Differentiate your company and your products through science backed sonic logos or soundtracks
Unique music-wine pairing events for wineries, hotels, restaurants, wine bars and corporate settings.
The idea behind Soundpear was born in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and the strict movement restrictions that Greece put in place at the beginning of 2021.
Asteris had relatively recently become involved in amateur winemaking and was looking for ways to combine his new passion with his research interests in the perception of musical meaning. It did not take him too long to realize the many commonalities between wine and sound and how these were reflected in the rich vocabulary we use to describe them. Being fully aware of the transformational power of music he reckoned it could be used to transform a gustatory experience as well.
And just like that Asteris met the fascinating world of multimodal perception. The scientific evidence was clear: the human senses interact with each other constantly and as a result, the sense of hearing could certainly influence the senses of taste and smell.
In the mind of Asteris, the music aiming to transform a gustatory and/or olfactory experience should ideally be created exclusively for this purpose. Furthermore, he thought he knew just the right man to create music paired with wine. Therefore, Vasilis received an evening call: "How about we make soundtracks for wines...?" That night the foundations of Soundpear were laid.
Since then, Asteris' research, which matches aromas and flavours with sounds, feeds Vasilis' musical creativity, serving a twofold vision: the creation of short sonic logos to represent the qualities of various products and the creation of longer soundtracks with the aim of enriching gustatory and olfactory experiences.
Asteris is a research associate and adjunct lecturer at the School of Music Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research interests include music cognition, psychoacoustics and the study of creativity in music. He is also an amateur winemaker, a fact that motivated him to bring his research interests closer to sensory science and multimodal perception. Soundpear is an endeavour to take his research out of the lab and promote the well-being of the wider public.
Vasilis is a music producer, audio engineer and multi-instrumentalist. Having studied Audio Media Engineering at the University of Surrey he has moved on to performing, recording, mixing and producing music. He is especially interested in sound synthesis and design and also in user interaction with digital audio systems.
Alexandra is a chemist-oenologist and wine writer at Athens Voice and at her personal blog Alexandra's Vineyarts. She is completing an MSc in oenology at the Agricultural University of Athens, has attended classes in oenology at the ISVV, University of Bordeaux and has collaborated with Ktima Gerovassiliou, TSANTALIS and Spyropoulos Winery. She has also studied music theory and singing and plays the guitar, the piano and the dulcimer. Naturally, she enjoys pairing wine with music.