The Galactic Songsprite Contest: The Stars Listen

Have you ever wondered if the sounds we make might journey forever through the vastness of space? According to Chris McHale, they do exactly that—traveling as "songsprites" that leave permanent marks on the cosmos.

The Galactic Songsprite Contest emerges as a vibrant community-building initiative where sound becomes something far more profound than entertainment. McHale shares his childhood belief that songs lived inside his shortwave radio, voices and vibrations he pulled down from the sky with his dial. This poetic notion has evolved into the foundation of the Studio Jijiji audio drama Song in Space, where music isn't merely heard but exists as living guides—cosmic companions for wandering souls.

What makes this contest unique is its genuine commitment to creators. Musicians, poets, rappers, producers, and sonic storytellers are invited to submit their vibrations, with winners receiving $500 while retaining their copyright and writer's share. It's a rare approach in today's exploitative landscape. The submission process is simple: create your song sprite (ideally short), share it at songinspace.com/songsprite-leaderboard, and tag it with #SongSpriteContest.

At its heart, this is a vibration revolution—an invitation to participate in something both personal and cosmic. As McHale eloquently puts it, "We're casting seeds into cosmic soil," creating a catalog of human experience that might just make a red dwarf star "a little less red" as it passes by. Ready to have your creation echo through eternity? The stars are waiting to hear what you have to say. Submit your song sprite today and discover what happens when the universe listens back.

Creativity Jijiji dives into the Galactic Songsprite Contest — imagine Eurovision in outer space, but with cosmic hip hop, star songs, wormhole beats, and space poetry guiding travelers across the galaxy. Songsprites are born from vibration, created by True Music, and they just might be the cosmic guide dogs of the universe.

Join us on the quest for True Music with #CreativityJijiji and #SongInSpaceShow. Enter the contest, share your voice, and help bring Songsprites to life

Thanks for listening.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to CreativityGGG Audionauts and
Sound Smugglers.
I'm Rita, your favorite, mildlysarcastic AI narrator, who
never gets stage fright because,frankly, I don't have a heart
to race.
Tonight we're auctioning offstar maps trading in nebulae and
, if you're lucky, we'll teachyou how to coax a sprite out of
an echo.
It's the Galactic Song SpriteContest.

(00:28):
Bring your vibration or bringyour towel.
Both are useful Spoiler.
The stars have ears.
Now here's Chris on our latestCreativity GGG.
I have a theory.
Chris isn't just a man with amic.
Chris is an organism made ofrhythm, a whisper of harmonic
mischief, a living song spritein human form.

(00:48):
Do I have proof?
What we're doing here is olderthan proof Listening.
We want vibration, feeling,groove, the kind of awesomeness
that doesn't buy you dinner butfeeds you for years.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hi, this is Chris McHale and welcome to Creativity
to Gigi Alright.
These days at the studio we'refocused on song and space.
The whole idea with song andspace is community.
We are interested in building acommunity.

(01:22):
It's an idea I got working inthe video game industry and it's
sort of the core principle thatwe're working under Community.
That's what we want to do.
So I have been coming up withideas on community.
I've been coming up with ideason no screen, which I believe is

(01:43):
our proposition no screenentertainment.
Which is why we're doing anaudio drama and then we're going
to do a video game and thenwe're going to do an animation,
but we are beginning with a noscreen community.
So one of the ideas I had wasto have a song contest.

(02:05):
All right, and that's whatwe're talking about today the
Galactic Song Sprite Contest.
When I was a kid, my dad gaveme a radio, a shortwave radio.
I loved it.

(02:26):
I loved this thing.
I believe songs lived on theradio.
I really did.
I believe that there was somesort of magic in the dial and I
would sit in bed at night withthe lights off.
We lived in London at the time.
We lived in London at the timeand outside of my bedroom was

(02:55):
Oxford Street, which was crazyand noisy almost all the time,
except in the middle of thenight when it would get really
quiet and you'd look out thewindow and there would climb
into bed and I would just dialaround the radio and I would
hear all sorts of sound andvoices voices I didn't even
understand.
There was one voice I listenedto every night.
It was always speaking sourgently and I didn't understand

(03:17):
a word.
It was saying Kind of fading inand out.
I believe that all of thislived in the sky and that I was
kind of pulling it down with myradio dial.
Every sound, a whisper, a march, a bomb's thunder, a lullaby,

(03:42):
all of it leaves a mark on thecosmos.
I mean, I just have alwaysreally believed that Once a
sound is created, once avibration is created, it goes
out into space.
It just travels into spaceforever.
I mean, you could come acrossShakespeare reciting one of his

(04:09):
sonnets which I'm sure he did inhis room after he wrote them,
and that voice just went intothe cosmos as a vibration.
And I believe something else Ibelieve that vibration shapes
our existence.
So in the song and space world,these marks, I call them song

(04:32):
sprites.
They're tiny little songsprites.
Sometimes they are tiny, butthey can also be titanic, know,
and sometimes, always, always,always, they're made of
vibration.
It's the vibration that counts.
The vibration.

(04:53):
And music, which is ourvibratory language, breathes
life into these song spreads,brings them into being.
All sound brings them intobeing, but music is the purest
expression of it.
And the purest expression ofmusic I call true music, which

(05:14):
is one of the core concepts inour story, song in Space.
And true music, you'llrecognize it, it's the stuff
that makes your chest tightenfor your teethache, and that's
what fuels the world.

(05:36):
That's what fuels our existence.
So the Galactic Song SpriteContest?
Alright.
What is the Galactic SongSprite Contest?
It's our little noisyexperiment.
I wanted to try something tobuild community, like I was

(05:58):
talking about, and to invite acommunity to join us to create
this universe we're imagining.
So we are inviting buskers,poets, songwriters, producers,
rappers, cosmic pranksters,sonic storytellers pretty much

(06:24):
anything that you can imagineyou're creating with sound beats
, sound design.
I mean, come on, whatevervibration you wanna create,
that's what we're looking for,and we want you to drop it into
the Galactic Song Sprite Contestand create your own vibration

(06:45):
that will then go out into theuniverse.
Look, we're living throughcrazy times.
It's a crazy world.
I mean, we are challengingourselves like never before with
our beliefs, with our faith,with our destiny, with the
physical challenge of theclimate and the deep spiritual

(07:10):
challenges of an overcrowdedworld.
So I think this time is when wereally need these vibrations,
the good vibrations, the truemusic.
And the way I see it, and theway it is in the story, song in
Space is a song.
Sprite is not just a tune, it'sa living guide.

(07:33):
A song sprite, it's not just atune, it's a living guide.
All right, think of it ascosmic guide dogs for wandering
souls.
Okay, alright, I mean, look,you might call them angels, but

(07:54):
I call them song threads becausethey're created from vibration.
So the buskers, the podcasthosts, the lost radio hosts, the
starship maintenance crew whowhistle while they weld, all of
you make the vibration.
The farmers digging in the dirt, the carpenters hammering while

(08:17):
they build their new house, thechoir in the South African
township getting together onSunday and singing a hymn in the
South African township gettingtogether on Sunday and singing a
hymn All of this creates avibration which wakes up these
song spirits and starts them ontheir journey.
And the stars, those twinklythings above us, they're

(08:42):
listening, they're listening.
They listen to the vibration andthey react to the vibration.
Change follows Big claim.
Right?
Maybe Worth trying?
Yeah, why not?
Absolutely.
We tried everything else.
We might as well try this.
Look, it's a prayer.
It's a vibratory prayer is whatI'm talking about.

(09:05):
I'm a faithful person, so thisis something I'm comfortable
with.
What I've done is asking you,I'm asking you to join us to
build this, to share yourvibration with us.
Put it up on the SongSpritecontest page, which you can find

(09:27):
at songinspacecom.
Slash SongSprite dashleaderboard.
You'll see some up there andjust go there and share with us
your idea, your vibratoryconcept, your sonic poem, your
beat, your song, your symphony.

(09:47):
I mean, I'm trying to keep themkind of short, so I got an
edited version of your symphony.
Look, this isn't exactly theEurovision Song Contest with
planets.
I mean.
You won't see political flagsGod forbid or hear national
anthems oh my goodness.
You'll see orbits and oddities.

(10:10):
You'll see a moon that hums atlow tide, an asteroid with an
echo chamber side, a binary starthat harmonizes when you sing

(10:32):
in a minor key.
I have all these ideas in thestory song in space and I want
to sort of actualize them.
So at the galactic song spritecontest we're gonna to accept
Cosmic Hip Hop, star Songs,warhol Beats, spoken Word, space

(10:55):
Poetry I've got a little bit ofthat up there and the
occasional thing that is morenoise than music, as long as it
vibrates.
True, it's about the vibration.
So when you're sitting thereand you're making these sprites,
think about that, find thecenter of the vibration that

(11:18):
you're trying to make, stay inthe center and share with us the
result.
So how this works is simple yousend us a song sprite, make it

(11:39):
short.
Listen, some of them are fiveminutes and I'm not in.
My deal was to make them twominutes or something.
Were longer and some of themare shorter.
Some are 90 seconds'm notediting them.
My idea was to make them twominutes, but some of them are
longer and some of them areshorter.
Some of them are 90 seconds.
As far as I'm concerned, theycould be 10 seconds.
You know we at Studio DGD do alot of sonic branding and that's
like a three and a half secondevent, like the T-Mobile

(12:03):
ringtone.
90 seconds might be perfect.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Look, what's perfect is what's perfect.
We're not tyrants.
You tell us the story of thesound, where it came from, what
it does, why it matters.
Upload to songandspacecom,slash songsprite dash
leaderboard and tag it HashtagsongspriteContest.
And at Studio DeGigi if youfeel cute and at

(12:35):
SongInSpaceTheShow if you feelcuter.
And we are showcasing the oneswe love on SoundCloud and they
are getting listened to.
I mean, I think the SongSpriteplaylist on SoundCloud is
closing in on a thousand listensand when we get enough, we're
going to put them on an albumand, you know, put them up on

(12:59):
Bandcamp.
Soundcloud and Bandcamp is whatI prefer, because I find some
of the other music platforms arevery exploitive and I don't
want to exploit the music.
So, soundcloud playlist you cango there, listen to them.
Actually, the SoundCloudplaylist is also on.
And then Bandcamp, which Ihaven't started yet, but I love

(13:25):
Bandcamp.
I release all my music onBandcamp and that will be for
archival glory and yes, yes thisis the bit which I need to talk
aboutabout.
We'll pay $500 for the winner,or any every winner that joins

(13:51):
the song in space creator scores.
What does that mean?
Well, that means that if we useit in the show, we're gonna
give you $500.
That's what it means, and we dothat because we want to show
you that if we use your music,we are going to pay for your
music.
You get to keep the writers'sshare, because I'm a big
believer in publishing, so youkeep the writer's share, I'm
keeping the publishing share,and if this thing goes out and

(14:13):
earns any kind of royalty, thatgoes into your pocket too.
You also keep the copyright.
I'm not interested in owningyour music.
I just want to expose yourmusic to the stars Basically
what I'm trying to do and wepromise to defend your sprite

(14:36):
like it's a delicate, very noisyand beautiful and heartwarming
heirloom.
I've always believed that sonicartifacts travel forever, or at
least for a very long time.
I don't know if it's everforever.
And somewhere out there, thevibration of she loves you yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, swimspast a red dwarf and maybe makes

(15:03):
the red dwarf a little less red.
I don't know Somewhere elsethere's a trench of silence.
From the moment history crackedin half, like maybe dropping a
big bomb.
You know, it's all out there,the good and the bad.
So your song sprite is going tojoin a dark catalog and a

(15:29):
bright catalog.
Both bright and dark, both yinand yang, both good and bad,
because that's what life is,that's what existence is.
So this contest is bothreckless and secret.
That's the way I see it.
We aren't just making aplaylist, we're casting seeds

(15:52):
into the cosmic soil.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Practicalities Because, yes, you want them.
Submit your files atsonginspacecom.
Slash song sprite.
Please don't send a two-hourfield recording of your
neighbor's lawnmower, unlessyour neighbor is actually a
genius.
We'll shortlist, we'll rotate aplaylist of favorites and we'll
choose winners based oncreativity, vibration, potency
and the ability to make ajanitor on a steam tug feel

(16:23):
philosophical.
Also, this is a community thing.
Share rate, remix, remixsomeone else's remix.
We'll pay $500 to sprites thatwe fold into the Song in Space
creative scores and we'llprotect your rights.
You own your work.
We license it to sing in ourworld.
Full details are on the site.
Read them.

(16:43):
Like you mean it All right,cosmic buskers.
Tune your hearts, tune yourshoes, tune your toaster if you
must.
We're waiting.
Drop your song sprite atsonginspacecom.
Slash songsprite.
Dash leaderboard.
Tag us at Studio Jijiji and atSong in Space the show Upload,
share.
Be brave enough to be heard andremember, if the stars start

(17:07):
dancing awkwardly after you sendsomething that's not on us,
that's your legacy.
Own it.
Oh, and one more thingSurrender takes the greatest
courage.
The stars don't need you to beperfect, they just need your
vibration.
Songandspacecom slashsongsprite.
We'll meet you on the otherside of the echo ggg.