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Shure Announces Winner of 10th Annual Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition

The winners of the 10th Annual Shure Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition from Middle Tennessee State University showcase the grand prize package. From left to right: Audio Production Coordinator Professor Bill Crabtree; audio team members Jimmy Mansfield, Charlie Garcia; Ryan Smith, Regional Manager, Shure Artist Relations Nashville; audio team members Frank Gerdts, Sam Hillman, and audio team faculty adviser Dr. Doug Bielmeier.

Shure Incorporated announces that the student team from Middle Tennessee State University won the grand prize for the company’s tenth annual Fantastic Scholastic Recording Competition. Under the guidance of Assistant Professor Dr. Doug Bielmeier, the winning team comprised students Frank Gerdts, Charlie Garcia, Jimmy Mansfield and Sam Hillman. The team’s winning original composition titled “In My Head” was co-written by Angel Snow and Darrell Scott.

As the grand prize winner, the Middle Tennessee State University team will take home a prize pack of Shure KSM, SM, and Beta microphones and SRH headphones valued collectively at more than $11,000. An assortment of Shure microphones and headphones, valued at $5,395 and $1,872, respectively, will be given to the runner-up and honorable mention schools. Additionally, individual members from the top three teams will be offered a range of prizes, including a KSM42 and SM27-C microphone and SRH840 headphones, ranging in value from $250 to $999.

“Over the last nine years our FSRC competition has pushed students to create exceptional music,” says Stephen Kohler, Senior Director of Marketing, Shure Americas. “This year was no different. The teams showed great diversity and proved to be a promising group of the audio industry’s future. A big shout out and sincere thank you from all of us at Shure to the students, faculty, and judges who helped make the tenth year of this competition one of the best yet.”

The final compositions were evaluated based on overall fidelity, clarity, sonic balance, and creativity in selection and placement of microphones. Expert judges on this year’s panel included Mike Clink, Johnny K., Jack Douglas, Stephen Hart, and David Cole.

“The Shure contest allowed some of our best students to put together all the skills they learned here at MTSU and apply them to a real world project with strict guidelines and hard deadlines,” says Dr. Bielmeier. “Just participating has made them better engineers, not to mention will help them with their current and future clients. Oh, and we had a lot of fun using the locker full of Shure’s fantastic microphones.”

During the competition, which began in November 2013, 10 student teams from the U.S. and Canada each produced and recorded an original composition using only the contents of a microphone locker provided by Shure. After working through the tracking and mixing phases of the project, each team submitted unmastered mixes of their track to the panel of industry experts for review.

“It was an honor to participate again as one of the judges in this annual recording contest,” says legendary record producer Jack Douglas. “I was very impressed by the hard work of these talented students and the overall excellence of their recordings. Based on what I heard, I would say that the future of recording is in very good hands! The SM57 is an industry standard, and to have access to the entire Shure recording product line is a complete luxury. The recordings these students produced reflected this.”

The nine other schools that participated in this year’s competition were Berklee College of Music, Daytona State College, Ithaca College, Lamont School of Music at University of Denver, MacEwan University (Canada), The Hartt School at University of Hartford, University of Central Missouri, University of Colorado Denver, and University of Lethbridge (Canada).

The student team from the University of Lethbridge, under the direction of Assistant Professor Thilo Schaller, was named runner-up, while an honorable mention was awarded to the student team from the University of Central Missouri, under the direction of Professor Eric Honour.

For more information about the winners, and to listen to the winning song, visit Shure’s Fantastic Scholastic 10 Recording Competition page.

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