The Learning Center hosted it's first annual Sound Collage Contest in the Fall of 2007 where contestants competed for a grand-prize of MachFive, the extensive sampler from MOTU, and a runner-up prize of a 30GB iPod. For the contest we recorded dozens of audio samples (from interesting children's toys to household items to unusual instruments) and students were asked to create a composition using these samples. On the evening of November 29th, many Berklee students gathered to hear the premiere of the seven finalists' pieces. They were fantastic in quality (hear the winning pieces below), and each finalist described their process for composing their piece, what software they used, and how they manipulated the samples.

         Our grand prize winner was Matt Lange, the runner-up was Roberto Murguia and the third place was taken by Yuichiro Kotani. Congratulations to our winners, many thanks to all who competed and a special thank you to MOTU for MachFive, Beverly Tryon the Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations for the iPod, Scott Mabuchi of the MP&E department for studio time to record the Sound Collage contest samples, and our judges Dave Roberts of MOTU, Music Synthesis faculty Neil Leonard, Music Synthesis staff Jess Hewitt, Sound Collage sample audio engineer Sohta Tsuchiya and former contest winner Rishabh Rajan.