May 21st, 2012 by Dave Eisenberg for BostonInno
Building the Beat: Mmmmaven to Launch DJ School in Boston
Who wouldn’t want to set the pulse of a party by providing the soundtrack that sends a whole crowd into boogie-woogie frenzy? We’d all love to produce the next great track that keeps the heads and toes of the masses bobbing and tapping. Since so few of us are well versed in the ways of DJing, we need someone, or something to teach us about the digital 1s and 2s.
Enter: The Mmmmaven Project.
With its beat set to drop this summer, The Mmmmaven Project is a school for aspiring producers in Electronic Dance Music (EDM).
The laptop is becoming as ubiquitous an instrument as the electric guitar and the Mmmmaven Project aims to teach aspiring producers how to make this music and develop a firm understanding of the technology used to do so.
“We’ve started to notice the tremendous wealth of music producers in the city using Abletonand iZotope,” said David Day, cofounder of Mmmmaven. iZotope is a research-driven audio technology company based in Cambridge, while Ableton is a German software company.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘why don’t we discover talent, get talent to mature under our watch so that not only are we working with people that are already trained, but actually training people from the ground up?’”
A big part of it is keeping the talent in Boston, too.
“A lot of the problem or challenge of Boston is maintaining the talent that’s produced here. People tend to move out of Boston once they’ve learned how to do X,Y and Z.”
Take Bristol for instance, described as one of the youngest cities in the UK by cofounder Alex Maniatis.
“The greatest thing about that city is that people are moving there,” he said.
So how to make Boston more like Bristol in that regard?
“We put you into a club environment if you’re ready for it and from there, you know, depending on your skill level and the demand, put together tours, put you at Identity opening for Rusko or something like that,” said Day.
For anyone unfamiliar, in the EDM scene, Rusko is basically God with a pair of headphones wrapped around his neck. So there is some incentive to stick around town.
“We want to make it so people want to come here. Before, electronic music tours would skip Boston,” added Maniatis. “Now we’re kind of making noise that needs to be noticed for its own talent, not just for bringing talent.”
The courses will be taught by “real DJs,” according to Maniatis, with one of the curriculums having been developed by Baltimoroder, a product of Mmmmaven’s talent agency. And students can seek out scholarships as well.
They’re hoping classes will begin in July, but the first official announcement will come on the first of June.
It’s not easy to just create a scene, to turn Boston into a one-stop destination for all your EDM needs.
But this is how you let the beat build.
