Chance for Hawke's Bay musicians to feature on vinyl

Tom Pierard, and Kevin Murphy at the launch of the Hawke's Bay Music Hub last year. Photo / File

The Backline Charitable Trust has initiated a project to produce a Hawke's Bay Compilation Vinyl Record to showcase the region's artists.

It's an opportunity for up and coming artists to be featured alongside established acts and will reflect the diversity and quality of local artists.

Founder of Backline Charitable Trust Kevin Murphy said they had worked hard over the past five years to deliver projects that are valuable and unique for the Hawke's Bay music industry .

"The HB Compilation Vinyl Record is another example of this and we hope artists take the opportunity. It will be exciting to see the submissions come in and hear the quality of the songs. We would also like to thank our two funders to make this project happen Lion Foundation and EIT," Murphy said.

Applicants are invited to submit one song, which will be reviewed by a judging panel before making their selection. The selected tracks will be mastered at Munki Studios in Wellington and then released in April 2021. A limited number (300) physical copies of the compilation will be produced and given away to market the artists – all artists will receive a physical copy of the record.

The judging panel will be made up of current music industry representatives: Devin Abrams (producer, ex-Shapeshifter), Lorraine Barry (manager of Tom Scott, Dave Dobbyn) and Mike Chunn (Play it Strange Trust, ex-Mushroom Records, former Split Enz bass player).

Murphy said they expected 10-12 songs to be on the record. "This is subject to change based on the length of the successful entries."

All works accepted must primarily feature an artist who is either from, or has spent a proportionate amount of time based in Hawke's Bay.

"We (The Backline Charitable Trust) reserve the right to decline submissions based on the artist's ongoing connection with the Hawke's Bay region."

Bay artist Eilish Rose said this was an incredible opportunity for Hawke's Bay artists.

"There is so much talent here in Hawke's Bay and for artists to be recognised on vinyl is truly special. The work that Backline Charitable Trust do for the music community here in Hawke's Bay is incredibly valuable and benefits all those that music has had a part to play in their heart and life," she said.

Co-founder and head of EIT's IDEAschool, Professor Matthew Marshall says they are delighted to be backing this initiative for Hawke's Bay.

"Supporting up and coming artists from the region is crucial for the future development of high quality music and puts Hawke's Bay on the map as a place where the arts is nurtured and supported."

The rights of all music and masters will be owned by the artists. It is required that all entries are registered with APRA prior to submission. Artists are asked to include the ISRC number as part of their submission.

"It is required that each artist will release their track digitally or prior to or alongside the compilation release. This will allow us to create a shareable playlist which we can then share through our online channels. We would also like to release some singles off the record via DRM (Digital Rights Managers NZ). The compilation record itself will not be released in any format other than vinyl," Murphy said.

"You can submit a previously released song as long as it was released in 2020."

■Submission needs to be a 24 or 32 bit wav or aiff file at the original mix sample rate. It should also be professionally mixed to suit a vinyl-specific mastering process - this means that the overall volume level should be no louder than -6 db and that the target RMS should be -16db to -26db. Any wide panning of bass instruments needs to be avoided and high frequencies like vocal sibilance and cymbal crashes should be tightly controlled in the mix. There should be no (or minimal) masterbuss (Stereo LR) limiting.

■If your submission is successful, you may be asked to resubmit if your mix isn't the required quality. If you don't have access to the session files but would like to submit, then please submit the pre and post-mastered files and our mastering engineer can work with what they have.

■To submit email a hosted link to your downloadable track to hawkesbaymusichub@gmail.com