Young Producers Workshop (Ages 16–20): Music Production + Songwriting

About this event

Ages 16–20. NO experience necessary. NO equipment needed. Limited to 10 students.

An evening session for older teens who want to make real tracks with their own crowd. Separate sessions run for ages 8–11, ages 12–15, and adults 21+.

A 3-hour studio session creating songs in multiple genres, including lyric writing and musical arrangement. Students record instrumental parts, sample, mix and produce original music together as a workshop collective. All skill levels welcome. Every student will have the opportunity to create and participate in every part of the process.

Students will be exposed to:

• Equipment Setup (microphones, speakers, keyboards and more) • Recording Sound Sources • Gain Staging • Song Arrangement • Applying Effects and Automation • Mixing and Mastering

Goals of the Workshop

Create 2–4 musical works as a group by recording musical parts and samples into a digital recording program like Ableton Live. Arrange and mix the tracks into a complete song from intro to outro. Lyric writing is part of the production-building process. Genres like Hip Hop, Reggae, Rock, Blues and EDM will be explored.

What Students Get Out of It

Hands-on time with many different instruments: drums, bass guitar, guitar, percussion, drum machines, keyboards and more.

Students can suggest songs whose sound they want to explore, and the group will build similar tracks, incorporating those musical ingredients into original compositions and productions.

Students learn to work as a team in a "band" of contributors on every production the class creates. They take part in recording, mixing and mastering, learning modern music software and how to balance tracks together. If the group decides to release the music as a single or album, students experience uploading to a digital distributor for release on iTunes, Spotify and more, and registering songs with PROs like ASCAP and BMI, so they see how material is released into the world and how their contribution is protected alongside other contributors.

Held in the recording studio at Jinny's Music Studio, 1620 Oakland Rd #D200, San Jose.