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Shure Announces Winners of the 2012 Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition

The Grand Prize Winners of Shure’s eighth annual “Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition, from left: MTSU students Taylor Bray, Jeff Braun, and Grant Hartford, with Shure’s Ryan Smith

Shure Incorporated in Niles. Ill., announces that a team from Middle Tennessee State University has won this year’s Grand Prize Winner of Shure’s eighth annual “Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition.” The three-student team of Taylor Bray, Jeff Braun, and Grant Hartford, with faculty advisor Associate Professor Michael Fleming, won this year’s contest with an original composition by aspiring singer-songwriter Rebecca Roubion entitled “Falliday.”

“We congratulate the winning team from MTSU and thank all of the students who participated in this year’s contest,” says Dave Mendez, Market Development Specialist at Shure, who coordinated the competition. “This year’s competition was extremely close, which is a credit to the high quality of all the submissions, and hard work of the students and faculty of these fine recording programs.”

The judges for the competition were Ken Caillat, Leslie Ann Jones, Dave O’Donnell, Keith Olsen, and John Paterno. They evaluated the recordings on their overall fidelity, clarity, and sonic balance as well as creativity in selection and placement of microphones.

“Congratulations to all the participants in this project,” says judge Leslie Ann Jones, Director of Music Recording and Scoring at Skywalker Sound. “It is wonderful of Shure to provide such a great opportunity to these teams of soon-to-be engineers and producers, and the results are quite impressive. I was very happy to be involved.”

Each of the 10 student teams worked on a recording project that involved tracking and mixing a performance, exclusively using a “microphone locker” provided by Shure for the competition. Teams submitted an unmastered stereo mix for review by a panel of industry professionals who were invited by Shure to judge the competition.

”We were thrilled to participate in this year’s competition,” says Associate Professor Michael Fleming, the faculty adviser to the team. “The student team opened the mic locker like it was a Christmas present, and they really rose to the challenge of using a collection of great microphones, musicians, and acoustic sources to create a unique recording. They learned a lot from the experience and had a great time doing it.”

Having the microphone locker enabled the students to gain experience with some microphones that none of them had previously used, and to experiment with different mics on different instruments and a variety of microphone placements.

In addition to the winning team from MTSU, there were nine other competing teams from Clemson University, Delta State University, DePaul University, New England School of Communications, the New York University Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, University of Miami Frost School of Music, University of the Pacific, and William Paterson University.

The runner-up in this year’s competition was the team from The NYU Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. The students from Delta State University received an honorable mention.

As the winning school, MTSU takes ownership of a selection of Shure KSM recording microphones, which consists of one KSM313 ribbon microphone, two KSM44A, one KSM42/SG, two KSM32/SL, one KSM141/SL stereo mic pair with A27M stereo mic stand adapter, two SM27-LC, two BETA 181/S, two RPM181/O, and six SRH840 Professional Monitoring Headphones. The entire prize package is valued at more than $11,000. In addition, each member of the winning team will receive a KSM42/SG, valued at $999 MSRP.

Find more information about the winners and to listen to the winning song.

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