Sing to the Lord a new song!

(Psalm 96:1)

It’s the time of the year when we call on all our musically talented young people from all over the world to come together and use their talent in producing Christian music. As usual we offer very attractive prizes for the top three winners. Over the years we have been successful in bringing together young people with music talent from all over the world to come up with great new songs and we use our platform to publish these songs to our large range of listeners. We also post all our music on popular internet radio such as itunes, spotify, google play, as well as some Orthodox apps such as Upper Room Media and Anaphora.

We always get feedback of stories of people using the songs you come up with in youth meetings, Sunday school classes, choir presentations from all over the world.

For this year’s competition participants can, but are not required to, use traditional church music but rather encouraged to use contemporary music. Please note that a lot of emphasis will be placed on the teaching component of the lyrics.

The judging process will take place in two stages. The first stage will be the judged by the monks of the monastery according to the criteria given below. Once that took place the successful participants will move to the second stage where the songs will be posted on the Asaph Tunes website for the public to vote on. The person/team with the most votes wins! We require voters to vote for 3 songs to make the voting based on the quality of the song rather than how popular a person/team is on social media.

We had few requests from different artists regarding our rule about not posting your songs on your website or social media and we have decided to change this rule with conditions. Artists will be allowed to post their song on their website or social media provided they follow the conditions laid out in the rules below.

Theme:

The Theme of this year’s Competition is titled “A Reason for God”. Living in a western sculler sucity we are always confronted with questions about our faith, How do you know God exists, how do you know the bible is true, where is God when we have all this evil in the world. For this year theme we want you to answer one of these questions in the form of a song. We realise that the theme is very content heavy and we expect every participant to know the question well and prove to us that they have read enough about the topic before they start writing the lyrics. We have provided ample resources to read and allow you to understand the answer of the question before you start the writing process. If you need further reading material please feel free to contact us.

We cannot emphasis enough the importance of reading about the topic before you start the writing process, as any artist NEED some material to get their inspiration from otherwise they would rely on their general knowledge on the topic which might not always be correct or otherwise not rich enough to give an Orthodox teaching to the listener. We are happy to help you find some related text relating to your topic.

Rules of the competition:

• You can enter the competition as a team or as an individual.
• The lyrics of the song must come from or inspired by one of the reliable text. A copy of the text must be provided.
• The lyrics MUST be within the theme given above and offer sufficient Orthodox teaching on the theme
• Participants must comply with the due dates given below.
• By submitting your song, the monastery (Asaph Tunes) will have full copyright to the music and lyrics of the songs and will have the right to use the music or lyrics or both as we wish. This is to encourage the Asaph Tunes to provide original material to listeners. In return Asaph Tunes does its best to present these submissions to the general public in different avenues such as different internet radio stations and produce video clips and other services to promote these songs.
• Artists will be allowed to post their song on their website or social media provided

1. The final results of the competition has been announced
2. The following sentence is added to each post the song is featured in. “This song was 1st/2nd /3rd place/ participated in the Asaph Tunes annual Christian Music Competition. www.asaphtunes.com”

• The song must be original work (not a cover song) and could not be used for any other competition.
• All prizes will be awarded to the contact person on the application form, and division of prizes among the group is the responsibility of the contact person.

Important Dates:

1^st August –  Last day for candidates to fill out the entry application form.

1st November –  Last day for submitting the recording

TBA  –  Music Files will be available online for the public to vote .

Announcement of winners and giving of prizes will be announced at a later stage.

Asaph Tunes reserves the right to extend the deadlines.

Submission:

• Three audio files must be submitted before the due date of the competition.
• An uncompressed file:

Format: WAV, WAVE, or AIFF.

Bit Depth/Rate: 16 bit.

Sample Rate: 44100 Hz (44.1 kHz)

• Compressed file:

               Format: MP3

Bitrate: 128 kbps (44100 Hz) 

• The sound track:

Format: WAV, WAVE, or AIFF.

Bit Depth/Rate: 16 bit.

Sample Rate: 44100 Hz (44.1 kHz)

• A typed copy of the lyrics must be provided.
• The Chords for the music must be provided
• Two photos of the participants must be provided. These photos will be used on the Asaph Tunes Website and other Asaph Tunes social media.
• Fill out the online application form before the due date.
• Applicants are responsible for sending their audio files via email or Dropbox. More details will be provided upon request.