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The Learning Center offers weekly music technology forum events. Topics range from audio recording to MIDI sequencing to industry advice. Set in an engaging and dynamic atmosphere, these events are presented by faculty members, composers, engineers, musicians and other artists, software representatives, student club leaders, and Learning Center staff.


Spring 2012 Forums     

Past Forums



The final forum of the spring 2012 semester, Alex Arntzen, president of the Film Scoring Network, hosted a film screening event. At the screening, Berklee students showed off projects they had worked on. In the line up was the short film Dembanger, a tense thriller short film scored by Arntzen, and Juan Carlos Enriquez, and mixed and engineered by MP&E student Andres Locsey. Next was an animated short called Ship Battle of 1814, scored by Steffen Schmidt. For the score, Schmidt conducted a live orchestra at the University of Oregon. Presenting next was Andy Forsberg with two projects, the first a commercial for Watson's Greenhouse that aired in the northwest this past December (coincidentally viewed by Schmidt), and a demo reel for the company Anchorlight Productions. Following Forsberg was a second piece by the trio of Arntzen, Enriquez and Locsey, a trailer to the upcoming film The Persian Pickle Club, shot by Oscar wining director of photography Mauro Fiore (Avatar). The music was lush, and consisted of strings, banjo, and mandolin among others.

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Taking time out from his busy schedule, composer Brian Tyler graciously visited with Berklee students via Skype. Organized and hosted by Alex Arntzen of Berklee's Film Scoring Network, the event was part of the Learning Center's forum series in the Media Lab. There were 100 plus students in attendance, spilling out into the lobby. Charismatic and friendly, the surprisingly humble Tyler has an impressive film and game resume. On it are Steven Spielberg's Eagle Eye, Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Coming up, he is scoring a Frederic Chopin biography, and Expendables 2, among others.

On getting into the film industry, Tyler says the big challenge is that you have to know people to get a gig. He reflects, "I even [previously] sent a demo to my agent that I have now, who never even knew I sent it. So I knew that didn't make it past reception." His advice after knowing the industry, is to get work as a composer's assistant. He noted that for all of his previous assistants, he eventually passed work on to them that he himself didn't have time for, and many of them went on to achieve their own success. When asked what qualities he looks for in an assistant he stressed the importance of knowing film. "I find it kind of amazing how unknowledgeable often the younger composers are about film itself." Watch the classics he says, "really when it comes down to it, you're dealing with a director."

When asked, "How do you keep your sounds original when everyone has the same sample libraries?", Tyler equated it to rock music. "Take any particular year, like 1970, and you basically had people playing on a few different Gibson guitars, a few different Fenders, Ludwig drum sets, everyone had a Fender P Bass, and maybe a Rhodes a Wurlitzer and a Mellotron. That's basically what rock bands were using, yet The Stones didn't sound anything like The Beatles, which didn't sound anything like Zeppelin." His conclusion is that technique and taste in the studio are a huge factor, and of course writing. "You can hear any John Williams score and distinguish it from a James Newton Howard score, Yet they're using the same exact people." He went on and said chuckling, "I don't know why, but it makes me feel good that things naturally take care of themselves, and so much of it has to do with the person." He advised never to work on a project where your music is expected to sound like another specific composer. "[That] I would never recommend because then you'll never get your own voice, and then you're interchangeable with many other clones."

On scoring for video games he notes that the process is completely different, in that the music is nonlinear. He equates the video game player to a film director: they could play through a level quickly, and the intensity of the music needs to reflect that, or they could be a novice and get stuck in the corner for 15 minutes, and the music needs to take a back seat without getting too repetitive. There need to be so many permutations, and fluid ways the music could go that Tyler notes, "When someone plays the game, they're probably hearing the music in a way that I've never even heard."

On working with the A-list action hero cast of The Expendables, Tyler says, "I'm sitting here facing this way watching Stallone do his thing [on screen], and he's standing right there. And I don't know how to refer to him, do I call him his character? It's definitely a pinch-me moment."

Brian Tyler -View Presenter Bio

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Are you a user of the audio production software known as Logic? Then the place to be this past Tuesday night was at the Media Lab for the Logic User group. Presiding over the proceedings was the Learning Center's own Manager of Training and Programs, Chris Fitzgerald. Flexing his Logic muscles, Chris dished out a diet of techniques including the creation of vocal derived drum samples and the making of a beat using the samples with the Ultrabeat drum device's built-in step sequencer. He also recorded some guitar, creating epic tones that would make Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix weep in unison with Logic's Amp Designer and Pedalboard effects. Cooly fielding a barrage of questions from the engaged crowd, he touched on vocal mixing chains of the stars, Rewiring into Reason (logically) and along the way shared some insanely useful keyboard shortcuts.

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Touching on Live's strength of complete control surface accessibility, Loudon used an APC40 (designed to control Live) to demonstrate performance techniques. Looking at MIDI mapping, he discussed APC40 setup, using the auto mapping, and remote mapping features in Live. Loudon stressed the importance of taking the time to set things up to suit your performance set, so that nothing goes wrong while you're on stage, by setting ranges for mapping (making sure resonance, gain amounts and others don't get too loud), and useful takeover modes for the sliders and pan controls (the way Live corrects the difference between where parameters are set in the software and where the controller is on the control surface). He mapped knobs to control delay amount, volume, filter cutoffs, and more, and discussed the importance of effect signal flow, and showed how to record automation, and your entire performance set. Loudon mentioned Vengeance Sounds for high quality, well produced samples that he likes to use in his productions.

Loudon Stearns -View Presenter Bio

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Assistant Chair of Contemporary Writing and Production, Andrea Pejrolo, gave an in-depth presentation in iOS music technology. Focused mainly on the iPad, he discussed some iPhone features and options. He covered a multitude of apps, different scenarios for remotely controlling your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), different approaches of app developers, proprietary versus open, configuring your system and incorporating other wireless devices such as the Airport Express by Apple, and a pros and cons analysis of different configurations. Specific apps Pejrolo discussed were MOTU DP Control, AC-7 Core, V-Control, Touch OSC, Lemur, as well as the Alesis audio interface iO Dock for the iPad. Download the presentation file.

Connect with Andrea Pejrolo at www.apejrolo.com, www.vimeo.com/apejrolo, and on Twitter @Pejrolo_music.

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Moderated by Associate Professor of film scoring, Michael Sweet, game composers Tsutomu Narita, and Yoshitaka Suzuki as well as Berklee alumnus Shotaro Kaizuka were on hand to discuss cultural reflections of working for Japanese game developers, tools and software used for making music for games, and tips for getting into the industry. Tsutomu often works as an arranger for Nobuo Uematsu, composer of the Final Fantasy series, and Yoshitaka has composed for the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Shotaro is a music producer, and works for Columbia in Japan. Special thanks to Shota Nakama for organizing the event, and to Sohta Tsuchiya for translating.

Tsutomu Narita -View Presenter Bio

Yoshitaka Suzuki -View Presenter Bio

Shotaro Kaizuka -View Presenter Bio

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The 5th annual Sound Collage Contest was a success! There were some phenomenal pieces, many of which were well-deserving of winning the grand prize. Our winners this year are Arseniy Mishchenko in 1st, Andrew Peebles in 2nd and Richard Ludlow in 3rd. The other 4 finalists are Giuseppe Cataldo, Andreas Russo, Aseem Suri, and Miguel Coca. Special thanks to our contest sponsors iZotope and IK Multimedia, to our screeners and judging panel, and to the MP&E and EPD departments. View more photos and listen to the winning pieces.

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Using Ableton Live, Berklee alumnus Sam Burke (EPD, '07) demonstrated in-depth techniques for dance music production. Using his own track Cali Murda, he walked through the Live session file. With heavy handed filtering, compression, side-chain compression and volume automation for an exact control, Sam showed the powerful subtlety of volume regulation. By sampling sawtooth waveforms, white noise, and other simple oscillator sounds, Sam built complex instruments, rhythms and phrases, and manufactured driving drum sounds. In addition, he used long signal chains, showing many of Ableton Live's effects, and discussing signal flow. Getting into the flexibility of Live, Sam showed techniques for using clips in the clips view, and sequencing, and MIDI editing in the arrange view. Sam discussed techniques for use in multiple styles of dance music, including electro house, dub step and more. Check out Sam at http://www.facebook.com/FlamClap

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Led by trainers Blair Pershyn and Sohta Tsuchiya, the Guerrilla Production Techniques: Mixing forum wrapped up our 3-part Guerrilla Production Techniques series. Using the tracks taken from last week's recording forum (drums, bass, piano, and vocals) Sohta mixed our version of the tune "Save Your Love for Me." Topics discussed were critical listening, monitors, headphones, room treatment for creating a good mixing atmosphere, control surfaces, audio interfaces, mixing tools such as compression, EQ and reverb, and genre based mixing applications.

www.realtraps.com
www.auralex.com
www.primacoustic.com
www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

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Presenting on drum parts in song productions, Bill D'Agostino, Director of Training and Support Services, and Mike Carrera, Manager of Faculty Technology Services discussed multiple ways to create grooves. The same presentation they do every year for MacWorld in San Francisco , they covered advantages and disadvantages with recording live drums, using loops, and sequencing with MIDI keyboard and drum controllers. Using the Doobie Brothers tune, "Long Train Running", they loaded in stock loops from Logic Pro, then called up instrument plug-ins Superior Drummer, and Drum Core. For full time, currently registered Berklee students, Kitcore is available for free from the Student Computer Support Center. Contact them for information at 8800@berklee.edu.

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The Learning Center and Media Lab at Berklee are for more than just printing. Among many other music technology events offered semesterly is the Guerrilla Production Techniques series, a start-to-finish music production workshop utilizing bang-for-your-buck gear. Each semester features a new song and a new band of Berklee students, but the principles are the same: start recording your music; use what you have and what is in your budget; keep in mind that these are techniques, not rules; and learn as you go.

Learning Center trainer (and jazz composition alumnus) Blair Pershyn led Guerrilla Production Techniques: Recording event, discussing topics ranging from microphone type, to polar pattern and frequency response. The gear used included a Shure SM58 mic on the kick drum; a pair of small diaphragm SE1A condenser mics configured to an XY stereo pattern for the drum overheads and the upright piano; and a Sterling ST55 large diaphragm condenser mic for the vocals, an Avid MBox Pro audio interface. Recording the jazz standard "Save Your Love for Me," the band consisted of Berklee students Anna Sun Lee (vocals), Fernado Vera (piano), Fabio Rojas (drums), and Berklee alumnus Julien Osty (bass). The event afforded Berklee students the opportunity to dive in and make the most out of their laptop package and realize that their computers aren't just devices to check Facebook, but tools of the trade and cornerstones of their career as professional musicians.

 Rounding off the Guerrilla Production Techniques series will be a mixing forum on Tuesday, March 9, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the Media Lab at 150 Massachusetts Avenue. The event is free and open to the Berklee community.

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Based in Boston, and a great employer of Berklee alumni, iZotope is a research-driven, audio technology company. In short, they make killer plug-ins. For a Learning Center forum in the Media Lab, iZotope Product Specialist Matt Hines (Berklee alumnus, Electronic Production & Design, 2011) demonstrated a few of their products including Ozone5, RX2, Stutter Edit, Trash, and Radius. iZotope is an official sponsor of the Learning Center's Sound Collage Contest, graciously donating Ozone5, RX2, and Stutter Edit as contest prizes.

Ozone5 is a complete mastering tool. With a host of powerful integrated mastering effects, and a beautiful interface and metering, it simply makes music sound better. To validate this claim, Ozone5 was recently used on grammy winning recordings by Skrillex and the Foo Fighters. A complete audio repair tool, RX2 is used in shows like Survivor and Deadliest Catch. The software displays audio by frequency as well as amplitude, and allows for precise selection of sounds and their corresponding harmonics in a recording, enabling removal of clicks, hiss and hum, restoration of clipped audio, and elimination of noise. In addition, the software is a powerful sound design tool. iZotope makes a hardware noise reducer based on the same technology that is in use by the NFL, MLB and FIFA for broadcasts. Stutter Edit is an innovative tool that lets you tear up tracks in real time. Designed by BT (producer, composer, Grammy nominee, Berklee alumnus, and the holder of the Guinness Book of World Records for the song with the most vocal edits), Stutter Edit takes the tedium out of slicing, manipulating and resynthesizing audio, and lets the user pull off complicated sweeps and fills on the fly. It is in use by producers for Brittany Spears, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and more.

Hines also mentioned indispensable free plug-ins, Spear, Soundhack, and iZotope's own Vinyl. iZotope gives Berklee students 50% off on all their software products. For details, log in to my.berklee.net, go to Technology Services and Vendor Offers. In addition, they allow free 10 day trials on all of their software products, which led Hines to suggest using iZotope products for the Sound Collage Contest, in order to win iZotope products from the Sound Collage Contest. Check out videos of iZotope demos at youtube.com/izotopeinc.

Matt Hines -View Presenter Bio

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Recording the song Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding, Learning Center trainer Chris Fitzgerald walked through GarageBand as a complete tool for music production. Topics covered were GarageBand session setup, UX2 configuration, MIDI sequencing, and basic mixing techniques. Vocals were sung by Berklee student Noshi Curry, and Tenor Sax by Carlos Llerena. Check out part 2 and 3 of the Guerrilla Production series on 2/28 and 3/6.

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Covering techniques directly applicable to the Sound Collage Contest, Learning Center Manger of Training & Programs, Chris Fitzgerald, presented a wide range of sample manipulation techniques specific to Propellerhead's Reason. First discussing details about the contest (the Learning Center provides "construction" related samples, and students manipulate them into a piece of music), Fitzgerald demonstrated audio editing and processing techniques from trimming, cropping, normalizing, EQing, and applying other effects such as denoiser and vocal processing. Next he used techniques to build drum kit, synth and vocode patch instruments by looping, pitch shifting, time stretching, and applying modulators such as LFOs and envelopes. Going in depth into Reason, he showed advanced routing techniques, use of the Combinator, and gave overviews of Reason samplers NNXT, NN19, and Redrum. There's still time to compete in the Sound Collage Contest. Check it out here!

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Compelling a large group of Berklee students to stay passionate, stay inspired, and not worry so much about following trends, avant-garde sound designer Diego Stocco inquired, "are you inspired by your own work, or are you feeling like there is something missing?". His advice; always tell a story with your music, and let it always be your story. Stocco is new school, and very hands-on, often creating his own instruments to get a unique sound. A performer as well, Stocco made his mark in Hans Zimmer's score to Sherlock Holmes with a solo role on his "experibass", a violin, viola, cello, double bass hybrid, played by bow, fishing line and hose clamps, paint brush, spoon, fork, drum stick and a kick drum pedal. "My father and my brother are butchers", Stocco said, "but the thing is I really wanted to be a musician, so I combined the two things. I butcher musical instruments now."

Stocco is also known for creating music out of found sounds, whether sand, a tree, dry cleaner machinery or a dessert plate, and of this he says, "sounds are like friends. if you really want to know them, you have to take the time to listen to them." Stocco urged students to always be listening. "Have you ever paid attention to the sound of mornings compared to the sound of evenings?" Pay attention because "you are building a library of sonic impressions that at some point you will take out and use for something." To achieve their own unique sound, he suggested to Berklee students to, "learn as much as you can from books, tutorials, teachers, classes, everything that you do. But at the same time approach the world of sounds as a baby that is seeing a microphone for the first time... When you approach the world this way, there's something magic happening there."

Engaging and dynamic, Stocco cautioned against the four most common "mind traps": Feeling like you have to prove something, being afraid to fail, putting off creating because of a lack of gear, and feeling like you can't make your mark on the music world because of a lack of experience or connections. His message brought home a common thread in the importance of trying new things, staying passionate, experimenting, and finding your own way to see the world. As he put it, "do what you love. When you do something you love, you really understand it. There's something related to the passion that you put into it." Look for videos of Stocco's work at http://vimeo.com/diegostocco. For brining Stocco to Berklee, thanks to the Electronic Production & Design department, and to Assistant Chair of Contemporary Writing & Production, Andrea Pejrolo.

Diego Stocco -View Presenter Bio

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Berklee Video Game Music Club members Akash Thakkar, Alex Liberatore, and Rachel Dziezynski gave an outstanding presentation on Musical Sound Design. Covering a wide range of topics, and using audio samples from the Sound Collage Contest, they touched on organization and workflow techniques, digital signal processing fundamentals, types of audio effects and creative ways to use them, keyboard shortcuts and MIDI mapping from control surfaces, recording and editing automation, tips in Logic and Audacity, vocoding, iOS apps on the iPad or iPhone (AC7 Core, Touch OSC and Rebirth), and free plug-ins like Live Cut, XOrcism and Paul Stretch OSX. Check out the VGMC on Facebook, and check out the Sound Collage Contest going on now!

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David Sonnenschein, sound designer, founder of Sonic Strategies, and author of the book Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema, gave a webinar event for Berklee, covering concepts from a website, and 12 hour seminar he offers called Sound Design For Pros. The event featured an hour long presentation by David, detailing listening modes (based on concepts from Michel Chion's book Audio Vision: Sound on Screen), processing tools for creating appropriate sounds in film and games, and psychoacoustic principles and applications. After the presentation, David critiqued Berklee student projects, and opened it up to a Q&A.

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Members of Berklee's Sound Design Network demonstrated techniques on sound design and composition using self recorded audio samples. Club co-president Richard Ludlow discussed sound design theory, mentioning examples from different films, how we perceive audio and visuals and how this plays into sound design considerations, audio sample editing and cleaning techniques, and a brief demo of Logic's EXS-24. Following this was Andy Forsberg demonstrating different audio editors Audacity, and Spear (download Spear for free at http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/), and digital signal processing techniques. Lastly was Richard Gould, other Sound Design Network co-President, covering work organization, the importance of backing up files on external hard drives, and incremental back-ups, recording tips and sound design techniques in Kontakt. The Sound Design Network meets on Mondays from 1-2pm in 150 Mass Ave, room A73. The techniques covered are perfect for the Sound Collage Contest. Find out more, and participate at: http://learningcenter.berklee.edu/Contests_and_Events/Sound_Collage_Contest/Sound_Collage_Contest_12/details_12

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Sound Collage Contest 5 has begun! With great prizes from iZotope and I.K. Multimedia, and a new batch of audio samples to work with, you could be the next Sound Collage Contest champion. Click here for more information and to participate. There are many great resources to support you with your Sound Collage.

Sign up for a training session
Sign up for a tutoring session
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook
Read our LC Tech Blog on music technology topics
View our calendar, and add it to your Google account
And take advantage of video tutorials through Lynda.com. Go to my.berklee.net, click Technology Services, click Access Lynda.com, and create an account using your Berklee e-mail address.

E-mail Chris Fitzgerald at cfitzgerald@berklee.edu with any questions. If you missed the forum or want a recap, stay tuned for the forum video by next week.

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The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world's largest game jam event. A project of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), it occurs annually in late January, and brings together thousands of game enthusiasts, participating in hundreds of local jams around the world. Attendance at each site might be anywhere from 1-300, though is typically 5-25 people, usually students, though many professional game developers and other interested hobbyists attend as well. The structure of a jam is usually that everyone gathers on Friday afternoon, watches a short video keynote with advice from leading game developers, and then a secret theme is announced. All sites worldwide are then challenged to make games based on that same theme, with games to be completed by Sunday afternoon. In January 2011, teams in 44 countries created over 1500 games in one weekend!

This year Berklee got involved, and had a GGJ kickoff event in the Media Lab, facilitated by Berklee faculty Michael Sweet, and in collaboration with student groups Video Game Music Club and Sound Design Network. In all, Berklee students collaborated on 17 games with our partners in Atlanta. They included Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Southern Polytechnic State University. Three games that won the top awards were composed with Berklee composers.

Here is a complete overview of the Global Game Jam.
https://blog.scad.edu/ggj/

The winners and projects are at the following link:
https://blog.scad.edu/ggj/projects/

Three games that won awards were done with Berklee composers:
Sacrifi<3 (Sacrifice): http://globalgamejam.org/2012/sacrifi
composer: Chris Burgess

Pangu: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/pangu
composer:KC Daugirdas

Hobbit's Quest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PLAG88bXlA
composer: Shaun Chasin

Find out more about Global Game Jam at www.globalgamejam.org

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Chris Fitzgerald, Blair Pershyn, and Sohta Tsuchiya demonstrated a number of music software applications, plug-ins, and techniques for song production using an original tune, in collaboration with vocalist and Logic audio editing guru, Kerry Leva, lab monitor for Electronic Production and Design. The topics included audio editing and manipulation, synthesizer and sampler instruments, plug-in effects, audio recording and mixing tools. Software they used included Logic, Pro Tools, Reason, Ableton Live, Kontakt, Massive, Guitar Rig and more. Classes and other forum events are available for training in these topics. Check our class schedule, sign up for one-on-one software tutoring, and check our forum schedule.

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sound collage contest 5 winner Arseniy Mishchenko







Learning Center at Berklee College of Music
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