Oramix

A few weeks back I came across The Science Museum's Oramix competition - the challenge was to create a new piece out of samples of Daphne Oram's work. Having nothing better to do I ended up constructing something out of a couple of short samples of what sounded like a zither which had been sped up massively and soaked with tape echo. It took me a few hours and I posted it on the relevant Soundcloud page and forgot all about it. I didn't think it was up to much really, but I never do.



Last week I got an email from the Science Museum and this is what it said.


Dear Peter,

The results are in and after adding up the scores it turned out we had a ‘photo finish’ on our hands. Unfortunately you didn’t win, but we would like to give Orbit a special mention, because it still had an impressive overall score and Brian Eno called it “very engaging, intricate and complex in mood. I wanted this to go on and on.” We think that’s still a pretty amazing result. Of course we understand that you wanted to win OraMIX, but the competition was incredibly tough. We want you to know that we think you submitted a great track.

Which is all very lovely. Now I looked up this Brian Eno chap on the internet and apparently he's very famous. I think he likes my track because it sounds like one of his. Ahem.

More here. The winning track is very lovely btw.