The 17th CGEmpire Music Compo has kicked off this week. The theme this month, is childrens’ music, and the winner will receive a copy of ProjectSAM’s True Strike 2 worth $539.99.

ProjectSAM is the brain child of film composer Maarten Spruijt, media composer Vincent Beijer and composer-arranger Marco Deegenaars, who teamed up in 2002, to found sample library development company ProjectSAM®.
ProjectSAM is where custom samples and commercial libraries meet.

Nowadays, ProjectSAM has become one of the most respected orchestral sample development companies. ProjectSAM has developed 8 sample libraries specially aimed at film, tv and games composers: True Strike 2, True Strike 1, Flute & Piccolo Effects, SAM Organ Mystique, SAM Solo Sessions, SAM Trumpets, SAM Trombones and SAM Horns. All libraries are sold internationally through ProjectSAM’s online shop and by a number of world-wide distributors in the US, Europe and Japan.

The 17th CGEmpire Music Competition, sponsored by ProjectSAM

For full information as well as the rules, take a look at this thread.

The 16th CGEmpire Music Competition is kindly sponsored by Peter and Giorgio, the creators and owners of SampleModeling.

The winner will receive a copy of The Trumpet (which retails for $240), a VSTi of unparalleled realism and usability!

The challenge this time is to compose The Darklord theme, and the deadline for entries is Sunday 22nd of June 23:59 London time.

For more information, please visit the Competition Thread.

Hearty congratulations go to mirrored for winning the 15th CGEmpire Music Competition with his entry ‘The Long Way Home‘.

For his troubles, mirrored takes home a copy of Stormdrum 2 which retails at $495, courtesy of Eastwest/Quantum Leap.

The challenge for this month’s competition was to compose a theme to accompany the following premise:

…The heroes kept on walking, the wind blowing restless. Soon the terrain changed. The sparse trees, which until then provided some kind of shelter, gave place to rocks. As they climbed the mountain the sun got hidden by deep clouds, and the wind changed to rain first and then to snow. The slowed down but never stopped. Every obstacle they overcame, they were not short of courage. Finally they reached the top of the mountains, stood there for only a brief moment, to catch their breathes and then took the path down, to the other side. At the bottom, the snow gave way to the everlasting greens and the familiar smell was reassuring enough. They were home!

Congratulations to all who took part for all-round excellent entries! You can listen to all the music competition entries here!

Eastwest are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year! Many of their titles are hugely popular all over the world, and their products have earned many awards over the years!

Recently they’ve launched their own player/sampler (PLAY) which is 64-bit and they have released 6 different products based on that platform.

One of these products is Stormdrum 2 - The next generation (worth $495), which we’re pleased to announce as the prize for the winner of the 15th CGEmpire Music Competition!

The theme this time is ‘The long Journey Home‘. The contest ends on Sunday 11th of May 23:59 London time. For more information on how to enter, please visit the competition thread in our forums.

For more information, demos, videos and tutorials about SD2 please visit this page.

Hearty congratulations go to DaZ for winning the 13th CGEmpire Music Competition with his entry ‘The Dark Heart‘.

For his troubles, DaZ wins the Garritan Personal Orchestra, otherwise known as GPO, worth $199, the Jazz and Big Band collection, otherwise known as JABB, worth $249 and the newly released Concert and Marching Band collection, worth $239.

Congratulations to all who took part for all-round excellent entries! You can listen to all the music competition entries here!

And by “lots”, we mean “lots”. To be almost exact, 2.5 million tracks in just over 8 weeks, apparently. That’s “double-platinum” according to the press release. See? Lots.

It’s quite ironic given all the furore over music piracy that all it seems you needed to do all along to get people to legitimately buy your music, was to attach it to a videogame where people can pretend to play guitar. Or pretend that they can sing. And if the likes of X-Factor and Pop Idol are to be believed, there’s a pretty massive market of people who should definitely only “pretend” to sing.

It’s all good news for trendy young Indie bands too, according to Van Toffler, president, MTVN Music Group/Logo/Films…

The incredible response to the downloadable content we’ve released to date motivates us even more to establish this platform as a way for people to discover new, up and coming artists through the game - in addition to delivering great game play experiences set to the music of mega-artists.

Read the full press-release here!

We love this game already and it’s not out until some time next year!

If it’s not the ridiculous amount of characters that excites you, or the stages based on the catalogue of Nintendo games, then let it be this… the music!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has got the most delightfully wonderful remixes of classic Nintendo tunes ever - I’d buy the soundtrack if it was ever available and play it on loop, forever. The music ranges from the cute (like the theme from Yoshi’s Story or Animal Crossing) to the grand (like the operatic Fire Emblem or Main Theme), with classics along the way that make you want to hug the musicians (like the amazingly fab Ocarina of Time Medley).

This could possibly end up being the most fantastic videogame soundtrack of all time at this rate (except for the ending song from Portal, of course). Click those links and go have a listen, or go here to listen to the complete set.

We’ve lined up something a little bit special for the 12th CGEmpire Music Competition. Animation artist Ilias Sounas has kindly given permission for you to take his animation short (roughly 3 minutes), and score music for it!

All entrants will be able to use their scored animation as part of their showreel (crediting Ilias and CGEmpire of course!) - a great addition to any portfolio since it is something unique!

Of course, it doesn’t end there! The winner will also receive a copy of SIR2, an easy to use native audio-plugin to use for high quality reverberation worth €149.

The deadline for the competition is the 1st of December 00:00, London time.

More information can be found in the CGEmpire Music Competition Thread.

Just a gentle reminder that the 11th CGEmpire Music Competition is close to an end!

Anyone who wishes to enter, should contact Nikolas with an attachment of their entry at nikolasideris@hotmail.com, or nikolasideris@yahoo.gr, or PM him with a link to their entry. After that he will upload it to the CGEmpire servers, make it anonymous and post it.

This month we have some great prizes from Wallander Instruments who are offering their full set worth $617, and Tsaiko Drums, worth $49 for the 2nd winner. The theme is “sadness” and the entry must include a piano.

For further details of the competition please visit this page and to listen to the entries, thus far, be our guest in the new blog front page!

Here are the entries so far for the 11th CGEmpire Music Competition. When the entry deadline has passed you will be notified on the voting rules and procedure.

Anticipated Reactions

Vampire Sadness Theme

A Short Lullabye In Memory of Lillie B Ross

Remembrances

Cloak and Dagger Operation

A Story Of Lovers

Rains of Catalmach

L’s Lament

Autumn Mood

Memories of Childhood

Untitled

decapitation_song

Sea Watching

Sad Nest

Reflections

She was drawn towards the sky

loss

reflection

Lady Of Lamentia

Sadness and Despair

Mourning

Death in the family

The Abandoned Farmhouse

Sadness

Passing of the Mighty Magus

Teardrop

Crestfalling

Hidden tears of miss adelle

Forgiveness

Gone

Signed With Love

Enjoy!