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Musician and sound engineer Zsolt Török is hosting a series of workshops exploring the world of music production — inviting you to learn about the process, get your hands dirty with state of the art creative tools and techniques, and express your musical ideas.
This workshop series will cover a wide range of topics including songwriting, recording, sampling, sound design, mixing, and mastering. Each session will include a presentation demonstrating the relevant concepts and techniques, while leaving ample time for hands-on experimentation, sharing, and discussion. Due to the creative and interactive nature of the series, there won’t be a set curriculum beyond the basics. The rest of the session topics will be updated on an ongoing basis, based on feedback from the participants.
Additional time spent on individual exploration and practice outside of the sessions will definitely help you learn faster, but there won’t be any homework assignments to submit; however, everyone is encouraged to work towards completing a song over the course of the series and present it at the free and open showcase session in December.
What you will need to follow along
Powerful computers and professional music production tools are more affordable and accessible than ever, but the wide range of options can still be daunting for beginners. To help those who are starting from scratch, here is a recommended starter kit for the attendees of this workshop series.
- Mac or Windows computer. Anything less than ~3 years old will likely work, see system requirements.
- Ableton Live 11 Standard Edition. Although the techniques taught in these workshops are generally applicable to any Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software, this is the one we’re going to focus on. Fully functional 90-day free trial is available—and we can continue to work with this version throughout the series.
- Novation Launchkey MIDI keyboard. Depending on your budget and space constraints, the keyboards range from the smallest Launchkey Mini MK3 to the full-sized Launchkey 61 MK3.
- Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface. You can get by with your computer’s built-in audio interface if you’re not planning to record external instruments or your own voice, but a dedicated audio interface will provide much better playback quality as well.
- Audio-Technica M50x headphones. In a pinch you can start out with cheaper wired headphones or the ones you already have, but these are a home studio staple.
This series has 8 episodes, running on the second Saturday of each month, at 6 PM CET.
It will conclude with a free and open showcase session in December where attendees get to share the music they created over the course of the series.
Dates: April 9, May 14, June 11, July 9, August 13, September 10, October 8, November 12
For those interested in attending, but unable to make all of these dates, this series will be recorded and shared with series ticket holders.
Depending on availability, the host might release tickets for each individual workshop, too.
Zsolt is offering two free tickets to students under 21 years, and people directly affected by the war in Ukraine. If this is you and you would like to attend this series, please contact us.
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| # | Date | Episode |
| 1 | April 9, 6-9 PM CET | Introduction to Ableton Live Getting started with a new creative endeavor can easily become overwhelming, especially when it’s something as complex and open-ended as digital music production. Experimentation and tinkering is a good first step in getting a feel for the possibilities, but this workshop salon will give you a more structured and guided tour of what Ableton Live 11 has to offer. |
| 2 | May 14, 6-9 PM CET | Everything Is a Remix: Making Music by the Creative Manipulation of Audio Samples |
| 3 | June 11, 6-9 PM CET | Say It in Song: Writing Beats and Melodies |
| 4 | July 9, 6-9 PM CET | Infinite Palette of Sounds: Creative Exploration of Sound Synthesis Techniques |
| 5 | August 13, 6-9 PM CET | Sound Your Best: Mixing and Mastering 101 |
| 6 | September 10, 6-9 PM CET | Genre-Focused Workshop #1 (voted on by series ticket holders) |
| 7 | October 8, 6-9 PM CET | Genre-Focused Workshop #2: 2000s Hip Hop and R&B |
| 8 | November 12, 6-9 PM CET | Playing Live: Taking Your Songs From Studio to Stage |
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