Arts Greenhouse Workshop Announcement
Truth About the Booth:
How To Record Hip-Hop Like A Pro
For those of us outside the music industry, “the booth” is the sound isolation room in which a vocalist records their performance. Movies and TV shows give us a glimpse of how professional artists record in the booth, but their full process is rarely revealed.
On Friday, February 19th, the Arts Greenhouse will be cracking open the world of hip-hop recording and sharing insight into what goes on beyond the studio door. The event will feature talented rappers, hip-hop producers, and recording engineers from across the region—including Freestyle, Riccardo Schulz, Soy Sos, and J. Armstead Brown. Poet Luqman Abdus-salaam will moderate a panel discussion, followed by a recording demo with rapper Freestyle. Participants will have an opportunity to engage with professionals, ask questions, and learn how tracks are produced.
The workshop aims to empower young people by helping them understand how to create their own music. The Arts Greenhouse believes that hip-hop can be a vehicle for artistic, social and economic empowerment by enabling teens to own and create their own culture. The potential of hip-hop is often obscured by the sensationalized and corporate hip-hop that reaches mainstream magazines and TV often obscures the real potential of this art. The Arts Greenhouse is committed to building positive hip-hop culture from the ground up by working directly with teens.
All teens and university students interested in recording hip-hop or being a producer of any sort are invited to participate!
The event will take place at Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts Building, Room A6 (the recording studio) between 4:30pm—6:30pm. For more information contact the Amos Levy at (412) 268-5269 or visit .
click for map and info on the featured guests:
An alumni of the Arts Greenhouse program, Freestyle is a rapidly ascending rap star. Where many Pittsburgh based artists take a locally based approach, Freestyle has pioneered a national and international trajectory. He has collaborated with international artists spanning Japan, Morocco, Bulgaria and Germany. He reached the top ten chart in Germany with a single, assisted by DJ Fatman Scoop. In the US he has won multiple competitions, trained with professional rapper Fabulous, and performed for crowds as big as 30,000.
Riccardo Schulz is Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Music where he teaches sound recording and runs the recording operations. His special interest is in recording, editing, and mastering classical music. Schulz has recorded and/or produced more than a hundred compact discs on a variety of record labels of world music, jazz, alternative rock groups, and selected hip-hop artists–including Freestyle, Unknown Prose, Lil ‘Toine, E-Nyse, Charon Don and D.J. Huggy. He oversees recordings with participants in the Arts Greenhouse project.
J.Armstead Brown is a professional musician and hip-hop producer. Originally from New York, Brown studied musicology as a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. He was the bandleader for the regionally renown hip-hop/rock band Eviction Notice and is the current bandleader for the Shadow Lounge open mic house band “Hambone Jenkins.” As a music producer, Brown has worked with independent hip-hop artists up and down the East Coast and in 2007 released his debut album “Fieldwork.” As an educator, Brown is the director of the Westinghouse Lighthouse Project, an after school program that uses multimedia and performing arts to educate and empower youth. He is also the co-founder and marketing director of Rhyme Calisthenics, an innovative hip-hop competition/game show.
Luqman Abdus-salaam leads the Arts Greenhouse Workshop Series as organizer, community liaison and primary lecturer. In addition he acts as a mentor for the youth, o ffering insight into the artistic process interweaved with broader life lessons. Abdus-salaam brings 15 years of experience as a hip-hop performance poet. He spent a period signed to Island Music Group, and currently works part time as a talent consultant for Philadelphia based independent record label, Ovum Recordings. As an educator, Abdus-salaam has taught creative expression workshops at Duquesne, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, Temple and Penn State universities. He is often requested to speak on the impact of hip-hop and relevance of art to activism.
Herman Pearl aka Soy Sos has been obsessed with music and recording since his first tape recorder at age 10. His broad range of experience includes internationally acclaimed record releases, film soundtracks, TV advertising jingles, music libraries and radio spots. He has also done sound design for theatrical and dance productions and served as front of house live sound engineer. As a guitarist he has appeared on national TV and toured throughout the US and Caribbean. His production esthetic can best be described as deep, clean, dirty, and dubbed out. He has a vast understanding of many popular dance and electronic music styles including Dance Hall/Reggae, Hip Hop and Deep House. Soy Sos is a co-founding member of 3 Generations Walking, Soma Mestizo and MKL vs. Soy Sos.
