Private courses in electronic music

[freqrush]

I'm thinking about giving private lessons to electronic music fans,
to teach them how to make the music they like.

There's enough room to set up several small home-studios at my place
and given the cheap prices of digital gear these days, that's one of my plans.
This way users can still choose to use their (kn)own proprietary program at home
and learn the basics on FOSS software during the course.

Here's an overview of the subjects I have in mind.

Part one (Introductions)
1.1 Analog audio (mixer basics)
1.2 Intro PC (alsa, FOSS)
1.3 Digital Audio (samplerate, buffersize, nframes, qjackctl)
1.4 Sequencer (audio, MIDI)
1.5 MIDI (with hardware/softsynth)
1.6 Signal flow (analog+AD/DA+jack, overview)

Part two (composing?)
2.1 Dynamics & EQ
2.2 Plugins & Softsynths
2.3 Harmony & Rhythm (Some basics of music theory)
2.4 Looping (Samplers, sync ardour tempo, rubberband)
2.5 Automation (Controllers)

Part three (the edge?)
3.1 Modular Synthesis (pure-data, supercollider, ams)
3.2 MIDI System Exclusive
3.3 Compiling - and optionally writing bug reports for - the latest newest software.

Of course this isn't the complete knowledge there is to learn, and I'd appreciate your thoughts about this.
Btw, I've already got five interested students

[Jan]

That sounds good. Make videos!

I have two suggestions:

#1: The music theory part (2.3) doesn't seem to fit where it is. I would do this as the first topic in the first section (1.1) or as the first topic in the second section (2.1), as it is the compsition which everyone would be working on before recording it.

#2: I would move Dynamics & EQ to a later point, maybe before Automation, because I think these two would go good together.

I would suggest the following order in section 2:

2.1 Harmony & Rhythm (Some basics of music theory)
2.2 Softsynths & Drum Machines
2.3 Looping (Samplers, sync ardour tempo, rubberband)
2.4 Plugins, Dynamics & EQ
2.5 Automation (Controllers)

This would make more sense to me. Maybe you could separate Plugins from Softsynths, since the softsynths are a pretty big topic, I believe. Maybe you could integrate Hydrogen with that. Plugins would go good with 2.4, I think.

Good luck!

[freqrush]

Hi Jan, thanks for your suggestions. they make a lot of sense indeed.
#1: Getting started with basic music theory and talking about the differences and similarities between
playing an instrument live in a band and composing in a home studio
is a good way to get to know their musical taste, and warm up their desire
to learn how to make that kind of music.

#2: Your order is more logical, following the "signal flow" from source to output. Thanks for the attention!

I'll think and work some more on my plan and update later. Any other suggestions are always welcome, maybe this is something many of us could start doing, these days of financial crisis ... people need jobs, kids need "cheap" hobbies.

[spm_gl]

How long are your courses going to be? We need a whole day just to scratch the surface of dynamics and eq, i.e. explain the absolute basics and demonstrate a few small things. And like our course, your's is missing "Delay, Modulation and Reverbration". We simply don't have time to fit it into our 5 days.

[freqrush]

I was thinking about a year or even two, three, four years, like regular music school.
One lesson a week and sometimes skip a week gives students some time to experiment and play with the things they've learned. That's one of the advantages of teaching with open source software, they can all use it and practice/experiment at home. For good recordings, they can use the gear from their 'school', and take the files home to work on/with during the week.
A 5 day course ... sounds more like a workshop to me, and it could be nice to integrate into the year of courses.
Also, I'm not an experienced teacher so I'm using the 'one lesson a week' system to give myself some time to prepare for giving the next lesson.
"Delay, Modulation and Reverbration" and a whole list of other Effects are missing indeed. I thought of putting that subject into synths and plugins, but it's worth a separate lesson(s) I guess.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, really appreciate it.

[spm_gl]

If it runs a year or longer, your participants will want to achieve a qualified degree. Then it will no longer be a "private" course.

[Yeri]

Hi Freqrush, I find very interesting your initiative. Lately I'm thinking also on doing some basic course of computer audio (oriented at linux) at the university. I work as associate professor and it doesn't report much incomes ehhe.. and there is the possibility to teach extra-curricular courses at the university which are offered at the students as free-credits. The bad thing is that I am not either a musician nor a computer audio expert, my profile is more of a computer engineer. Anyway I plan to start to teach myself into computer audio and gather all the information I can, when I have time (now I'm working on my phd). I hope I'll be able to teach an introductory course of, say 1 month, once a week (I'm quite autodidactic). Let me know if you plan to to write down some theory for your course in the case you're going to make it publicly available. I am highly interested on that (I'm not hurry, I probably won't start until next year or so). Hopely I can give you some feedback.

Gerard.

[freqrush]

@spm_gl : A qualified degree might be a problem for some, but I think most beginners would just go for the insights, experience and fun. And also to prevent them from buying expensive material/software they didn't really need to get started. I might also split up the whole course in "modules" that can be done as "workshops", so there's the Linux freedom included ...

@Gerard : I would be glad to get some feedback, and maybe also help, because I'm not a teacher. (Musician and expert both are names I can't give myself, but others have called me so pretty often.)

About making things publicly available ... of course, what the hack are we talking about? This is a penguin i'm thinkin' about. I'm not all-knowing, so what I teach should be open for discussion too. What I want to "sell" is my time and infrastructure, and "the Flemish words for the technical terms."

To give an idea, here's a shot of the spare place that I don't really use atm.

Here you see one side and 5 of the 8 windows. On the other side are windows too and it's at the 7th floor in an old industrial brewery in the center of a small town, not very far from the railway station. In the back are two more rooms with a heavy door and place for a window between them (control & live room).
and my plan is to build two or four more rooms in the large space, but that's not mandatory to get started. Another plan is to collect great recording gear so advanced users can come over to rent a room and something "the school" has that they want to use. Hmm, yes, I should change the title to music school ... , but hey wait, a school at my place

[freqrush]

Maybe I should ask the FLOSSmanuals team to start a book for this idea, but that's only worth it if I'm not the only writer. I'm currently writing in Dutch, using Open Office, but FLOSS manuals has some nice features for a collaborative project. I already started a JSynthLib developers book there and hardly find time to work on it, so asking for another book is not a good idea I guess.

[freqrush]

... So I've set up a page on Google sites where I can collaborate with others on the document.
Title: MyEMA (MyEMA means My Electronic Music Academy)
Location: http://sites.google.com/site/myelectronicmusicacademy

Just send me your e-mail if you want to add stuff, then I can invite you as collaborator. I'm picking up lots of stuff from this forum, so in fact everybody already is a collaborator

[spm_gl]

I'd put "Signal Flow" first. Mixers (analog or digital/virtual) don't make much sense unless you know the context. And things like pre/post fader sends are universal to both analog and digital mixing.

[Jan]

I really don't have much knowledge about this, but I second what spm_gl said. At least basic routing should be explained first. The complex routing stuff can be incorporated in the other segments, I think, since it's really all about practical application.