Big news today for fans of synthesis, sound design, and Halloween! I'm proud to announce the first discchord preset contest, sponsored by Sunsine Audio! Sunsine Audio have also released a Free Halloween Pack of 20 presets for Magellan!

For the contest, your goal is to make your own scary sound for Magellan. If you don't already have Magellan, watch this review to see why you should!

The top 3, picked by readers, will be win a free Sunsine Audio preset pack of their choice. Make any kind of sounds you like, but keep them spooky and get them in to me by the witching hour on

Entries will be played, recorded and put up for voting on October 29th. Winners will be announced on Halloween! All entries will be playing the same notes to keep the judging focused on the preset and not the tune. For this one we'll be doing C3, G#2, F2; with each note held for a bar, the last note holding for a bar and a half. All at 66.6 BPM, which turns out to be a tortuously slow rate to maximize the terror!

If you'd prefer for your recording to be in a different octave, or you're doing some interesting synth-coupling with 2 presets, just let me know. Also include any special instructions like tunings, panning and volume!

Submit your entry and any special notes to contest@discchord.com with the subject Preset Contest.

If you are submitting just one preset, use the usual export function. If you have two presets that are coupled then you should use the Song export function; go to Seq and then save and export from the menu on the left. This will include panning and volume information, but not tunings! Please be sure to include those details in the email, if you have changed them. I won't be fooling around with the X/Y or Mod Wheel, so make sure you save your preset with them in the position you like, before exporting them!

Here is a little demo of my own scary sound, synth-coupled with the AfterDark Pad from Sunsine Audio.

Special thanks to reader DSWO for the suggestion to do preset contests, and Fletcher from Sunsine Audio for working out the details with me!