College students spend a majority of their time doing things other people want them to do. With obligations piling up, sometimes creating something is the best stress reliever.

That’s what Apple had in mind when it created the iMovie/Garageband contest, a campus-wide contest designed to reward students for their creativity in something other than classwork. Students were encouraged to submit a piece of music or film using GarageBand or iMovie for a chance to win cash and prizes, as well as an opportunity to have their work played in the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall.

“I wasn’t really expecting to get selected, and it was great to hear,” said Daniel Helvick, graduate student in computer engineering and finalist in the competition. He said he doesn’t expect to win, but it was “nice to get this far.”

Helvick was selected for “Dusty Radio,” an electronic piece which he named after the “glitchy radio chatter” he used to create the melody.

“I am very much into weird electronic music. I tried to follow some of my heroes in the area. This piece is fairly similar to an Autechre tune. I tend to try to create melody through timbre and not pitch changes, which sounds pretty weird, but I think it works,” he said. “I was working on it over semester break. At that time of the year there are a lot of family gatherings and so on, so I had to kind of bring my laptop with me everywhere to get work done on the piece.”

Helvick said making music is his hobby, which he tries to make time for during the school year.

Students were allowed to enter one original musical composition or video per category. Musical compositions were allowed to be up to 10 minutes in length and three to five minutes for animations or film. Entries were judged based on technical quality and originality.

“I had never used GarageBand before, and I’d heard that it’s a really good tool creatively,” said Adam Tow, junior in art and design. “What it lacks in power it makes up for in usability and intuitiveness.”

Between his internship and art studios, Tow said he found it difficult to make time for his acoustic, hand-drum driven “Instrumental #7.”

“It’s hard to justify spending a lot of time on something that’s just for fun,” Tow said. “I just submitted it because I spent enough time on it that I thought I should. I did the majority of the work on the song in the 72 hours before it was due, to be honest.”

Registration for the contest was Dec. 16, and contestants had until Feb. 1 to submit their work in CD-R format. The participants were notified by e-mail if their piece was chosen and given information about attending the show.

“Just knowing that I made the top 10 was good enough for me – for now,” said Derrick Calloway, freshman in political science.

Calloway, whose “Sometimes I Just Go For It” was chosen for the final show, is a self-described “avid Apple user” who had plenty of experience with the GarageBand program. In addition to creating his own music, he produces beats for other artists.

“Music has always been a part of my life, it was just a matter of directing how I used the time,” Calloway said. “I don’t really watch TV, I don’t go out and party too much. My fulfillment and joy is just playing music.”