Sunday, July 24, 2016

"Courage" Remix Contest Entries

I recently sponsored a remix contest for a track called "Courage" that Urban Francis and I put together.  We were overwhelmed by a flood of entries for the contest!  We had more than a hundred entries, which was a LOT more than we expected.  Narrowing down a final winner was pretty difficult.  Here's what we did:

Urban Francis picked about fifty of his preferred tracks, and we shared those with eight of our friends who are music producers or DJ's.  Each of those eight friends got to pick two tracks out of the group.  One track would become a finalist, and another was a "noteworthy entry" that didn't make it as a finalist, but which our panel judge felt deserved more exposure.  We then pitted the eight finalists against each other to come up with a final winner.

 




In judging a winner, the judging panel looked at a number of factors, but mostly the following four considerations:

1. Creativity - Any genre was acceptable, and we were really pleased with the variety that we got!
2. Professional Sounding Production - Does the remix sound like it's ready for professional mastering?
3. Identifiable - Does the remix have some identifiable elements of at least one of the original mixes, either vocal samples and/or melody lines or chord progressions?
4. Playability - Is the track a suitable choice for a DJ or radio programmer to include in a set or a show?


The final winner that was picked was a mix by Lazarus, of New York.  We'll feature it first in this post.  But we also wanted to share the other tracks submitted by the other seven finalists, and the eight noteworthy entries that were picked, so we're including SoundCloud links in the this post to all of these sixteen tracks.  All of these are downloadable, so feel free to grab copies and share them with your friends.


WINNING ENTRY

Lazarus (New York)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/lazarus




FINALISTS
(In no particular order)



Nelson D (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/nelson-d
  Facebook:  www.facebook.com/Nelson-D-423492404398619




Paul Why (United Kingdom)




Xudeus (Sweden)
  Soundcloud:  www.soundcloud.com/xudeus




Faith (Italy)




DaanDee (Ukraine)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/daandeemusic




Brahmox (India)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/thereal-brahmox




Jackson Laframboise (Canada)




NOTEWORTHY ENTRIES

XY!RO (country unknown)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/xyiro




Tribal Heart (Czech Republic)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/tribalheart




Tightrops (France)




Split Armada (Estonia)
  Facebook:  www.facebook.com/splitwert
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/splitarmada




Splashed (Portugal)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/splashedmusic
  Facebook:  www.facebook.com/iamsplashed




Eduard Fawkes (Hungary)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/eduardfawkes




Aspasia P (Germany)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/aspasia-p




Karl Parker (Sweden)
  SoundCloud:  www.soundcloud.com/karlparker
  Twitter:  www.soundcloud.com/karlparker




MORE INTERESTING ENTRIES
(Here a few of the other entries that we liked)

























And Here Are The Original Mixes




You can also grab copies of all of these tracks (and of our original Ableton project files for this track) from our public Dropbox folder at this link:



You can also see a number of YouTube videos explaining our production of the original project by visiting this link:




I have to give a huge thanks, on behalf of myself and Francis, to everyone who submitted entries.  Above and beyond the sixteen tracks that we've featured above, I've already heard a number of really professional sounding other entries, and it's obvious that a lot of participants put a lot of time and effort into making their productions.  There were a lot of entries, including some that aren't featured above, that could arguably be judged winners!

I'm currently doing forestry work in the Canadian bush, so I haven't had much time to be heavily involved in this contest.  However, I have a few weeks of downtime in early August, and my first goal is to listen to every single track that was submitted, and I'll be sharing a few more of the remixes in our Dropbox folder at that time.

Thanks for your interest in this remix contest!





I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:



Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia
    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia
    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com
    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

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