fbpx

ISPro Academy Fall 2022

ISPro Academy is our premiere educational program for artists, producers and engineers. It is ISPro Academy’s mission to create the next generation of business savvy, music creatives who will change the landscape of music for generations to come.

This fall, ISPro Academy focused on the Westside of Chicago partnering with the Chicago West Community Music Center. Led by Marlon King (Founder of Insomniac Studios) and Brian Sykes (founder of Unchained Genius), our crew has worked diligently with our students to instill the principles of music production and royalty collection. We have embarked on a journey using Bandlab as our chosen DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to illustrate creating song structure and tension/release in their music.

We stressed the importance of creating musical variation when setting up verse and hook structures. By building out this framework, we allowed our students to teach us about their musical taste. Based on their taste, we discussed with them the science and math used to create the music they loved. This allowed us to begin opening our students up to different musical possibilities. Such as using the same bar structure of their favorite songs to create something musically different but emotionally captivating.

We teach that music without the power to evoke emotion is not music at all. So our students began their own investigation, to create instrumentals that would speak to themselves as well as the listener.

As we progressed, we began to talk with our students about sync licensing with our good friend Dave Herrero from Whoz The Boss Music Library. He began to talk with our students about the importance of protecting your music and also how to get your music into tv and film. Our students were very interested in how Dave started his sync licensing career working for the Oprah Winfrey Show for years. This talk built up our students’ confidence in knowing that you can start making and protecting your music as early as you want; the caveat is making sure you are dedicated to your craft. 

At the end of our term, two of our standout students created instrumental projects titled Nintendo ™ and Ice Cream that are available on Bandcamp. They worked hard and put a lot of thought into the sound of their projects. Our students have made a great impact on us and we have also created a compilation sampler for your pleasure as well! With their inspiration, we seek to spread our unique curriculum to other young adults in our city. Please check out their projects and support our young producers as they begin their great musical journeys!

STUDENT PROJECTS