Sound Designer Spotlight: VAS_SD
Hello Valerio! How are you, what have you been doing lately?
Hi to AudioDraft! I’m fine and definitely quite busy (fortunately!). A lot of things happened since the winning of the contest and besides a few ups and downs everything went great!
You won Nokia Tune Remake contest 6 months ago. After that your tune got a huge amount of attention over the globe. Would you tell something about that hype, highlights etc.?
Well… after getting the call at 8.30 am by the Nokia Sound Design department 6 months ago, I got definitely quite an attention! Apparently national newspaper and tv news talked about the winning of the contest and I also got invited to tv-shows; in one show I had the chance to meet one of the best-selling Italian recording artist Laura Pausini and the only Italian artist winning a Grammy Award in the last decades. I’m not such a big fan of her but meeting someone like her in the showbusiness and getting complimented for my achievement is definitely something big. I had other tv-shows interviews where I had the chance to talk about what happened with the Nokia Tune Remake contest. A lots of web interviews also came in and they still does. I also get some kind of Award by the major of my small town for “my Creative Ingeniousness and for giving international lustre to the city” – that’s wicked. To be honest, I never thought it would have been such a huge thing but hey! It is :D.
What has happened since then? How much this win has affected to your artistic career for example?
I definitely got more visibility and my Soundcloud’s plays grew a lot but I’m pretty much continuing what I’m used to do without getting pressures from anyone and anything. Which is great 😀
What kind of musical plans for future do you have right now?
There is still the idea of working on an album to be released on my label Head2Toes Records but after the winning I found a job to a production house called LabNext working mostly on audio post-production for big customers and it took me a lot of time. I had a full-time collaboration since a few weeks ago but now I might think on proceeding on the development of my album. I also would like to collaborate with a few friends and do some music production for different projects.
What do you think about previous “Nokia Regional Ringtones” sound design contests on AudioDraft?
When I found out about the Nokia Regional Ringtones contest I thought that “the ringtone thing” is something that Nokia (and also the people) really cares of! It is, again, a right marketing strategy by Nokia and it might be another chance to bring some spotlights to local and regional artists/composers/sound designer like what happened to me.
Would you like to send greetings to AudioDraft users?
I’d like to say to the AudioDraft users that for obvious personal experience, this portal is able to give you a proper chance to emerge and get to be known just by giving you the possibility to create things related to your passion to be listened and validated by people and also professionals. So keep on participating and proposing your talent and creativity because it will definitely pay back in a very positive way!
And the last question: What is ringtone of your phone right now?
Ahah! Nice question! I like to change my mobile ringtone quite often. After the winning I had of course my version of the Nokia Tune (which is now my mum’s ringtone… for real!), an edit of “Garden” by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (the soundtrack of the whole Nokia Lumia adv campaign) and right now I have the main theme of Skins UK Season 6 by Fat Segal (the composer of the entire themes and music of the series, which I love!).
Thanks Valerio! Have a great spring!
Nokia Tune Remake campaign page
V@LeRiC on Soundcloud
Valerio’s sound design website
