Well, our Drumception contest has, at last, come to a close. In case you aren’t aware, Drumception is the songwriting contest we run during Toontrack’s Metal Month, where we provide a drum track to which contestants write and record their own original song.
This year featured a drum track that included the new Toontrack Orchestral Percussion SDX, which allows you to add hugely epic textures to your compositions. We were FLOODED with great entries, and picking the winners was grueling. What a difficult choice to have to make; everyone who entered put time and hard effort into making these, and we absolutely agonized over it. When it came down to it, we had to make some extremely difficult choices, but we listened to every single one, so if you entered, the Gear Gods have heard your song.
Because this was a songwriting/composition contest, we did not pick the ones with the best production, the sickest performances, or the best-looking video (in fact, the ones we wound up picking didn’t have videos at all). We picked entries with vision, cohesive but also adventurous compositional pizzazz, and ones that hooked us in.
Here are your 2019 Drumception Challenge winners:
First Place – Ricardo Corrales
The Grand Prize winner of Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 3, a Toontrack mystery box, an Orange Micro Dark amp, an Orange Kongpressor pedal, and an Orange Fur Coat fuzz pedal, is Ricardo Corrales, known as The Basement on SoundCloud. His entry was wildly different from the rest – he took big risks, explored crazy tonal territories and interesting sounds, but always brought it back to the theme, which tied his exotic and beautiful composition together. Congratulations Ricardo!
Runner-Up – Mark Herrera
Our runner-up is Mark Herrera. His entry has it all – great performances, cool sound choices, great production, a cohesive and interesting song with thematic recurrence and cool catchy parts.
Mark wins a Toontrack mystery box – congratulations Mark!
Third Place – Georgi Stanchev
And our third place winner is Georgi Stanchev! I’ll have what he’s having. I’m not sure entirely what all is going on in Georgi’s version of the song, but we were fucking GLUED to this one the entire time. It was a little too out there to take the top honors, but it got our attention so much that we felt it was deserving of yours, and of the third place prize of a Toontrack mystery box! Congratulations Georgi, and, uh, get me the number of your guy, will ya?
To everyone who submitted – great work. I wish I could give you all a prize, but I can say this – keep doing what you’re doing, and thank you for your effort and time – see you next year!
