The Toy Box Studio is psyched to announce that our first Studio School will take place this saturday Jan 26th at noon! We are teamed up with J Pierson of Reggaerica to provide teaching from the studio. Please contact lij@thetoyboxstudio.com if you are interested in attending. We are building our syllabus this go around and offering the first class Jan 26th for free! We only ask of the students that they provide thoughtful feedback to let us know how we can improve future classes. There will be more introductory classes to come as well as master classes in the future that will go deeper into detail.

Our first class is “Introduction to Tracking Sessions”. We will be miking up a band for tracking, and then move into overdubs to finish out a track during the 6 hour session. We plan to give insight into all the aspects of the session as we go and explain many of the things that dont really get covered in a traditional college recording course. The class will touch on real world skills and problem solving during the session. Rather than focusing on “state of the art” equipment we will be focusing on skills that an engineer and producer can bring to any recording session. Students will learn how to trouble shoot and workaround many of the typical obstacles that arise during a session.

While many teaching programs offer access to expensive gear and highlight the studio’s benefits we plan to focus on empowering the engineer with skills that can be applied in any studio situation. A recording session should finish with the client singing praises for the engineer first and for the studio second. We want to help students on the path toward that recognition. Lij Shaw will be teaching the class, has 25 years of experience recording in studios all across the country, and enjoys sharing what he has learned along the way. Our goal with Studio School is to enable students to walk into any studio large or small and be prepared to make great records!

We are grateful to the Daniel Walker Band for providing music for the session.

Cheers!

Lij