May 24, 2005 4:32 PM, By Mix Editors

L-R: Judith de los Santos, Gerardo Larios, Andres Ascanio and Antonio Resendiz; faculty advisor Rob Jaczko; Erin McComb; and Shure’s Nick Wood.

Shure Incorporated announced that a five-member team from the Berklee College of Music (Boston, Mass.) has won the company’s first “Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition.” The winning team members were: Judith de los Santos, Andres Ascanio, Erin McComb, Antonio Resendiz and Gerardo Larios.

“We were really pleased with the response to this contest from the students and extremely impressed with the level of competition,” said Nick Wood, market development specialist, who coordinated the competition. “This contest was a great way for us to show our support for the people who teach and study recording. We’d like to congratulate the winning team from Berklee and thank the students from all of the schools who participated.”

In addition to Berklee, there were nine other competing teams from the College of Saint Rose, The Hartt School at the University of Harvard, Bethune-Cookman College, Northeastern University, William Paterson University of New Jersey, Middle Tennessee State University, Webster University School of Communications, Georgia State University School of Music and American University.

Each of the 10 student teams worked on a recording project that consisted of tracking and mixing a performance, exclusively using standard-issue mics provided by Shure for the competition. Teams submitted a stereo mix for review by a panel of industry professionals who were selected by Shure to judge the competition.

“The premise of the competition was excellent,” said Rob Jaczko, chair, music production and engineering at the Berklee College of Music. “The team applied a great deal of thought to the A&R process, rehearsals, technical strategy and documentation. I was most impressed by their delegation of duties and creative use of mic technique in the context of a large format ensemble.”

The judges for the competition were Joe Barresi, David Hewitt, Eddie Kramer and Bob Ludwig, who evaluated the recordings on their overall fidelity, clarity and sonic balance, as well as creativity in selection and placement of microphones.

“I would like to thank Shure for instituting this program in the schools,” said Hewitt. “Anything that we can do to further education in the arts improves the world.”

Regarding the winning entry from the Berklee team, Hewitt added, “It was a good mix, especially considering the complexity of the instrumentation. It’s good to hear that large scale live band recording is being taught!”

As the winning school, The Berklee College of Music takes ownership of the entire Shure microphone locker, which consists of: a Beta 52A?, a Beta 91, two Beta 98s, two KSM27s, two KSM32s, two KSM44s, two KSM141s, four SM57s and a SM7B. The entire microphone package is valued at more than $10,000. In addition, a donation of $3,000 toward a scholarship fund was awarded to Berklee, and each member of the winning team receives a KSM27, valued at $575.

For more information, please go to the Website at www.shure.com.

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