A couple of months ago, I was chatting with another composer about how under-represented we felt female composers were in the business. We were seeing many of them at functions and events, hearing about how even the ratio between men and women was on composing courses and the like, and yet, when it came to seeing who got the gigs, women were all too often very unrepresented.

I thought about how, if my two daughters wanted to go into the world of music or composing and asked me what I’d done to help redress the balance, my answer would probably be “Erm…” followed by an indefinite pause.

The one small way I thought that someone as far down the composing industry food chain could do something, was to try and add some female composers to my demo writing team. I think that in the five years I’ve been at this that I’d maybe had two or three demo tracks written by women. And this wasn’t good enough.

So, I did a shout-out in a couple of places, inviting women to write demo tracks for me and got a surprisingly positive response. Now I was in trouble, I had to forumalte a coherent plan and make this all worthwhile for everyone.

My starting point was asking everyone who was interested in getting involved what softsynths they owned. The answer provided me with an initial headache that would actually turn out to be the catalyst for my whole International Women’s Day sale adventure. I was hoping to find at least a handful of female composers who had most of the synths that I create sounds for, in order to add them to the roster. Some of the most popular ones were synths I no longer planned to create soundsets for, unfortunately!

Then, I had my eureka moment! International Women’s Day was only a month or so away. I could get everyone to write a demo track for whichever synth they might have in their arsenal and promote it that day. Then, it struck me that I could put those synth soundset on sale and raise money for charity. Hallelujah! I had a plan!

It took a while to get there, but everything started to fall into place. Everyone involved had an opportunity to write a demo track, I had a great reason to promote their work AND I was able to raise money for a worthwhile cause, in this case Women’s Aid.

So, now we’re having The Unfinished International Women’s Day Sale, starting March 8th and ending on the 14th. A select number of soundsets are 25% off, using the discount code BOUDICCA, and all the proceeds go to Women’s Aid. I’ve also released a brand new soundset for Absynth, called Jura, which again will have 100% of the revenue going to the charity. If you don’t own Absynth and/or already own all the soundsets on sale, I’ve created a little soundset for TyrellN6, called Cordero, where you can name your price and again, you’ve guessed it, all the money goes to Women’s Aid.

Come join me in raising money to help some of the most vulnerable women in the UK and also celebrate the work of some very fine female composers!

Below is a list of the soundsets included in the sale:

Absynth Jura, Massive Polaris, Omnisphere Capricorn, Omnisphere Colossus, Omnisphere Ferox, Omnisphere Horizon V, Omnisphere Pangaea, TyrellN6 Cordero, Zebra Theta , Zebra Theta: Dark Edition, Zebra Vellumand Zebra Vellum: Dark Edition.