Freesound Project

Meet the Judges

For the first freesound competition, we gathered a heterogenous panel of judges. We wanted to stress the importance of both designed and recorded sounds. Without further ado, meet the judges.

Ross Bencina

Ross Bencina

Ross Bencina is a composer, performer, software developer and digital instrument maker, with a strong interest in improvised electroacoustic music. He has performed solo and with collaborators around Australia and internationally. He has recently performed at venues including Metrònom in Barcelona, The Zoo in Manchester, and at the Queensland Music Festival. Since 2002, Ross and fellow composers Steve Adam and Tim Kreger have performed together as Simulus, an improvising electroacoustic ensemble. Ross is the creator of AudioMulch interactive music studio - software for electronic music performance. He is the founding developer of PortAudio, foundation software for real-time audio applications. Ross regularly gives presentations about his software and musical practice. He was a keynote speaker at the 2005 Australasian Computer Music Conference, and presented innovative AudioMulch developments at the 2005 New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in Vancouver. Ross is a graduate of the La Trobe University Music Department (BA hons., 1995). In 2005, Ross completed one year as visiting researcher at the Music Technology Group, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, where he contributed to the design and development of audio transformation technologies and musical instruments, including the reacTable* interactive music table. For the month of October 2005, Ross was a resident artist at STEIM in Amsterdam, a major international centre for the research and development of instruments and tools for performers in the electronic performance arts. Ross is the sole proprietor of Sonic Fritter Pty Ltd which sells AudioMulch and offers consulting and software development services for desktop and embedded audio applications.

Website: http://www.audiomulch.com/

Richard Devine

Richard Devine

Richard Devine is at the cutting edge of new edge of sound design and musical composition. During the past three years, Richard Devine has remixed top Warp artists like Aphex Twin and Mike Patton (Faith No More). He has released 4 full-length albums on Schematic, Warp, Asphodel, and Sublight records and has performed his own ear-tearing music mayhem worldwide. Based from Atlanta, Georgia he has done film score work for Touchstone Pictures (with John Hues & Kyle Cooper), Wieden & Kennedy, AKQA Inc., and have done sound mangling/programming for Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, composed and designed commercials for the Nike Shoe Company and worked with various companies doing sound design for Scion, LandRover, Dodge, Audi, LG, Ford, HBO, Spike Television network and XBOX (Halo2 for Microsoft Gamming Division. And currently now for Sony Play station PS3 (Infected) for Dawn of the Dead. He has also recently completed all the sound design for the new xbox360.

In conjunction with TV and film work Richard also has done programming and sound design work with major audio companies. His work has been featured on new software and hardware titles from many innovative companies such as Native Instruments, Korg, Clavia Nord, Alesis, Ableton Live, Apple Computers, Openlabs, Universal Audio, Hartmann Neuron synthesizers, Stanton Magnetics DJ Company and M-Audio Division.

Website: http://www.richard-devine.com

Vance Dylan

Vance Dylan

Over the last 17 years Vance aka Sonic has been producing hundreds of projects ranging from albums and demos to location sound, foley and post production for films.

After discovering how fun recording weapons for video game sound design is, This year marks a new era as Vance and his comapny of 7 years, Sonic Valley Productions, moves soley into the audio for video games genre. Within the past year Vance has been working on some of the most anticipated game modifications for Half Life 2 including Iron Grip: The Oppression and The Hidden Source. Both games have been accailimed by PC Gamer, Game Connect and computer gaming world magazines and recieved quite alot of attention at the recent 2006 GDC convention.

Website: http://www.sonicvalley.com

Gary Garritan

Gary Garritan

Gary Garritan is the leading innovator in the music sampling industry today. He started in the business producing one of the very first sample libraries for GigStudio, the GigaHarp. Seeing the need for the sounds of excellent strings sections, Garritan's next venture was Garritan Orchestral Strings. Sampling over $10 million in stringed instruments at the famous Lincoln Center in NYC, Garritan's GOS has now become the staple in Hollywood and on television.

Wishing to bring high quality samples for every musician - student and teachers for example- Garritan produced the award winning Garritan Personal Orchestra. He sampled all the instruments commonly found in orchestras today with the same attention to detail, technology and professionalism as his high-end GOS but with a price that most musicians can afford. Garritan has also pioneered new technology in making GPO which allows access to PC and Mac users, notation and sequence users alike. This new technology has broken open the barriers of sampling permitting a wider user base.

Continuing with his cutting edge style, Garritan has introduced Garritan Jazz and Big Band Library, the first ever jazz and big band sample library. This library became a hit among educators and jazz musicians and is receiving accolades from the music press.

Website: http://www.garritan.com

Richard Humpries

Richard Humphries

Richard Humphries is fortunate enough to have always known what he has wanted to do. His interest in sound stems from having grown up in a family of musicians. Having been to many recording sessions as a youngster, Richard started recording his parents' piano students while still in high school. He later earned a B.S. degree in Audio Technology from American University. For a year he pursued a Masters in Digital Signal Processing but postponed his studies indefinitely when offered a job as a mixer at Soundwave, an audio post house.

During his four years at Soundwave, Richard worked for such clients as MCI, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, and Fox Television-- for whom he mixed "America's Most Wanted". For the next six and a half years Richard worked as a Mixer and Sound Designer at Henninger Digital Audio for various radio, film, DVD and television productions with an emphasis on surround sound mixes. Some of his clients have included Unapix Entertainment, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS, Arnold Advertising, TBWA/Chiat Day, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Gallery of Art, and others.

As of February 2003, Richard has been an Audio Engineer for Discovery Communications. His projects have included documentaries and promotions for both foreign and domestic Discovery Channel networks.

He is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Peer Award for his work on the Documentary "POW: Escape from a Living Hell", a Monitor Award for his work on the National Park Service's program "Back to Wildness", and an ITVA Award for his work on AARP's PSA "Faucet". Richard has also been a panelist at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and has written an article about Surround Sound, which was published in Millimeter Magazine.

When he is not behind a mixing console Richard can be found traveling the world recording sounds and meeting people. Recently he has visited Nepal, Belize, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia.

Jose Lozano

Jose Lozano

Jose Lozano manages the recording studio of IUA at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. He is direct collaborator of the Phonos Institute and manages all the recordings, postproduction and concerts organized by Phonos and the Music Technology Group. He Teaches Digital Audio Editing and Processing, Studio Techniques, Audio for video animation and Physical Computing at The Master in Digital Arts and Sound Design at ESMUC. He has developed interactive and mix media expositions with Vaina Systems. He also recorded and mixed the experimental film "Tira tu reloj al agua" from director Eugeni Bonet. He has been involved with different artists as Konic Thtr, Galeria Virtual, en Reposo studios, BCNova, Sara Nuytemans.

http://www.iua.upf.edu/~jlozano/

Xavier Serra

Xavier Serra

Xavier Serra (born in 1959) is the director of the Department of Technology of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) where he is also founder and head of the Music Technology Group. He holds a Master degree in Music from Florida State University (1983), a Ph.D. in Computer Music from Stanford University (1989) and he has worked for two years as Chief Engineer at Yamaha Music Technologies USA, Inc. Since 1992 he is a visiting professor at Stanford University where he teaches every summer. His dissertation, in the area of spectral processing of audio signals, is considered a key reference in the area of Computer Music and it is widely cited in many articles. His research interests are in sound analysis and synthesis for music and other multimedia applications, specifically he is working with spectral models and their application to synthesis, processing and content-based retrieval of audio. Dr. Serra is editor for a number of international journals, reviewer for several international conferences and for the 5th and 6th framework programs of the European Commission, member of a few professional organizations and he is often invited at conferences and workshops as a guest speaker. He is the principal investigator of more than 10 major research projects funded by the European Commission and other public and private institutions. He has more than 30 patents, most of them submitted in Japan and the USA, he has published more than 30 articles in international journals and proceedings of conferences and he has contributed to several books.

Website: http://www.iua.upf.edu/~xserra/

Anton Woldhek

Anton Woldhek

Anton is a student, sound designer and musician (in that order). He studies Music Technology, specializing in sound design, at the Utrecht School for Music and Technology which is part of the School for the Arts in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Currently working on the sound design for his first feature length indie film and just finishing a short tour with his electro-acoustic ensemble "Tokyo Stock Exchange" which features him as didgeridoo player. Ever since he got his first taperecorder as a child he has been running around recording everything he heard. Some of his more recent field recording efforts can be found on this site. He could be a familiar face for some on the freesound project as he is moderator and was beta tester of the project.

Comments...