Ableton Live 8 : 8 weekends of workshops : 8 U.S. Cities

Thavius Beck is an electronic musician/producer/programmer who has worked with various artists ranging from Nine Inch Nails to Saul Williams. He is currently signed to LA-based label Mush Records, where he has released several albums. His previous works are known for their distinctive sound, which melds equal parts rock, hip-hop, soul, industrial, and electronic music, showcasing his diverse musical influences in everything he makes. With a heavy focus on beat making, editing, and multi-track recording, he has used Ableton Live for the majority of his work (live and in the studio) for the past three years, giving him extensive practical knowledge of the software.

His latest album, Dialogue, will be released January 26, 2010, on Big Dada Recordings.

In addition to making his own music, he has held electronic music workshops at several colleges, given one-on-one tutorials to various artists on Ableton Live, and host his own repeating Ableton Live workshop at The Downtown Independent in Los Angeles.

Check out Mush Records website for more information.

Also check his myspace page.

Jon Margulies is a New York based producer, DJ, guitarist, and the creator of Hobotech In addition to being instrumental in the development of Dubspot's Ableton curriculum, he has authored the definitive user manual on the program, Ableton Live 7 (and 8) Power!. He has been performing professionally since the age of 11, and has worked with top musicians from around the world in a dizzying array of styles. His diverse career has seen him play jazz at the Knitting Factory, medieval music at the Spoleto Festival, techno at Burning Man, punk rock at CBGBs, ambient music at Winter Music Conference, and Hobotech at some of New York's strangest underground parties. Jon has composed music for the BMW films project, the documentary "The World's Best Prom," the promotional campaign for the film "It's All Gone Pete Tong," and has engineered music for SNLs "TV Funhouse." His recently released "Too Big To Fail" is now available from his website.

As many musicians have found, learning to properly use EQs, compressors, and limiters can be a daunting task. No matter how talented the composer is, and regardless of how the synth-lines kill it, the drums are banging, and the pads are flowing, if the soundstage is not clean the track is doomed to never reach its full potential.

Dan will outline his personally developed mixing and mastering techniques by discussing the proper application of EQs, compression, limiting, mid-side techniques, and some of the general pitfalls of mastering that plague many musicians.

Daniel Wyatt is a multi-platinum, grammy and emmy-nominated producer/engineer, who began his career as an artist on Warner Brothers, and has worked with Wax Poetic featuring Norah Jones, Curtis Mayfield, Thievery Corp., The Roots, Ultra Records, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Mos Def, Ziggy Marley, Elephant Man, Killah Priest, and many others. He produced the theme music for "Yo, MTV Raps" that ran internationally for over a decade, as well as for the emmy-nominated Sundance Film "Word Wars." In 2000, Daniel Wyatt co-founded Sonica Media Group, a boutique company dedicated to artist development and representation, including all facets of production and publishing. In it's years of operation, SMG has deepened its contacts within the media industry, developing a client list that ranges from Rawkus Records to New Line Pictures to NASA. He has also lectured extensively in Amsterdam and Tokyo. Currently Dan still lives in New York, where he maintains an active free-lance career and teaching schedule, including mixing and mastering classes at Dubspot.

Barry will discuss ways to protect and monetize your tracks by covering music publishing, the issues surrounding royalties, digital distribution in the new music age, and licensing your music for film, TV, video games and advertising.

Barry Cole is a Grammy nominated soundtrack producer and music supervisor. His company Spot Music stands at the threshold of music supervision for film and television. Based in New York City, Spot Music is an independent music supervision and consulting firm with more than 60 film credits, including Notorious, Sling Blade, Belly, and Super Troopers. In addition, Spot Music has a proven track record in soundtrack A&R, music clearance, musical score and post-production music clearance. The soundtrack for the film "Brown Sugar" was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 and the single from the film "Love Of My Life" performed by Erykah Badu won the Grammy for R&B Single Of The Year. Barry Cole's exceptional talent and artistry as a Music Supervisor caught the attention of Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. In 2004, Blackwell tapped Cole to oversee and manage his publishing catalog of over 15,000 songs including the catalogs of such luminaries as Bob Marley, Free, Spooky Tooth, Grace Jones, Black Uhuru and Justice. Cole is currently living in New York and maintains Spot Music while also managing the Blue Mountain Music Publishing catalog for North America.

-Additional participants will be announced as we near the event, but may contain other presenters, as well as some outside guests.

Hopeton Brown, aka Scientist, inadvertently began his music career when a friend suggested he visit the legendary dub producer/mixer King Tubby, not to remix records, but to get some transformers by which Scientist could build his own amplifiers. Soon Tubby challenged the Scientist to take a shot at remixing a record. Brimming with adolescent bravado, Scientist took Tubby's challenge, which led to an extended apprenticeship in dub experimentation under Tubby's guidance. Scientist's unique idiosyncratic dub style, playful and very psychedelic while loaded with echo explosions and blasts of feedback, has taken him through a legendary career, in which he has worked with the likes of Don Mais, Linval Thompson, and Henry "Junjo" Lewis, produced and remixed hundreds of tracks, while releasing them on an equal number of records and compilations. For over three decades, he has been a powerful presence in the Dub scene, and will always be known as one of the true pioneers of the genre.

The workshop will begin by looking at strategies for preparing your music for performance, and configuring the session to work with the appropriate MIDI controllers. Kiva will then discuss Ableton's effects options, and how to create incredible sounding, custom built, audio effect racks. Next, explore setting up advanced MIDI multi-mappings, and using macro-controls to create unique and powerful morphing effects racks. This is an exciting workshop full of tips and tricks for any aspiring Ableton DJ, producer, or performer looking to take their sound to the next level. The principles learned can not only be applied to performance, but production as well.

DJ Kiva is an NYC based artist/DJ/producer residing in Brooklyn, and founder of the recording studio and label Adios Babylon. He introduced the world to the sound of Stuttastep: a form of music derived from a formula of afro-cuban time signatures, broken beats, dubwise production, heavyweight bass, and a cast of talented NYC vocalists and poets. Kiva's music combines the best of soulful live performance with futuristic electronic music production techniques, and his latest full length album, "Degrees of Freedom," explores a wide spectrum of the human experience. The record features a highly talented crew of guest performers including NY afrobeat empress Toli Nameless, Nigerian vocalist/spoken word artist Onome, Oakland based hip-hop artist Sunru, Philly"s Jneiro Jarel, and many others.

Kiva has released numerous full length albums and remixed many soul, broken beat, reggae, and dance music artists, which have been released on Adios Babylon (USA), King Tubbys Heritage Dub Foundation (USA), Tommy Boy (USA), Kindred Spirits (Netherlands), Bagpak (USA), Sunshine Enterprises (Austria) and more. A veteran live musician, Kiva also tours internationally as live guitarist for "Willie Isz" featuring Jneiro Jarel and Khujo Goodie of Goodie Mob and currently teaches electronic music production at Manhattan based DJ & Music Production School Dubspot. For more information, check out his website.

Presentation topic will cover the integration of Max techniques alongside general programming strategies, as well as original ways to create your own live performance setup that emphasizes your personal abilities.

More coming soon...

Singer. Beatboxer. Songwriter. Live looper. One-man vocal band.

He's lent his lips to the "Godfather of Soul" and spit in the general direction of LL Cool J, Run DMC, and even the great Ray Charles. Armed with only a microphone, a laptop and one versatile delivery system Ñ his mouth Ñ Kid Beyond has been beatboxing for over twenty years and dishing out smoldering performances with artists such as with Imogen Heap, Keane, Lyrics Born, String Cheese Incident, Spearhead, and Sage Francis. While beats are Kid Beyond's trade, don't be surprised to hear guitar, bass, keys, turntable scratches, horns, movie samples and soulful singing flow from his mouth. Using Ableton Live, Kid Beyond combines these elements, creating full-fledged compositions in real time.

Kid Beyond is working on a new project, look out for new track releases in 2010.

Check out his home page or his myspace for more information.