Spectrasonics announces the winners in the OMG-1 Contest

Spectrasonics has announced the winners in the OMG-1 Contest.

Over 400 entries for the contest were submitted from 68 different countries, with a very wide diversity of musical styles. The goal for each contestant was to use the sounds from the Bob Moog Tribute Library in a creative and inspiring way. The company reports that the Contest and the Library have been able to raise record-breaking funds for the Bob Moog Foundation to support their innovative projects.

The Grand Prize of Eric Persing's custom-built OMG-1 synthesizer has been awarded to Torley Wong of Washington State, who submitted an entire album's worth of music-15 pieces, over one-hour in total-exclusively using the Bob Moog Tribute Library in Spectrasonics' Omnisphere software synthesizer for the tonal elements of his album. The one-of-a-kind OMG-1 synthesizer will be presented as the Grand Prize to Mr. Wong in a special event at the 'Moogfest' in Asheville, North Carolina in October 2011.

Three other major winners were announced as well, winning prizes generously donated by hardware synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music:

• "Outstanding Achievement Award" David Soltany (Strasbourg, France).
• "Next Generation Award" Eric Oberthaler (Berkeley, California).
• "Most Original Composition" Waen Shepherd (London, UK).

Fifteen additional contestants were recognized with "Creative Excellence Awards" and have their music featured on the Spectrasonics website.

The OMG-1 Synthesizer

The grand prize in the contest, the OMG-1 hardware synthesizer, was designed by Persing as a live performance instrument and is not a commercial product. It integrates the worlds of analog synthesis with a Moog Little Phatty, and software synthesis with Omnisphere software synthesizer and the Omni TR iPad app-all in a hand-crafted curly maple cabinet containing Apple iPads and a MacMini.

The Bob Moog Tribute Library is still Available for all Omnisphere Users.
Produced by Eric Persing, the Bob Moog Tribute library features over 700 stunning new sounds for Spectrasonics' Omnisphere Power Synth. The Soundsources in the library were developed using highly creative processing techniques-often with exotic gear. The sounds in the library were created by more than 40 of the world's top synth artists, remixers and sound designers, including Hans Zimmer, Vince Clarke, Jean Michel Jarre, The Crystal Method, Bernie Worrell, Larry Fast, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jan Hammer, Richard Devine, Danny Elfman and many more. Although the OMG-1 Contest has ended, Spectrasonics' Bob Moog Tribute Library will continue to be sold as a $100 downloadable library for Omnisphere, and 100% of the proceeds will continue to be donated to the Bob Moog Foundation.