Stephanie Reininger was a geology major; she wasn’t looking forward to her career in science. Fortunately, in her fifth year at University of Colorado at Boulder, she went to the Red Bull Music Labs.
“If I hadn’t gone to the Red Bull Music Labs, I might be an intern at the Geological Survey,” says Reininger, a current DJ at Radio 1190, a Boulder campus station. “I started a band because of this thing. Before, I didn’t have the means and I didn’t know how to approach it.”
Red Bull Music Labs teaches aspiring musicians how to create and remix their own music. Instead of spending a fortune on studio time, Music Labs shows its students how computer software and the Internet empowers them to record their own music and distribute it to more listeners. Using software programs like Reason on a laptop – which gives musicians a virtual rack of instruments and allows them to tweak sounds – the participants walk away from the five-day experience with an original recorded song.
Now in its third year, the Labs will visit Chicago March 1 through March 5 before moving on to Houston, St. Louis, Durham and San Francisco.
Ten musicians are accepted for the program based on a written application. Instructors look for passion about music and pick a variety of skill and experience levels. Because of remixing, the most beneficial genres are ambient, beats and breaks and hip-hop, followed by rock, metal and punk.
Most participants are college-aged, and a lot of them are working DJs, says Elizabeth Ordenstein, a spokeswoman for Red Bull.
“It’s a really great networking opportunity (for participants), and they’re empowered to go out and experiment with their own music,” Ordenstein says. “Red Bull created Music Labs, collaborating with Lorin Ashton, because we wanted to provide independent musicians with an opportunity.”
Ashton, Red Bull Music Labs head instructor, co-founder and underground DJ, created the basic framework for the Labs while in college. The prototype Music Labs is based on a drum workshop he taught at a juvenile hall to earn class credit. Ashton taught the students to produce, mix and write poetry and turn it into hip-hop, he says.
“It was based in idealism,” Ashton says. “I was a liberal arts student in California, and I wanted to get my hands into life. I wanted to work with kids and give something back to music because music meant so much to me. I wanted to change the world.”
Ashton decided to make the workshop about remixing, recording and creatively producing music. According to Ashton, this experience is life-changing for a musician who wants to leave his band and simulate the rest of the instruments through a computer.
“(The computer music program) Reason simulates a full studio,” he says. “It’s a one-stop way to produce music from the ground up.”
Participants learn the programs in workshops with their own workstation, which includes a laptop, headphones, a piano keyboard and software. Ashton and other instructors demonstrate lessons on the software by projecting their computer screens in front of the class.
“It showed me opportunities I didn’t see before,” says Reininger, a student at the Boulder lab during November 2005. “You can just sit down at your computer and produce your own music. You don’t have to pay someone else to do it.”
During the intensive five-day process, students get exposure to guest speakers from the industry who discuss their paths to success in the music business. Students also learn music business skills in a class about copyright law. It teaches students about record labels, publishing and the basics of a record deal, as well as the importance of marketing on the Internet, says Paul Anthony, who teaches the class.
“I teach students how to leverage the Internet using sites like MySpace and CafePress,” says Anthony, CEO and founder of music licensing company Rumblefish. “There are a lot of resources online that artists don’t know about. And (with these programs) you can create fans who will buy your CDs and shirts and you can create momentum.”
While Music Labs doesn’t teach musicians how to sell millions of CDs and become rock-star famous, they do teach participants how to take initiative with their music, Anthony says.
“Before the Music Labs, I was just someone with a lot of ideas driving me insane,” says Moses Goldstein, a November 2005 participant. “Now I have all the tools to make any song I want. I have two songs on MySpace.com and eventually I will have my own Web site. It was like my whole life I wanted to sing, and the Music Labs gave me a voice.”
If you want to participate in the Chicago music lab, applications are due Friday, Feb. 10. Visit www.redbullmusiclabs.com for more information.
Music junior Rebecca Huval is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
