The morning of Wednesday June 20th, Tony, Aunt Pennie and Uncle Art and I were all flying out. Tony went with Aunt Pennie and Uncle Art to the airport around 8 AM. My flight was not until around 12:30 PM so I waited until 9 AM to go to the airport. My first flight was from Dublin to London. I landed in Heathrow and I had a 4 hour layover so I decided to take the tube into the center of London to go shopping. It took about 45 minutes to get from the airport to central London, and once I was there I walked around a lot and visited the Supreme store and Palace store in Soho.
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I ended up only buying one shirt from the Palace store. They did not have a ton of stock in the Supreme store, I liked the Palace store much better. I did not take pictures of the Palace store but here is what it looks like:
I bought a shirt that was pink, blue and white. I liked it because it had summer vibes, here is what it looks like:
After buying that shirt, I went back to the tube to get back to the airport. I was only in London for about 30 minutes because I did not have a ton of time. I got back to the airport on time and got to my gate. My next flight was about 7 hours, but was delayed for 2 hours because they had to inspect the airplane after apparently a bird had hit near the engine. After they did all the paperwork and safety checks or whatever they had to do, we were finally able to take off. I got into Boston around midnight. I took a taxi to the HI Boston Hostel where I was staying because it was so late. I got my card and went to my room. Each room has 6 beds and each person is assigned a bed.
I woke up Thursday morning around 6 AM because I was still on the Dublin time. I took a shower and then went to walk around Boston. I walked around for about 2 hours, I walked around the boston commons which is a large park area really close to where I was staying. I also walked next to this big river and it was a really sunny day out that day. Here are some pictures I got from my walk:
At 1 PM that day, I had a tour of Berklee College of Music. I walked from my place to Berklee around 12:30ish to get there at 1. It was about a 20 minute walk but it was a nice walk because I got to see buildings and stuff. Once I got there I went up to the 6th floor where the tour started. A ton of other kids were there with their parents, I was like the only one who was alone which was cool. We all were introduced with a 30 minute presentation with a ton of information. They explained a lot of undergrad programs and how to apply and all of that stuff. We then walked around the college and were shown the two main buildings which were 150 Mass Ave and 160 Mass Ave which were buildings right next to eachother. We were shown the dorms and what they looked like. Above the 10th floor she said, had a really good view of Boston. We got to see a lot of class rooms, and a lot of awesome software and technology all around.
The tour was finished around 3:30 PM. I walked back to the Hostel and hung around for a bit and for dinner I went to find a Taco Bell. The closest one was a train ride away so I took the T to the place. I got to walk around more of Boston though so it was a win win. I found the Taco Bell in a mall and had some food, then I went to go back to my place. On the way out of the mall, going down an escalator, a lady in-front of me had dropped her credit card in-between the two escalators but wasn't able to get it, so I went back up and grabbed it for her.
I went to bed around 11 PM Thursday night. Friday morning I woke up and had a shower again. I packed my bags because I had to be at Berklee from 9-11 AM to get my Berklee ID, and my dorm key and stuff. I took the T about 3 stops then walked the rest of the way until I made it to 160 Mass Ave which is where the dorms were. I got my ID and key and went to floor 9 which is where my room was. I got all situated and then the camp began at 11 AM.
Our first thing all the students went to was in room B41 in the building 150 Mass Ave. It was a presentation by this guy named DiViNCi who is a Musician and uses a lot of cool technology to perform music live. He talked about producing electronic music. He was a really cool guy. He uses Ableton Live in conjunction with other pieces of technology such as MPCs and the Ableton Push which looks like this:
This is the Ableton Push, and allows you to have hands on control of an unlimited amount of sounds, and you can basically route each button to a sound, and do a ton of stuff that allows you to perform music live. As you can see, it has a ton of different features and is a very strong piece of equipment.
For each meal at this camp, I would eat in the cafeteria which is on the 2nd floor of 160 Mass Ave. They have some pretty good food. We had lunch after our presentation from DiViNCi. We next had a lot of choices of what to do next, they called them 'Breakout Sessions' and each person could choose what one they wanted to go to based on what was the most interesting for them. I chose to go to the one called Creative Sound Design Techniques, which was in room B58 with Mr. Jeff Baust. This room was really cool, each station had 2 seats, a cool MIDI keyboard, some MPCs and 2 monitors with lots of software. This session we were using LogicPro which is a DAW for the Mac. He taught us a lot of techniques to modify sounds and just learning to use Logic in general. Many of the people I met at the camp used Logic already, I was one of the few who doesn't use it, but I want to start soon because I have a Mac and if I get it, I can make music when I am traveling. It looks like a very good software.
The next breakout session was from 4-6 PM and it was at 22 Fenway. It was also with the same teacher and this one was called electronic music mixing techniques and we also were shown these using Logic Pro, but these techniques can be applied to most DAWs. (Oh by the way DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation)
This was very useful for Mixing & Mastering, and we were shown techniques such as side-chaining, parallel compression, pitch processing and using EQ. Basically these are all used to Mix and Master tracks which transforms the piece of music into its final form that is going to be heard by everyone. What this does is looking at each sound in the piece of music and seeing what needs to be done to it. For example, maybe a kick might have to much high frequency in it, and we can use tools to lower the high sounds in the kick to make the kick a much lower hitting sound. Another example is with the Vocals in the piece, there is a technique that can lower the inhales of the person singing so that it is not so loud. Little things like this help create the final form of a piece of music. I liked that session, and after we were done it was dinner time.
After dinner, we had another breakout session from 7-10 PM. I went to the one called Open-Mic where each person could go up and show their own musical works. It was very fun, the people there were very talented and it was awesome listening to the variety of music the people had created. Some had beats, some made EDM music and it was just very fun.
I got some snacks from 7-Eleven then went back to my dorm. I went to sleep around midnight.
Saturday consisted of another DiViNCi presentation, this time he performed some music for us which was awesome. He used this unique thing I have never seen before which was a tube that went from a piece of software into his mouth, then a microphone also. How this contraption worked was different waves were created and sent through the tube into his mouth, then he would shape his mouth and the sound would go into the microphone. Basically, the tube replaces his vocal chords, so he just has to use his mouth to talk without actually talking and the result is like an electronic vocal thing thats really cool.
Another thing I did Saturday was attend a session that taught us how to perform with the Ableton Push. I learned how cool this piece of software was and I would love to have this someday. I went to a DJ thing where we were taught how to use turntables to DJ which was cool, but probably not down my alley as much as the other sessions. Saturday night at 7 PM there was a faculty performance which was pretty dope. It was not exactly what I had imagined, but it was still cool. The music they performed live, was like atmospheric and very space like. After that 1 hour performance there was Open-Mic again which was fun.
Sunday was the last day of the camp. I went to the session on working with labels and promotion. The guy teaching us stuff was pretty cool, we were basically told a lot of stuff about how music labels work. At 1 PM there was one final DiViNCi presentation, and at the end he did an insane performance and like flipped some of his equipment over and went insane, it was really dope. That was the end of the camp, around 4 PM I went to my room and got my stuff and then went to the Hostel again to stay Sunday night.
Sunday night I went to eat at this place called Maria's Taqueria. I wanted Mexican food since I have been in Dublin for a long time and they dont have good Mexican food compared to the US. I was very happy with the burrito I ate. Monday morning, I got prepared as I was traveling back to Dublin that day. I got up around 8 AM, took a shower and washed a load of clothes. Before I left the Hostel, I walked a bit more around Boston. I visited Chinatown in Boston, they had a really cool gate:
I also saw some cool artwork on a building in a park:
I walked a different way back to my Hostel and waited until about 2 PM to get a Lyft to the airport. My flight was at 4:37 PM from Boston to Philadelphia. Then I had a flight at 9:15 PM from Boston to Dublin.
June 20 - 25, 2018
June 20 - 25, 2018
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