A SALISBURY student has scooped top prize in a music competition.

Becca Maule, who is studying Level 3 Music Performance at Wiltshire College, won Tunnel Rat Recording Studios’ Talent Search competition, which saw more than 150 performers enter.

“I mainly feel surprised I won, my mum kept pushing me to send in an entry so eventually I did, and of course I’m so glad I did now,” said the 16-year-old. “Im not sure why they’d choose me out of so many entries but I’m so happy they did.”

Becca’s prize is recording time at the studio in Haxton near Salisbury.

She added: “Winning the studio time is golden for me - as a student I don’t have much money and therefore booking studio time is really hard; winning the time means I can professionally record all the ideas in my head instead of trying to do it at home on my not-so-good laptop.”

As part of the competition Becca sent in videos of her performing her own original songs, Poison Roses and Teenage Things.

Teenage Things is the song Becca is planning to record during her studio time.

She said: “Teenage Things is about the teenage mental health crisis, and how so many adults put it down to normal teenager stuff when really its a lot more than that.”

Becca describes her music as “indie pop” and hopes to pursue a career in music.

“My dream is to be a touring musician, and release music as my career. I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember, even as a little kid I would put on shows for my family, I just love it so much. My goal is to go to BIMM University in Bristol to study music performance and just progress as an artist from there."

Eddie Prestige and Jolyon Dixon, of Tunnel Rat Recording Studios, said: “We decided to run the competition late last year, really just to see if we could discover musically gifted people in the area, who may benefit from the prize of free recording studio time to help develop their career.

“We weren’t expecting to get as many entries as we eventually did and the standard overall was very high, but Becca’s entry stood out to our team right away.

“The original song she entered is perfectly composed and arranged and her live video performance of it was understatedly cool, with a pitch perfect vocal and great guitar playing.

“We are really looking forward to working with Becca to record the song with a full production -and we’ve no doubt she has a bright future ahead as a recording artist.”