Study For A Day
Last Saturday 3rd of June, Abbey Road Institute once again opened it’s doors to Melbourne’s most enthusiastic, aspiring producers to experience life as an Abbey Road student at their Study For A Day. The day was jammed packed with a new format designed to give attendees more hands-on, one-on-one mentoring in specialised areas of music production.
The day started out with our head trainer Lance Krive giving a brief history of sound recording, outlining the influence Abbey Road Studio in London, the first ever purpose-built recording studio, had on how sound recording developed. He also detailed many artists through the decades that utilised the studios at Abbey Road and the specialised recording techniques that were developed within its famous walls.
In the second part of the morning session, Lance Krive went through an introductory class of Pro Tools, a Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW as it’s known in the industry) that is the industry standard software for recording and mixing music. Students were able to open up a pre-recorded session that was prepared on their own computer workstation in our custom designed labs and follow along as Lance detailed his process of mixing. After an hour of practical guided learning, it was time for a lunch break.
After lunch, Paul Edwards, Abbey Road Institute’s National Academic Coordinator briefly described the course content and entry requirements for the Advanced Diploma of Sound Production before explaining how the rest of the afternoon sessions would run. The remaining part of the day saw three mini tutorials running simultaneously with students being able to choose what area they would like to learn.
Bradley Toan, ARI’s Senior Technical Officer was stationed in the Avid S6 desk, demonstrating how to utilise the desk with Pro Tools by working on a mix. Julian Davis was stationed in the API 1608 desk and talked to guests about signal flow on an analog desk. In the lab, Alex Braithwaite, our Ableton trainer, set up a session in Ableton and demonstrated how he composes and arranges tracks and even delved into a little mixing at the end. Guests were able to move freely between the areas, asking questions and picking up tips as they went.
The feedback from our guests was extremely positive, most looking to undertake full-time study or start our new part-time course, which will become available later in the year. If you or anyone you know would love to attend an event like this, make sure you send an email to melbourne@abbeyroadinstitute.com to express your interest for our next event.