For the 10 year anniversary of Seattle’s annual Decibel Festival, the world’s premier electronic music and DJ school Dubspot heads to the Northwest from Wednesday, September 25 to Friday, September 27 to add an educational component to the music celebration.
Dubspot will host three full days of free workshops on music production, DJing, mixing, mastering sound design, and modular synthesis as part of the 2013 DB Conference in partnership with Decibel Festival, Ableton and Portland’s Control Voltage.
The DB Conference including Dubspot’s EDU Sessions takes place at the Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122. The full schedule along with detailed information about each workshop is after the jump:
Wednesday – 9/25/2013
12:00-3:00PM – Dubspot & Control Voltage Present: Synthesizer Studio with James Patrick – Dubspot and Control Voltage present an interactive space showcasing classic and contemporary modular and analog synthesizer technology. Dubspot sound design instructor James Patrick will give a guided tour through variety of synths and how they create sound.
2:00-4:00PM – Intro To Native Instruments Maschine, Day 1 with Matt Cellitti – Explore Dubspot’s Maschine curriculum in this 2-day mini course with Dubspot’s Director of Online Student Experience and one of their top electronic music production and sound design instructors Matt Celliti. Day one will cover some Maschine basics including hardware/software overview pattern recording and overdubbing. Participants are encouraged to bring their own Maschine/Maschine Mikro controller and laptop to follow along with the mini course.
3:00-4:30PM – Sound Design: Analog Gear in with the modern World with Chris Petti – Dubspot Curriculum Director Chris Petti explores ways to use traditional analog synths with modern software such as Ableton Live 9, Logic X and more.
4:30-5:30PM – A Day in the Life – Decibel Festival TBD artist moderated by Chris Petti – Chris Petti moderates with a performing Decibel Festival artist, discussing music production/DJing workflow and techniques.
5:00-6:00PM – How does CV (Control Voltage) work? with James Patrick – CV (Control Voltage), is the foundation behind many concepts in synthesis. Dubspot sound design instructor and Ableton Certified Trainer James Patrick will demystify this often-misunderstood topic by showing, visually and aurally, just how Control Voltage behaves in the audio world.
Thursday – 9/26/13
12:00-1:00PM – A Day in the Life of a Mastering Engineer – Tarekith, with Chris Petti – Erik Magrini (Tarekith) of Seattle-based Inner Portal Studio shares his experience as an electronic-music focused Mastering Engineer. He’ll provide an extensive Q&A on his process and on a life paying the bills doing mastering and mixdowns.
1:00-200PM – Build It Yourself w/Livid Instruments with Dave Cross – Dubspot’s Head of R&D Dave Cross will teach how MIDI controllers are built and designed. Discover how various sensor technologies turn physical movements into MIDI data, which then control your favorite music software. Presented with Peter Nyboer, Director of Software Development of Livid Instruments.
2:00-4:00PM – Intro To Native Instruments Maschine, Day 2 with Matt Cellitti Explore Dubspot’s Maschine curriculum in this 2-day mini course with Matt Celliti. Participants are encouraged to bring their own Maschine/Maschine Mikro controller and laptop to follow along with the mini course.
3:00-4:00PM – A Day in the Life – Decibel Festival Artist TBD moderated by Chris Petti – Chris Petti moderates with a performing Decibel Festival artist, discussing music production/DJing workflow and techniques.
4:00-5:00PM – DJing w/Native Instruments Traktor – from iPhone to laptop with Matt Cellitti – Dubspot instructor Matt Cellitti demonstrates Traktor basics, starting with DJing techniques with Traktor DJ (iOS), progressing to more advanced features using the full PC/Mac version of Traktor Pro.
5:00-6:00PM – Evolution of the DAW with Chris Petti – What is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and how do DJs and Producers use them? Dubspot Curriculum Director Chris Petti will present a number of popular DAWs from the music software industry, exploring the philosophies behind their design.
Friday – 9/27/13
12:30-130 – PM Max for Live Visuals with Chris Petti – Max for Live can help artists come up with material they never thought possible. In this workshop, Chris Petti demonstrates a cool way to utilize video clips to generate actual musical data.
1:45-2:30PM – Ableton Live 101 with Matt Cellitti – For aspiring artists this workshop will gives the lay of the land for the entire world of music creation and performance with computers. For those experienced with other music software but thinking of trying out something new this session will demonstrate what kind of things Ableton Live can do, what makes it unique and why it’s a great musical tool.
2:45-4:00PM – Erased Tapes Co-Presents: Artist Workshop with Ólafur Arnalds Erased Tapes artist Ólafur Arnalds comes by before his performance at Optical 2 later in the day to show how he incorporates acoustic instrumentation into his otherwise electronic music compositions, how he prepares the compositions for live performance and the pros & cons of this process in today’s music landscape. Joining him for the workshop to enhance the demonstration will be a violinist TBA. This session is hosted by Dubspot Marketing Manager Nate Mars and Dave Cross.
3:45-430PM – Sound Design with Vocals with Chris Petti – What kind of things can you do with recorded voice? More than one might expect. During this workshop an entire song will be constructed using only vocal recordings from audience members, and teach some amazing sound design techniques that will boost artists’ confidence to work with just about any kind of source material.
4:15-5PM – Ghostly International Co-Presents: Performance Setup Demonstrations with Lusine & Dauwd – Ghostly artists Dauwd & Lusine will describe their live setups and conduct short performances to demonstrate the tools they’ve come to use at this point in their musical careers hosted by Dubspot’s Nate Mars and Dave Cross.