The winners of the OddGrooves Lockdown Song Contest are:

First prize winner

Paul Devlin: Home Grown

Paul Devlin

I come from a musical family. Growing up in a household with five siblings, all of whom sing, play an instrument, and write music. My Mom was a concert pianist when she was just a teenager and my dad was an actor and playwright. We would go to bed listening to my mom play for my dad and my dad always encouraged us to be the best we could be with our art, “Quality over Quantity” he would always say.

I am self-taught and started learning my instruments at age 9. I play Guitar, Dobro, Mandolin, Piano and Harp. I toured with a few original bands trying to secure that record deal. In the end though, I decided to concentrate on my songwriting and production, with occasional live gigs to promote my music.

There are so many talented, gifted musicians and songwriters out there that the world doesn’t ever get to hear for various reasons. I consider it a blessing to be able to write and perform with some of those amazing artists and get to call them my friends.

You can view some of my videos and hear my other music at www.devlindesigns.com

TRACK CONCEPTION:

Magnus’ tracks and performance are nothing short of inspiring! Thank goodness, for the partnership between Magnus and Per. I so appreciated what Per offered in the form of this contest. I challenged myself to see if I could write a tune to one of Magnus’ Lockdown Pack grooves, record it, and send it off in a timely manner.

I gravitate towards the type of groove I wrote over Magnus’ track so it just seemed like a natural fit for me. “Homegrown” is a song about missing my hometown in Vermont.

I dropped his midi into Superior Drummer, separated out his kick and snare to a sub bus, leaving the rest in its own sub bus and went from there. I probably own all Odd Grooves’ midi and use them constantly because of the great vibe, non-quantized feel they have.

Second prize winner

Laurence Rabone: What Time it Is

I am a singer and guitarist based in Birmingham in the UK. Over the years I’ve performed and written with various artists including the renowned Indian musician and producer Surinder Sandhu, whose debut album featured luminaries from the rock and jazz world including Steve Vai and Andy Sheppard. In recent years I have been learning the production side of things and have now written and produced 2 solo albums – Dancing With Ghosts in 2018 and Retrospective in 2020. I am currently working on a third. I also released a 4 track EP at the beginning of the year called 2020 vision. They are available on all major digital platforms including Bandcamp – https://lozrabone.bandcamp.com

In 2019 the Spanish Artist Fernando Viscasillas used songs from my first album as part of a montage for an Art exhibition in Paris. It can be seen here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DulpdgF8PWQ

Using the drum grooves for the track

After downloading the Oddgroove pack I was just jamming along with my guitar to a few of the beats and recording some ideas. On the four four rock beat I kept falling into a riff for a song that I had put together in rough form a few years back but never properly finished. Even though I changed the speed and altered the beat a little, the basic feel of the rhythm was perfect for how I wanted the song to move. I then just simply looped the edited beat and put a guide guitar down to get the structure right. I then made the structural edits I needed and gradually built up the instrumentation of the track around what I had done with the drums.

Third prize winner (shared)

Patrick Mottaz: Renier the Rooster

Patrick Mottaz, jazz guitarist from Switzerland, currently resides in the Boston area. Mottaz actively performs with a variety of talents and is also the co-leader, composer, and arranger of the Philippe Crettien jazz quartet.

He has both recorded as a studio musician and performed extensively throughout Switzerland, France and the US

He is currently a faculty member of the Rivers school, where he teaches guitar, music theory, and coaches ensembles.

About using the grooves

I love the challenge of writing specifically to a drum track. It offers a unique perspective where rhythmic inspiration is provided by both the singular playing style and feel of the drummer, something that Magnus excels at.

The goal for me was to stay fairly close to the original drum track, only editing the grooves where necessary, to fit the accents and stop time ideas as the composition evolved. The funk drum track was my main focus for the writing, but I ended up using the pop track for the chorus as it turned out to be a better fit.

I used superior drummer 3 for editing and mixing the drum set, played all the guitars and bass and programmed the keyboards.

Third prize winner (shared)

Saulo Valerio: Lockdown 3.0

I love making a racket using guitars and synths! To me, having access to really organic grooves like these to use as the basis for further exploration is such a valuable asset in so many ways – whether composing and working on more serious projects or even just practicing and jamming, they never cease to inspire me.

About producing the tune

I had a few days off work to chill with the family and it just happened to be around the last week for this Song Contest so it felt like the perfect opportunity to spend a bit of time making music for it. I sat down with a cup of tea to listen to the grooves included in the Lockdown Pack 2 and, as usual with the stuff that the gents at OddGrooves produce, I was inspired pretty much straight away by their great vibes so a few ideas immediately popped into my head. Later that day I started experimenting with a few harmonic ideas that worked well with some of these grooves and everything seemed to flow very naturally. Even the lyrics, which often I am normally not so interested in, were put together fairly quickly as all I wanted was for them to offer a tiny bit of humour and positivity during these very difficult times.