MASTERCLASS 1 – MIXING AND MIXES AS ORGANIC WHOLE: JULY 8th, 10am-1pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructor: Phillip Sollmann (Efdemin)

Mixing, a central element of DJing, is a concept and craft that weaves together the music and sounds you select for your mix/set. It includes practical and methodical aspects, as well as aesthetic and artistic ones. The art of DJing is to combine these aspects to an entity. This can include mixing across styles, genres, and BPMs. Moreover, by an advanced approach of selecting and mixing you add a meta-narrative running through a set and can elevate it to a higher level.

• Various ways of mixing (and non-mixing)
• From seamless mixes to disruptive fragmentations
• Differences of a set played live compared to a recorded mix
• Extra-musical material (samples from movies, field recordings etc.)

Foto: Fabian Schubert

Phillip Sollmann (Efdemin) investigates multiple dimensions of sound: He studied Computer Music in Vienna. Working under his real name, he is a sound artist and experimental composer. Moreover, he has been producing electronic music under the project name Efdemin since the late 1990s. He holds a residency as a DJ at Berghain.

phillip-sollmann.de
Instagram: @efdemin

MASTERCLASS 2 – SELECTION AND DRAMATURGY: JULY 8th, 2pm-5pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructor: Lena Willikens

The creation of DJ mixes and sets starts with a process of selection: of genres and artists you want to feature, specific tracks and parts of musical pieces, up to extra-musical sources, such as samples from movies, TV, radio, internet sources, or field recordings and miscellaneous sounds. Learn about how you make these elements work together in the best possible way and to create a dramaturgy that tells a story: movie without images, a journey through different sounds and moods.

• Enhance your selection skills for creating exciting mixes/sets
• Know your material, musical genres, and sound you want to feature
• Explore Metaphors such as storytelling to support your dramaturgy
• From genre-specific DJing to eclectic, post-genre approaches
• Explore Metaphors such as storytelling to support your dramaturgy

Lena Willikens is an artist, DJ, and music producer. Her revered ability to switch gears between upfront UK bass mutations, motorik offbeats, and European synth curios, her intuitive bias prizes sensuality as much as cohesion. Besides being active in the contemporary arts project Phantom Kino Ballett (with Sarah Szczesny), she is a resident at Salon des Amateurs (Düsseldorf) and RSO (Berlin) and DJs in clubs all around the world.

Instagram: @lena_willikens

MASTERCLASS 3 – AT THE DECKS (PRACTICAL SESSION): JULY 9th,  10am-1pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructor: Fallon MacWilliam (Darwin) 

Enhance your use of the tools in functional and creative, ways. Explore the potential (and limits) of the main instruments of DJs: CDJs/turntables, and mixers. Learn how to optimize the use of the technological set-up for your own, individual practice.

• How to best use the possibilities of the DJ set-up
• Various ways to interact with the set-up
• Specifics and advanced knowledge of digital CDJ tools (Rekordbox)
• Enhance your use of faders, EQs, filters for mixing and dramaturgy

Fallon MacWilliams (Darwin) Born in Canada, Fallon honed her craft in Berlin, bringing the bleeding edge of UK sound-system culture to the techno capital with REEF, a party that began in 2016 at Griessmuehle, and then ABYSS, a sound-system series that plunges further into the depths of mind-bending bass weight. Whether she’s mixing records, curating her label or dreaming up new bass raves, Darwin is dedicated to unlocking that energy.

Darwin on Berlin School of Sound faculty page

Instagram: @darwin_reef

Foto: Bex Griffith

MASTERCLASS 4 – FROM DJING TO REMIXING AND PRODUCING: JULY 10th, 10am-1pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructor: Phillip Sollmann (Efdemin)

Neighboring musical practices, especially remixing and producing electronic (dance) music, are closely connected to DJing. Learn more about the methodology and practical approaches to remix existing music, create edits, or produce your own tracks derived from DJing. Get inspired to think of new ways to combine DJing with other fields that are not yet part of the canon of DJ practices.

• Aesthetics and methods of remixes, edits, producing
• Expand your practice through diverse methods and approaches
• Get inspired to create new ways of combining these practices

MASTERCLASS 5 – SHARING AND DISTRIBUTING YOUR MIXES: JULY 10th, 2-5pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructor: Fallon MacWilliam (Darwin) 

Distributing and Sharing your Mixes: Expand your knowledge on how online platforms provide a broad range of options for publishing and distributing your work. Discover alternative ways of community building by sharing your work and overcome the limiting mechanisms of the music industry.

• Enhance the ways to communicate, distribute, and promote your work as a DJ
• Alternative ways of distribution and community building
• How to subvert the limiting mechanisms of the party industry

MASTERCLASS 6 – CREATE AND COMMUNICATE YOUR ARTIST PROFILE: JULY 16th, 10am-1pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructor: Fallon MacWilliams (Darwin)

As DJing has liberated and democratized artistic expression and the ways of production, it is especially important to learn how to communicate your individual approach and style and to create a detailed and distinctive artistic profile. You will get introduced into the basics of creating your artist profile and the ways of how to share your work to specific audiences.

• Learn to communicate, distribute, and promote your work
• Define and formulate your artistic vision as a DJ
• Various ways of sharing your work to specific audiences

MASTERCLASS 7 – TURNTABLES AS EXPERIMENTAL INSTRUMENTS: JULY 16th, 2pm-5pm | ACUD CLUB
Instructors: Florian Meyer (Don’t DJ) and Marc Matter (Institut für Feinmotorik)

Turntables can be more than mere playback devices, you can turn them into instruments. Some artists have expanded this concept to extremes, creating new kinds of instruments that can even become playable sound installations. Others have derived new ways of composing music via the technological set-up and artistic methods of Djing. We will explore selected examples, including practical hands-on exercises to the ‘prepared turntables’ of Institut für Feinmotorik and Don’t DJ.

• The DJ setup as instrument for composition
• Creative expansion of the set-up and experimental approaches
• Get inspired by idiosyncratic and subversive methods

Florian Meyer (Don’t DJ), experimental composer, producer, remixer, label-owner, promoter, and DJ. A founding member of Institut für Feinmotorik, he was also part of The Durian Brothers and is active under the moniker Don’t DJ, producing polyrhythmic patterns and expanding notions of post-techno club music. He has released on labels such as Emotional Response, BAKK, Meakusma, Honest Jon’s, Berceuse Heroique, or EM, and runs the DISK label.

disk label at bandcamp
Instagram: @dont_dj

ARTIST TALK: July 3rd 5pm-7pm | THE LODGE (Berlin-Neukölln)

OPEN TO ALL PARTICIPANTS

Artist Talk with Eric D. Clark

Days before heading off to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival (!), Eric will talk about his idiosyncratic approach to music and DJing, as well as his general work as artist, producer and musician. A Q&A will round up this artist talk with one of the most original and prolific musical artists around.

Foto: Michael Mann

Eric D. Clark is a versatile artist active as musician, composer, producer and DJ known for a highly individual and eclectic style that transcends musical genre boundaries. He already had a chart hit in the 1990s with the group Whirlpool Productions (From: Disco to: Disco) and has spinned records in many contexts ever since, including a residency at the infamous Funky Chicken Club (Cologne).

Instagram: @eric_d_clark

FIELD TRIP: JULY 3rd 2:30-3:30pm | Location t.b.a.

OPTIONAL and OPEN for ALL

Genrealogy: Benefits and Limits of Musical Genres for DJing

Music can be divided into genres and new genres and sub-genres evolve all the time. In electronic music alone, there are myriads of sub-genres impossible to oversee, some featuring names close to avantgarde poetry while still being descriptive to a certain extent (e.g. Chemical Breaks, Vaporwave, or Progpsy, see Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music). However, some DJs overcome genres and follow a post-genre approach. We will check the Genre descriptions and tagging system in one of techno’s most prolific record shops and discuss the benefits and limitations of genres.