What is the sense of music contests?
One could really argue, and from my experience some contests have been fully pointless.
And it really started very pointless with the first one I participated in:
In year 1989, my music teacher at school approached me, if I would like to participate in the first “Pupil’s Composing Contest” of Rhineland Palatinate. While I was in my singer/songwriter phase, I thought it might be a good idea to join in. When I read the contest’s rules sheet, the impression struck me that some classical music professors had been sitting together with planning and describing a contest for composing classical music. However, they had failed to explicitely say so, and gave no single hint which styles or concepts were expected.
As you could expect, selecting winners eventually had become a major challenge – based on the presumed huge variety of submissions, it must have been hard to tell, if actually some classical piece was better than a solid rock song – how would you tell?
Nevertheless, the jury had finally chosen to grant the 1st prices to classical scores, 2nd prices for Jazz-like music, and 3rd prices for something else.
Absurdly enough, in my age class they didn’t assign a 1st price, as apparently there had been “no appropriate classical score submitted” from their view. So the 2nd price went to a guy who had written a remarkable Jazz score for a big band ensemble (so why exactly no 1st price for him?), and I received the 3rd price for my rock song “Scenery” – my epic singer songwriter song I’d written even a year before, and then written down as a formal score just to fulfill the contest requirememts.
While I for sure was very proud of this nevertheless, I took the opportunity to book the best local Heavy Metal band (“Agur’s Words” – I actually spent the whole money of my award to get them), and invited them as my kind of “PoC” to the winner’s concert, which (apart from the Jazz pieces) consisted of classical music only. And how I enjoyed all the prejudices and clichees meeting up in one room 🙂 Just image the face of a young “elite” violonist unexecpectedly bumping into the sound check of a rude-looking metal band “littering” the stage of the concert hall with amp stacks and a drumset….
However in later years, knowing this, I took part in several remix contests. In no case I was actually after a price (for me it is a bit pointless to get my remix imprinted to venyl as a typical reward), but took the opportunity to learn how to rearrange someone else’s material, and how to mix and master that to an appropriate level. In most cases, I’d set myself a limit of 3 days – from the orginal idea to the submission – to keep focussed and fresh on the topic. I need to confess that I’d rather not used real remixer’s skills, but thought of it like rearranging that stuff to a completely different style that hopefully nobody else had thought of. The term “re-produce” would literally be better for my approach than the term “remix“. And to my surprise, at least some of my attempts achieved a notable ranking 🙂
My remixes were submitted under my pseudonym “METAPHISTOPHELES”.
If you like, check them out below!
BE THE CHANGE @KYNDRYL
#Be_the_Change Contest at Kyndryl 2022
This was an internal creativity contest inside the company I work for.
Most of the other contributions were recorded slide deck shows with “boxed” music underneath – many of them saying how happy everybody should be, that our jobs and roles and corporation are going through heavy changes….
My composition I filmed should have taken a more realistic view on the topic – and finally ranked #2.
Hear it yourself => => => => => => =>
STEVEN WILSON: PERSONAL SHOPPER
STEVEN WILSON: PERSONAL SHOPPER
METAPHISTOPHELES Remix 2020
Steven Wilson is my personal music hero of the last two decades. He dares to publish various styles and genres simultaneously, while the rest of the music markes seems to be producing to fill small little “gaps” that promise some market reach…. (my opinion). And many of his songs have a clarity and richness that is uncommon even in the Progressive Rock scene.
Actually, this contest was more between me and my son Jan, and one of his friends, who of us three could actually get more plays on the contest platform 🙂
None of us reached the top of the list, but re-ordering all words of the lyrics to make up new meanings was big fun for me – plus that little Tubular Bells imitation at the end…. 🙂
CALEIDOSCOPE: RAISE YOUR GLASSES feat. Lia
CALEIDOSCOPE: RAISE YOUR GLASSES feat. Lia
METAPHISTOPHELES: Waiätt Örp Remix 2019
Also quite successful remix reaching the finals of the best 10 remixes in the competition.
Thinking about how to rebuild a song about excessive drinking on the one hand, and on the other hand searching for a style that should be unique in the competition, I removed it from the Ibiza party island and placed it into a Western saloon….
Sorry but based on the lack of more vocal lyrics from Lia, and by demand of my wife to let the singer sing something different for a change, I just could not resist but to be slicing some funny noises from her recording track into her solo part…. Really, please believe me, it was just the missing additional vocals, I swear…. 😉
THE EASTON ELLISES – SexDrungsRocknRoll
The Easton Ellises
SexDrungsRocknRoll
METAPHISTOPHELES:
Let’s Get Wild Remix 2015
This remix contest participation was very successful and ranked #5 in the final.
I wanted to test an old theory: “The Reggae Always Wins”. Well, it almost did – at least it took my contribution to a professional CD release for the Easton Ellises remixes, and they sent me 10 copies (yey!).
They occasionally removed the original Soundcloud relases, so I added the track into a separate player here.
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