Plugins, Programmes and Platforms
Jim Pinchen (Workforce Development Manager: Rhythmix and MusicLeader South East) talks about being yourself with young people; MAC/ PC resources, Plugins, Programmes and Platforms; the elephant in the room – cracked software; what are we doing to keep our workforce up to date; and asks for your thoughts.
Anyone working with young people will agree on the importance of ‘just being yourself’ in sessions. Talk how you talk, be honest, empathetic without trying to identify too much and call young people ‘blud’. I’m a middle-class, white, 38year old, British male from Rugby in the midlands, so there’s no need to break into Jamaican Patois when working in a PRU in Guildford. That said, I genuinely love drum n bass, dubstep, metal, house, hip-hop, grime and a fair bit of pop music and I’m not too bad at making it which wins me ‘cool points’ - wid da yuf.
It seems as though we talk a lot about MAC vs PC and that’s important when considering the resources of the vast array of formal and non-formal music education settings and young people’s continued musical progression.
• What then about programmes? I use Logic but it’s only available on MAC, MAC is largely considered a better platform for music making but is arguably too expensive for young people and schools. • What then about the huge elephant in the room? We can’t get around it, young people download cracked software such as FL Studio, which is great for house and dubstep and takes up very little ram so runs pretty well on low spec PCs. So why not use FL Studio and show young people how to use it? Ah, it’s on available on PC and most of our workforce are MAC based. • What about using programmes that are useable on both platforms? Reason, Cubase and Ableton Live can be used on both. I remain faithful to Logic but Ableton’s developments in accessible music making are pretty exciting. Cubase for me is a good solid all round platform with nice layout, good midi functionality and awesome audio manipulation capability.
I recently read an article by Skrillex which talked about plugins, programmes and platforms and it led me to think about what we use when working with young people. Skrillex uses Ableton Live and creates a lot of truly awesome basses using Native Instrument’s ‘Massive’ plugin among others.
My question and concern in this blog is around whether we focus enough on ensuring our workforce are using industry standard platforms, plugins and techniques and what, if anything, are we doing about it? MusicLeader and Youth Music have produced fantastic training resources around working with hard to reach groups and in diverse settings but what of plugins, mastering, mixing to industry standards. I feel there’s more we can do and I’d be keen to know people’s thoughts and existing resources.