From Friday January 27 – Thursday February 2, the excellent Saffron music tech programming is offering seven days of online workshops, ranging from running a label to vocal production to mastering. It’s pay-what-you-will, exclusively for women, non-binary, and trans folks worldwide. And with this faculty, if you identify with one of those groups, you might want to check your calendar.
On board for these seven days of sessions, offered early evening/late afternoon UK time:
- Heba Kadry, known as mastering engineer for Björk
- Elana Colombi, producer/DJ and NTS Radio resident
- Josette Joseph, XL Recordings in-house engineer
- Manuka Honey, DJ producer
- rRoxymore, Berlin’s own fantastic “organic-electronic boundary pusher”
- Homay Schmitz, composer
- Pop Roberts, producer
- Trishes (pictured at top), producer
Saffron is a wonderful project, which we covered in 2020:
Tickets start at just £1 per day, pay what you can – no questions asked. This also goes on the understanding that you can work out how you identify, and appreciate that cis men have opportunities elsewhere and in other contexts, as they put it that this particular even isn’t for you.
It’s great to check out how they’ve put this together, as added inspiration – with some partners we also appreciate!
Check this schedule, all times UTC+0 (so for your city, -8 LA, -5 Lima/Bogota, -6 = NYC/Mexico City, -3 Rio, +1 = Berlin/Paris, +2 = Kyiv/Beirut, +4 Yerevan, +5:30 Dehli, +8 Beijing/Manila, +9 Tokyo, +11 Sydney, +13 Auckland):
Friday, 7:30pm: Solo gigging with Trishes (Novation)
Saturday, 4:30pm: Mixdown “surgery hour” with rRoxymore (AIAIAI … also the sound I make when mixing…)
Sunday, 5:00pm: Vocal production with Pops Roberts (Ableton)
Sunday, 8:00pm: Beat breakdown with Josette Joseph (Ableton)
Monday, 7:30pm: Composing and arranging strings with Homay Schmitz (Spitfire Audio)
Tuesday, 7:30pm: Elana Colombi on starting and running a label (Saffron)
Wednesday, 7:30pm: Multi-genre DJing with Manuka Honey (Pioneer DJ)
Thursday, 7:30pm: Heba Kadry with a mastering Q&A (Soundtoys)
Sign up (and check their ongoing membership program, also worldwide):
Is this needed? Math says yes: the latest Annenberg report shows less than 5% of the music tech industry is women, non-binary, or trans (put together), and less than 1% of these are people of color.
The program looks amazing. Certainly if you do attend, we’d love to hear how the experience goes and what you come away with! And given those numbers and the opportunities here, do spread the word!
https://saffronmusic.co.uk/events/7-days-of-sound-2023/
All images courtesy Saffron.
