Final Round percentages totaling 200% and not 100% as one would expect, appears at least strange, if not suspicious. Can anyone figure out what might account for that discrepancy? As Donny Pesce suggested earlier, is it just us, or does something seem fishy? I'm sure there's an explanation, so what are we missing?

They set up but didn't explain the bracket play. The first round was...
1 vs 8 - 2 vs 7 - 3 vs 6 - 4 vs 5
The rankings were determined by 2 judges from Nashville who are studio guys... they judged on a list of criteria Yamaha gave them.

Here's where things go wrong...
Then they had an issue... took an additional week to replace #2 and rerun #7 vs #9 (the next in line.)

Semi-Final Round Bracket was #1 vs #9 and #4 vs #6. In true bracket play... the #1 seed always has the advantage and should be verses the lower rank available, unless the underdog wins. If all of the favorites win... the top 4 should move on to the next round. #1 vs #8 should play the winner of #4 vs #5 and #2 vs #7 should play the winner of #3 vs #6. You would think the finals should be #1 vs #2 to have your best match up. Yamaha, in the first round did 1/8 vs 2/7 - 3/6 - 4/5. The next round, if #2 stayed in, would have been a #1 vs the #2 in the second round. Then they replaced #2 with #9 and took the week to run #7 vs #9 and #9 won. The next round was 1/9 - 4/6. Didn't make sense to me.

Within the first hour or so of the 2nd round, it started as #1 vs #6 and #4 vs #9. A few hours later, it flipped to #1 vs #9 and #4 vs #6... it was explained as a mistake and it was always meant to be how they fixed it... not true bracket play.

The percentage is 100% out of the 2 videos against each other. 1 vs 9 ended up 58% to 42% = 100% and 4 vs 6 ended up 42% to 58% = 100%. The higher percentage moves onto the next round. After this week it should be 1 vs 6.

Hope this explains some things...

Though I noticed the brackets I thought they had no bearing how one was supposed to vote. In addition, I thought the finalist numbers were arbitrarily assigned without regard to rank and that the contestant out of numerical order of appearance was merely done to eliminate any favoritism by their finalist number. I honestly had no idea we were supposed to only vote between the two contestants appearing in each bracket. I'm betting many other voters as well were unaware of the bracketed voting setup or its rules either. I merely applied the same rules given to the Yamaha judges in their initial selection process, and gave all my votes to who I felt the top 2 arranger kb players of everyone appearing in each round. A bit late in the contest to discover only now, but thank you Jonathan for taking the time to explain in detail the "bracket play" voting rules. Yamaha should have really included these voting rules on the page where people actually vote.

I think that's why they gave each person 5 votes. You can only vote 5 times per day... not per bracket. So, you could give 3 votes to #1 and 2 votes to #2 to see them move on.

They should have spelled out how to vote to make the bracket play fair. I'm sure they have learned a lot about how to run a contest after the issues with this one.

Here's the latest...

"The Final voting round will commence on Monday, May 9, 2011 and will end Sunday, May 15 at 11:59 PM PDT."

The finalists aren't even announced... what's going on???

Yep. I've been wondering the same thing for nearly a week now too.

With the now seemingly endless contest starts, stops, and delays, and because contestant #2 was eliminated on a so called technicality (but never explained), and then the subsequent run off between contestant #7 and #9 (what happened to contestant #8?), plus the only now realized public's awareness of and or confusion over the way the bracketed voting system works, and of which I'd expect to have certainly affected the voting results, I think Yamaha USA may need to consider cutting their losses, and simply award "All 4 Semi Finalists" a Tyros 4.

Newsflash: May 9th, 2011

From Yamaha USA:

Yamaha Corporation of America has reason to believe that the integrity of the voting process in the Freestyle Contest has been compromised. Yamaha regrets this and, in the interest of fairness to the entrants, has decided to award the announced prize based on the professional judging scores from the pre-voting phase of the Contest. Based on those scores, the winner is Dmitry Greenberg. Congratulations, Dmitry, on winning the YAMAHA Tyros4 Arranger Workstation Keyboard, TRS-MS04 speakers, L-7S stand and available manufacturer's warranty.

In addition to the originally announced prize, Yamaha has decided to also award each of the seven remaining finalists in the Freestyle Contest a YAMAHA Piaggero NP-V60.

Once again, Yamaha regrets the disruption that has occurred to the Contest. Thank you to everyone for your interest and participation.

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In light of the above statement made by Yamaha USA , and the observations I made in my last posting reply,
I believe Yamaha did the 'honorable thing' to make Dimitry Greenberg the grand prize winner of the Tyros 4 keyboard,
and in addition , award the other 7 finalists a Yamaha Piaggero NP-V60 keyboard.
Congratulations (esp sz members Chony Milecki & Jonathan Shuey.
I didn't enter this contest, but hope to participate next time, if there's ever another arranger contest in the future. - Scott