Back in August 2005 on SOS's first-ever covermount DVD, we ran a unique Music-For-Picture Commission competition in conjunction with PRODRIVE, the world's number one independent motorsport company. They required specially composed music to reflect their corporate image and one lucky Sound On Sound reader was going to win!
PRIZE: The winner will receive the unique prize of a high-speed ride in a Subaru Impreza World Rally Car, plus the kudos and exposure that only a prestige commission on their showreel can offer.
As you can imagine, Prodrive were inundated with entries, all produced to a very high standard [you're a talented bunch of readers!]. Judging proved very difficult because of the high standard of entries and quantity, with the winning music track finally being chosen days before our March 2006 magazine DVD went to press, which included this info and the MP3 of the winning track.Just to remind you, the brief from the client was to compose an original piece of music, between 3 and 4 minutes in duration, judged to most effectively reflect the corporate activities and ethos of the Prodrive organisation to accompany the short video clip we supplied on DVD001. We also requested that your music also had to work in longer form, to be used as Prodrive's telephone music-on-hold and for longer music-for-picture applications. This oversight proved a stumbling block for many of the otherwise excellent entries which synchronised perfectly with the 1min:08sec video clip, but were judged to be unsuitable for music-on-hold purposes. The winning composer stuck to the brief perfectly in the view of the judges.[ Tip: always pay close attention to the client's brief. ]
The winning entry was selected personally by Prodrive Chairman David Richards and will be used by Prodrive for corporate video soundtracks and for the organisation's telephone 'music on-hold' system.
"After being notified of his win, Chris kindly wrote to us about his background: "I am a drummer by profession, living in Surrey. I have in the past written a few things, none of which have really taken off, and after a long period of not wanting to write music I decided to have another crack at it."So about two years ago I reluctantly got rid of my old 'black and white' Cubase and my keyboards, including my Oberheim OBXa (incidentally, this was one of the first MIDI conversions that John Price did before he became Kenton Electronics, and I found a buyer on the Sound On Sound web site who was desparate to own an OBXa!). I consulted 'the bible', SOS, and made a wish list of equipment from recommendations and reviews and help from my mate Ken in Essex, who told me that after listening to 'soft synths' I would never need to own any external sounds — he was right! Digital Village were fantastic and supplied me with the new equipment, and after a couple of phone calls to their PC expert I was ready to go.
"Like every other reader, I have got bits of music started and ideas stuck on the hard drive. I saw the Prodrive Competition and decided to use it as a way of seeing if I could write some music to fit a brief. When I eventually managed to 'import' the video into Cubase I got cracking and used a section of music for the opening that I had stored as an idea. And then when the cars were racing around the track, I could get a feel for the energy they would be looking for to go with the video. Given the quality of other readers' music I've heard on the DVD and elsewhere, I am very pleased that it was my tune that was picked!"
- PC running Cubase SX / Stylus / Atmosphere / Trilogy and various other plug-ins
- Soundcraft Compact 10 mixer
- Lexicon MPX 550
- SE Electronics Z3300A and SE 2200A microphones
- Fostex PM1 monitors
- Beyerdynamic DT 990 and DT 770 headphones
Well done Chris. Congratulations on winning! And a big thank you to the hundreds of other readers who rose to the challenge and entered.
