Dan Freeman is an artist/producer/bassist and music technologist based in Brooklyn, New York and of the world’s leading experts on the integration of live instruments with laptops using Ableton Live and a virtuoso Ableton Push performer, he has presented and performed and designed educational programs globally as well as worked with a variety of major label artists as a producer, and consultant for the creation of their live shows.
Dan was born in Boston and comes from a family of musicians from his mother’s native country of Nicaragua. After graduating Harvard College, he came to New York City to be a session bass player and performed with a variety of major label artists, DJs and Broadway pit orchestras throughout North America, South America, and Europe in venues ranging from underground Brooklyn loft parties to Carnegie Hall. He also played keyboards for the RCA Records’ rock group Stellastarr*.
From his earliest days in New York City, Dan became involved in New York City’s underground live electronic music scene where he became fascinated with mixing live and digital instruments. In 2005, he did his first show using Ableton Live 3 with Virgin Records’ artist Xavier at Berghain (Berlin) and became so fascinated with the possibilities of the software that he formed Comandante Zero – an electro-funk digital art and music collective that performed with groups like the Brazilian Girls and the Juan Maclean at venues/festivals in NYC, LA, Latin America and Europe. In 2011, he became an Ableton Certified Trainer (he is now Certified in Ableton 8, 9 and 10) and joined the faculty at New York City’s Dubspot where he became the director of Dubspot International and launched electronic music production programs globally.
Currently Dan is on the faculty at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music where he designed the Producing Music with Software and MIDI and Live Performance with Laptops curriculum. He has also on the faculty and one of the main course designers for New York City’s Electronic Music Collective and DJLAB in San Jose, Costa Rica. He has been hired by Ableton to train numerous major label artists on Ableton Live and Push and has launched Ableton’s Push 1 and 2 instruments in the United States with presentations in New York City. He has given workshops on electronic music production and performed at festivals, universities and schools worldwide including at: SXSW (Austin, US), Harvard University (US), Berklee College of Music (US), DNA (Bogota), The Strøm Festival (Denmark), IATEC (Brazil), AIMEC (Brazil) The Universidad de Caldas (Colombia), The International Museum and Library of Music (Bologna, Italy), Argenlive (Buenos Aires), Tecnologico Monterrey (Mexico City), The Universidad de Santiago (Chile) and at SONAR (Barcelona).
In 2015, he founded the Brooklyn Digital Conservatory, a platform that brings top digital music producers/performers and educators a to emerging markets in Latin America for courses and performances. The Brooklyn Digital Conservatory has done numerous workshops and courses in Latin America including in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Mexico. In 2017, he partnered with DJLAB, San Jose, Costa Rica to create Central America’s first Certificate Program in Electronic Music Production.
Dan works out his production studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn (Studio J – The Playroom) where he produces, records and creates live performance set-ups for artists. His specialty is NYC house and disco house, but since he has a jazz and classical background, and played for years in Brooklyn’s Indie rock scene, he incorporates all of these into his work.
Workshop Videos:
https://youtu.be/q39BaDQPJ1U (All the Performances with Tunde Adebimpe)
https://youtu.be/IYNczsdEiE0 (Live Production Set)
https://youtu.be/lGOGLvDBNWc (En Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLWS0NBpk3E (Live Improvised Performance)