In case you or someone you know may be interested: this year’s intensive week-long SuperCollider workshop at CCRMA / Stanford, California will take place August 26-30. More info here: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/workshops/supercollider
The workshop is designed for total beginners even without any programming experience. We usually have a class of 10-20 people from various backgrounds and levels of experience, and it’s amazing how much learning can happen in person in just one week. Every year it’s been a lot of fun to spend a whole week in SuperCollider with a great group of people!
In addition to the usual topics, this year I will try and bring some guests from the Santa Clara Laptop Orchestra (SCLOrk), so we will likely share some of the SuperCollider work we’ve been doing on that front.
Bruno, I already reached out to Eli (Fieldsteel) suggesting such an idea. He was also quite open to the possibility, so maybe we could try to look further into this if you’re interested (and available).
There’s already a few people on this side of the Atlantic (Thor Magnusson, Andrea Valle, Daniel Mayer, and probably many more who’s online names don’t show where they are). If you combined those on the stateside with the European team it could make up a formidable teaching resource. From that it would be possible to make some great workshops, which like Stanford, could be regular yearly events!
By the way, I think HJH lives, or is based in Japan(?). Maybe he could be tempted one year to come to Europe to head a workshop!
I’m in Berlin and would consider running something together there some time in the next year if there was enough interest (though probably next spring at the very earliest).
I’d be very curious to hear what people might want in terms of time/intensity (e.g. 1-2 days, 1 week, etc), and focus (introductory things, synth building, design patterns, etc)?
Nice to hear from you Scott, I did wonder where you were. I think there’s room for a week long workshop - not unlike Stanford’s CCRMA or the EMUTE workshop (in Brighton) - which should cover all levels. This way you would attract more people. Maybe Bruno could tell us a little about the various ‘levels’ at CCRMA. As for what to do, I guess that depends on the levels, although I suspect ‘composition’ could be a general theme, which gives direction to much of learning process.
As for the possibilities of shorter workshops, it could be interesting. I’m in Brussels, which is fairly central if I travel elsewhere to participate, and why not see if there’s interest for short mid-term get togethers?
In the CCRMA summer workshop we usually have between 10 and 20 participants of various levels, many who never did any programming before. But often a few experienced programmers in the room as well. Musical background also all levels. Sometimes people come from visual arts, or interested in sound art. So we cover basically all of Gentle Intro to SC, with special topics added on the fly depending on participants’ questions. Mornings are lectures, afternoons are labs where each person works towards building a personal project to present at end of week, & I go around giving individual help. It’s a really intensive week where people are there full time, so it quickly becomes a nice transient community. Last afternoon is project presentations, followed by barbecue!
