Cold Blend 2009/2011

The art of producing and mixing music.

A FREE 12 week DJ skills and production course.

Newcastle Arts Centre, Westgate Road.

Courses will run throughout 2009/2011.

Spaces are free but limited. Get in touch now to secure your space.

Candidates must be aged between 16-24. All styles of music catered for.

Newly equipped studio for Cold blend this year.

Our young person’s steering group recently made an application to the Youth Opportunities Capital Fund and were successful, drawing down funds to update the current Cold Blend studio. Mark Lowry, tutor for Cold Blend, tells us a little more about the gadgets.

Can you list just a few of these items, and what it is they do?

Mark Lowry: “On the DJing side, we upgraded the course with 2 sets of CDJ400's and 2 DJM 400 mixers from Pioneer, on top of these 2 new digital setups we added 2 brand new laptops both running Traktor Scratch Pro. This means that our attendees are able to experience the most current digital DJing set ups.

Our production side also benefited from huge upgrades, mainly on the software side, with all of our systems running Cubase 5. The addition of 2 laptop production units also adds great flexibility to our production training.

A new Adam monitoring system and Synergy PC now means that the training we can offer is bang up to date.

All of this plus Reason 4.0 and Recycle 2.1 upgrades means the studio is running at full spec”.

What are the direct benefits this equipment will have for the production training you will deliver?

Mark Lowry: “The benefits are huge, we can now offer up to date training on one of the worlds best production systems. It really means Cold Blend is now offering training on state of the art equipment, which for a free course really is something special”.

How does it improve what Cold Blend can offer to those enrolled?

Mark Lowry: “To put it into perspective, for the same kind of training on this type of equipment at a specialist school you would be looking at paying around £1000 a course.

The Cold Blend course uses first-rate producers and DJs to teach skills including beat-matching, beat juggling, turntablism, CD mixing, FX, editing, sequencing and sampling with access to the latest equipment and software.

If you are starting up, keen to develop existing skills or making first forays into production, get in touch with us to secure your space.

Contact: Joe Frankland
(0191) 245 0099 ext. 4 for more information.

Also- see our new Facebook page for further information.