How to do a live hiphop Workshop with Ardour (try this at home!)

This weekend we did a workshop in a classroom at Puces POP - a co-pro between Indyish and Lulu.com. Katie and Nick came all the way from North Carolina to do Lulu’s first ever Canadian workshop!! explaining to Montrealers just what exactly is print on demand.

(Elran’s not in the pic because he’s helping set up computers that he and Mathieu brought from the Coop-Musique studio. Thank you Mathieu for so generously lending them! Thank you Elran for being you!)

This was the second half of the workshop. For the first half we did some live hiphop recording with Tyler Rauman and Alter Reign, and Mathieu on Ardour- the Free open source multi track recording software. There were things we learned doing the workshop this weekend, which is awesome because learning things is the whole point of doing stuff. Some were things that had to do with the technicalities of music making, like we should have talked more about looping tracks, and the best way to do that quickly and precisely, before trying to do it live with an audience.

Mathieu from Coop-Musique is a recording artist who works mostly with analog musicians who play whole songs in one take and don’t mess much with samples. So naturally he has had only a little experience with the detail points of electronic music, like perfect looping.

But because everyone was in a great mood, or maybe just because everyone was ok with their own personal combo of amateur and pro, things still went smoothly. In between natural software delays where things like copy/paste etc needed to happen, we carried on a great dialogue with all our guests.

Mathieu and Tyler- from Coop-Musique and Telefauna respectively- were the two most in the spotlight, navigating the waters of this potentially awkward improv. They both remained calm, well-spoken, informative and friendly. As a result, everybody in the room got to learn from the two of them, and to see how quickly a really really sticky problem like the perfect timing required for live rhyming could be resolved by two people comfortable with software and music and other people’s expertise. They talked it out, and with a very few tries got the drum beats all lined up and sizzly and once again we were rockin.

The added curveball slowed us up a little bit, which had a cascading effect on how much time the amazing guys from Alter Reign got to perform and lead the workshop, which we all agreed was too bad. They were so fun and awesome though, dispite being forshortened, and so good-natured about the whole thing, sticking around for the full workshop and asking questions and being funny and eloquent about the benefits as they perceive them from the perspective of musicians of open source, indyish and lulu.com. We all had such a good time together that we’re taking about throwing a big collective party together soon.

(Hopefully including performances from Alter Reign and Telefauna and friends, and other great local rappers like Lil Pip, who Tyler worked with this weekend. I saw the show. It was hot.)

The audience for our workshop was great too- they were patient with us, and inquisitive, and I think they had a good time and learned maybe a few new things, and we were delighted to get to meet them.

Lots of people got involved in the polite round table back and forth that was our workshop- shooting out specific technical questions on how Mathieu was doing certain things with Ardour, and clarifying what Ardour was capable of in comparison to other audio options, clearing up what Lulu is and what kinds of possibilities it creates, and also asking more general questions about open source, community, Lulu.com, print on demand, marketing on the web, etc.

There were several musicians in the crowd, and at least one record label, 2 people filming and at least 2 other professional filmmakers, a few open source enthusiasts, at least 2 professional fashion designers, someone from the Future of Music (for a little while), someone who produces television and writes books, and that’s just who I met in the rotating, note taking crowd.

I told people some of Mathieu’s suggestions for how to get started with Ardour and linux which were all taken from this interview. Afterwards a number of people said to me they were going to check out Ardour, or that they did have an old computer around that was pretty useless running windows that they were going to go home and start screwing around with linux on. Plus I had a wicked time. I consider this workshop success!

Tips for your workshop:

1. post on the Ardour Forum to find someone who’s good at the software in your area. Work with someone who knows what they’re doing and who is nice. Don’t go meet them alone the first time. (Heads up for software developers- if you want to benefit from the free publicity of workshops like these, you gotta have an active community. community is to open source as money is to proprietary, in terms of how good stuff gets done, and personally i have my preferences.)

2. plan on recording a few tracks live, because this is fun for everyone. but also, you can record some in advance to make sure you have what you need when the day comes. mix and match for added goodness and layers.

3. find musicians to work with who have recorded music before (both Alter Reign and Tyler have Telefauna have set up their own at home studios, and so both were at ease with recording and not at all shy.)

4. make sure the person with the computers talks with the person from the venue about technical requirements well in advance- there is probably stuff you need that you haven’t thought of yet.

5. if you’re the organizer, call everyone involved a few days before and the day of to confirm.

6. if you’re the organizer, don’t also be in charge of a bunch of other stuff at the same time. case in point- music video screening. we ran a bit late and missed it, so clearly i should have put someone specifically in charge of that. bah. embarassing. not that this excuses it, but the email i sent to Film POp about 5 days before the screening bounced back to me the day after i missed it. moral of the story- everyone who is trying to do a lot will sometimes drop a ball or two, either bc of brain fry or technical disfunction. c’est la vie.

7. make sure you do a full run-through of the workshop with everyone. the one part we didn’t get to practice was the one part we got hung up on. (next time, however, you will learn stuff AND have your pants and socks rocked off, so watch out for it!)

8. don’t over agonize mistakes, or pregnant pauses.

9. feel ok about tossing in a relevant question or comment to fill dead air up if you can think of one. In our case, one question seemed to dislodge a bunch of other questions from brains so the chatty learny exchange could keep on keepin on.

10. make sure you have fun… and what else, guys?? if you can think of some, post your tips for future workshops in the comments below…