folly Summer School of Sound
June 27th, 28th, 29th 2007, 10am - 4pm
St Martins College, Lancaster

This year’s Summer School of Sound will be led by internationally-acclaimed sound artist collective GOTO10.

Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux will lead a three-day course exploring free open-source software available for home-studio purposes, such as audio and midi sequencers, sound editors and virtual effect-racks, including the creative possibilities of puredata, Hydrogen, Seq24, Icecast, DarkIce, JackRack/LADSPA, Audacity, Ardour and ZynAddSubFX as well as a range of GNU/Linux distributions such as pure:dyne, Ubuntu Studio, Debian Multimedia, Musix, 64 Studio, APODIO and Planet CCRMA.

The Summer School of Sound will also include an evening performance on Thursday 28 June by goto10 artists de Valk and Mansoux, as well as Claude Heiland-Allen and Chun Lee.

This three-day accredited summer school is aimed at musicians, designers, artists and those with an interest in multimedia technologies who want to explore how new digital technologies can help and inspire us when working with music and sound.

Participants do not need a high level of technological or programming skills, although these would be beneficial. A strong interest in one or more of the following areas is essential: sound art, music, technology, open source software.

Booking fees and deadline:
Organisational rate: £250
Individual rate: £150

Places are limited: to apply please email Jennifer Stoddart, Programme Co-ordinator at jennifer.stoddart ‘at’ folly.co.uk with brief details of your background, interest and experience in the areas listed above, and an indication of your level of computer literacy.

The closing date for applications is Thursday 31 May 2007. Applicants will be informed after this date if their application has been successful.

Please note: to apply for a place, you need to be able to attend all 3 days of the Summer School. This is an intensive course, but it will be fun, and you’ll benefit from some of the leading and most inspiring artists in their field!

Program overview
Day 1
11.00 – 13.00
Introduction to the pure:dyne operating system, tour of the software included on the live CD and its extra modules, introduction to some basic GNU/Linux skills
14.00 – 15.15
ALSA and sound card configuration, and an introduction to JACK, the low latency audio server, that will be used to share audio and MIDI between the covered software
15.45 – 17.00
Simple example of JACK use: playing audio files with XMMS, applying real-time effects using JACK Rack/LADSPA and recording the results with the Audacity sound editor

Day 2
11.00 – 13.00
Which GNU/Linux distribution is best for me? Live CD’s and regular distributions such as pure:dyne, APODIO, Musix, Debian Multimedia, Ubuntu Studio, 64 Studio, Planet CCRMA…
14.00 – 15.30 Introduction to MIDI and sequencers. Using a MIDI sequencer (Seq24) to control a software synthesizer (ZynAddSubFX) and working with a drum machine (Hydrogen)
15.45 – 17.00
Using Ardour to record, edit and mix multi track audio.

20.00 – 23.00
Performances by 0xa (Chun Lee and Aymeric Mansoux), Marloes de Valk and Claude Heiland-Allen

Day 3
11.00 – 13.00
Software and hardware considerations when building your own audio workstation: real time kernel, sound card support, system optimisation, Mac or PC
14.00 – 15.30
Introduction to Pure Data, a dataflow patcher software for digital signal processing. Build a simple FM synthesizer and control it with Seq24.
15.45 – 17.00
Distributing and releasing your work: how to encode in different file formats and an introduction to streaming audio using Icecast and DarkIce