Reason Forum Song Challenge III

So, hot on the heels of the ending of Challenge II, I have kicked off Challenge III. Because I’m lazy, here’s the post I made on the forum…

Ladies and germs,

It gives me enormous pleasure to announce the third Forum Song Challenge!!

Ok, first things first. I am delighted to announce that our sound library partner this time is BITLEY, the producer of the Fairlight ReFills, lovingly crafted by long time Reason-head, Patrick Fridh!

To participate in the challenge, you will first need to download the free DeLight ReFill which contains 60 NNXT patches, 4 ReDrum kits and 30 Combinators. Plenty of material to create your masterpiece. Your composition must only contain sounds from this ReFill and no other sound library. We will, as usual, allow you to put vocals on and this time we will allow you to add one other audio track to accommodate things like a guitar or trumpet. As before, should we need to verify that your entry meets the criteria, we reserve the right to request the song file for verification otherwise we will be reluctantly forced to disqualify your track.

A few rules:

Judge’s decision is final
Only 1 winner and one prize. No cash alternative.
All entries must be submitted by 4pm GMT (UK) Sunday 4th December 2011
No other Reason sound source must be used except for vocals and one instrument audio track.
All entries must be uploaded to SoundCloud
All entrants, when requested, must be prepared to provide evidence that no other sound source was used, except for those allowed in point 4.

All entries, once completed, must be uploaded to SoundCloud and submitted to the Challenge group…

There will be no submissions thread on the forum this time so please ensure you upload to SoundCloud and then add your tracks to the group page, ensuring you use your forum name so that we can easily identify you.

Entries will be judged by our guest judge and there will be one winner who will receive a copy of the full Fairlight XXL ReFill by BITLEY, worth $125

Which brings me on to our guest judge for this challenge.

Many of you were suitably inspired by Mark Reeder being our last judge, which was amazing to see. So I needed to maintain the high standard I had set myself. And I think, actually, I KNOW I have done just that.

Ladies & Gentlemen, our guest judge for this challenge is none other than Mr Martyn Ware, founding member of the Human League, Heaven 17 and the British Electric Foundation (B.E.F)!!

Martyn Ware

I could write for hours on what Martyn has achieved in his illustrious 35+ year career, but here are some snippets from the web..

Sheffield, 1977. Martyn Ware and his friends Ian Craig Marsh and Phil Oakey start Human League. Two albums later, Ware and Craig Marsh split from Oakey and started Heaven 17. Within 24 hours they’d made their first single and can lay claim to the world’s first use of the 303 on ‘Let Me Go’. Always into overarching aesthetics, Ware founded BEF, aka British Electric Foundation, and produced a career-rejuvenating album for Tina Turner, a series of smash singles for Terence Trent D’Arby, and their own ‘Temptation’, a record which contained 128 layered vocals in one quarter second clip. More recently, Ware’s continued his fierce dedication to the future with his sound design company, Illustrious. Next? A 3D sonic re-imagining of Ancient Rome.

Martyn “Teddy Bear” Ware (born 19 May 1956 in Sheffield, England) is a British musician and music producer. As a founder member of both The Human League and Heaven 17, he was partly responsible for hit records such as “Being Boiled” and “Temptation”. He has also worked as a record producer, notably helping to revitalise Tina Turner’s career in 1983 with “Let’s Stay Together” and producing Erasure’s I Say I Say I Say album in 1994.

More recently, he has collaborated with Vince Clarke (as The Clarke & Ware Experiment) on two music projects; the Pretentious album (1999), and Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle (2001). He has also contributed programmes to internet radio stations.

Ware created a 3D surround sound auditorium for the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield – a museum of contemporary music and culture. Ware later used the surround sound technology to launch an Arts Council subsidised touring project called “The Future of Sound”.

Fairlight XXL

Martyn is still recording and touring as Heaven 17 with singer Glenn Gregory. I caught up with them back in October as they did a two night performance at London’s Roundhouse. Martyn is in high demand as a keynote speaker on audio technology and artists rights as well as running his own innovative sound design company with Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode/Erasure) called Illustrious. He also lectures extensively on music production, technology, creativity and soundscape composition at universities and colleges across the UK, US and Europe. A B.E.F. boxset has just been released and a new album, entitled “Music of Quality & Distinction, Vol.3 – Dark” will be released in 2012 featuring collaborations with Boy George, Polly Scattergood, Shingai Shinowa, Green Gartside, Sandie Shaw, Midge Ure, Elly Jackson and many others.

I hope you are as excited about Martyn being on board as I am and I hope that the fact you have one of electronic pop music’s forefathers judging your entries will inspire you.

I am so excited about this one, my hands are shaking just typing this!! Patrick & I wish you all the very best of luck

Please direct any questions underneath this post and I will try and clarify anything I can. As before, I don’t want to be too restrictive apart from the use of just the DeLight ReFill.

So, if you own Reason, get it it registered if you haven’t already, and get writing!! 🙂