Description

Bob Power is a self-effacing yet prolific producer who has worked with the best east-coast R&B/hip-hop acts from the 80s onwards. Self-described as a ‘soul music producer/engineer’, Power began his musical career while at Webster College in St. Louis. Power moved to New York to work in the Calliope Studios on 37th Street. Asked to sit in as engineer on a hip-hop session, he found himself overseeing the breakthrough sessions for Stetsasonic. He continued his liaison with rap groups thereafter, linking with A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul and Black Sheep. By the mid-90s he was given charge of a production suite at Sony Music Studios in New York. His profile as a producer continued to grow through work with Me’Shell N’degéocello, D’Angelo and Erykah Badu. The latter gave Power his first number 1 R&B single, ‘On & On’, while N’degéocello’s Peace Beyond Passion received a Grammy nomination for best engineered album. Power’s other credits read like a who’s who or hip hop and R&B including The Roots, J. Dilla, Nelly Furtado and Common as well jazz artists like Bobby McFerrin.

In a special event produced by the Brooklyn Digital Conservatory (BkDigiCon) (NYC),  101 Training (Santiago) and Dubspot International, Bob Power will be making his first visit to Santiago on Saturday, August 15 to Sunday, August 16.  He will be giving a twelve hour production master classes in Santiago’s state of the art CHT Studios, open to eighteen students from 10 AM – 4PM on both Saturday and Sunday.  Students who successfully complete the course will receive a Professional Mixing and Mastering Training Certificate of Completion signed by Bob Power, 101 Training and Dan Freeman, Director of Dubspot International.

In this workshop, Bob Power will go over the following:

• What is a good mix? What is critical listening? Listening and discussion of great mixes across different genres. Exploration and discussion of genre-specific commonalities and differences between various music styles. Demonstration and discussion of the stereo soundfield, concepts of the three planes of a mix (front-to-rear, high-to-low, and side-to-side), instrumental balancing techniques. Discussion of equalization and filtering; different types, hardware vs software, common uses on drums, different styles of guitars, piano, background vocals, lead vocals, strings, brass, reeds.

• The two essential elemets of mixing; musical balances and tonal balances. Musical instruments’ tonal ranges, the overtone series and how it relates to timbre.

• Gain control devices and various uses, both technical and artistic. hardware vs software, common uses on drums, different styles of guitars, piano, background vocals, lead vocals, strings, brass, reeds, groups, full mixes.

• Mixing vocals, lead and background, gain control, equalization and timbral considerations, use of ambience generators to “place” the vocal in a mix. Discussion of stylistic concerns in usage of foregoing.

• Mixing drums, different stylistic concerns, equalization, gain control, sidechaining, ambience generators, creative uses of “wrong;” distortion and artifacts of gain control. The last segment of the class, we will do a “tag team” mix, where each student, with time limits, prepares for a mix a different element in a recording. Homework to include written analysis of different mixes for presentation in class.

• The full mix; equalization and gain control. Hardware vs software, the sonic footprint of commonly used equalizers and compressors, appropriate stylistic uses of such. The last segment of the class, we will finish a mix started earlier in the week.
• Students will have the option of playing their mixes and having them critiqued by Bob.

To reserve a spot, please feel free to either pay in full or put down a deposit of $100.00. A DEPOSIT MUST BE PAID BY AUGUST 3, 2015 TO RESERVE A SPOT IN THE COURSE.  Full payment will be due on August 7, 2015. Payment can be made by credit card or PayPal or at 101 Training in Santiago, Chile.

For more information, contact the Brooklyn Digital Conservatory or 101 Training in Chile at: [email protected] or call +56 09 7 7014577

For more on the course, visit our Facebook event page