Thinking further about the connection between Ensemble Offspring’s live instruments, experimental sounds (imitating sounds of engineering on the vessels), sampled orchestral sounds and synthesis, I’ve decided to sharpen up my 1994-trained (thank you Exeter University) synth skills by taking the LiveSchool sound design course this coming November and December. It’s not cheap, but the last time I did synthesis in more detail than scrolling through presets was on a Minimoog. So as I discussed a few blogs ago, I’m going to combine my desire to become a better user of Ableton Live with some sound synthesis revision – this time virtually with Live’s built-in synthesisers. I did LiveSchool’s Begin short course last year and love the way they teach a small number of users hands-on, so I think this will be really great both technically and creatively…

Here’s a little taster of the kind of event that these guys put on…