ABOUT MELBOURNE SOUND SCHOOL

Turn plants into musical instruments, turn light waves into sound waves, make music from code, make a synthesiser think it’s Mariah Carey – this is Melbourne Sound School. We’re a community school upskilling and celebrating people making electronic music from the margins. Our 2017 and 2018 programs were a huge success: initially a 100% self-funded and volunteer run project, we were awarded Best Experimental/Avante Garde Act in the 2017 Music Victoria Awards. In 2018 we went on to run 60 workshops at Footscray Community Arts Centre, Phoenix Youth Hub, Signal Arts, Artful Dodgers Studios, and other spaces across Melbourne.

Folks are hungry for high quality accessible electronic music education. As of 2011, only 7% of Ableton Live users identified as women. A 2015 Forbes list of the highest paid EDM (Electronic Dance Music) DJs are all male and mostly white. Other press celebrates the minority of white women at the forefront of electronic music, ignoring its black history. So many of electronic music's innovators were and are queer, people of colour, women or femme, or on low incomes – where would house, techno, and hip hop be without these communities? Let’s keep making music powerful and accessible for the next generation of creatives on the margins.

WHO WE ARE

Bridget Chappell

Bridget Chappell is the founder of the Sound School, and has coordinated many of its programs. As an arts organiser they work also with Signal Arts and Arts Mildura; as a music educator they have also worked with Girls Rock! Melbourne, Wild at Heart, Living Music, and the Department of Education at Malmsbury Youth Justice Centre. Their own creative practice sees them produce and DJ as Hextape, produce commissions for the City of Melbourne, Critical Mass Festival and Liquid Architecture, and complete a Bachelor of Music at VCA. They spend most of their time hoping someone will bring up synthesizers so they can talk about them more.

Neil Cabatingan

Neil is the current lead coordinator. He has been involved with Sound School since 2018, and led numerous Sound School programs at Footscray Community Arts Centre, SIGNAL Arts, Phoenix Youth Centre, Yarra Youth Services, Monash University Wholefoods, as well as lectures at RMIT University & Melbourne Polytechnic. As a music producer, he works under the alias “Kuya Neil” and has established himself as a heavyweight of Melbourne’s underground hip-hop scene, notably his collaborative project with prolific vocalist Teether. He founded the artist collective and digital platform CONTENT.NET.AU, representing the ecosystem of underground music across Naarm and Eora, Australia. His fluidity as an artist are evident in his diverse collaborations and projects - from soundtracking the left-field representations of rap and contemporary club to his explorations of third culture aesthetics and 2000s internet art.

Marty Ydema
Marte is the current lead coordinator of Sound School. While studying contemporary/jazz flute they picked up sound production units alongside their regular classes. Quickly becoming disillusioned with mainstream music and sound education, they got involved with Sound School in 2019. Through Sound School they further developed their belief in increasing equity and accessibility for people on the margins in electronic music. They currently make experimental pop music with their newest project MXMARS.

Allison Walker

Allison Walker is our live coding facilitator. She has been instrumental in increasing representation for women and queer people in coding and algorave culture in Melbourne, and is the brains behind the Sound School Live Coding Club. She is also a sound engineer, game developer, and classical pianist.

Tig Kokiri
Tig has been developing mixing and mastering workshops for Sound School. They are an experimental noise and Armenian folk musician based in (so called) Melbourne, Australia and have produced, engineered, mixed and mastered a number of critically acclaimed albums for various bands (Horsehunter, Elbrus). Currently they are performing with their solo act Blood of a Pomegranate.

Jonnine Nokes

Jonnine is our sound engineering series coordinator and graphic designer. They are an artist, musician and sound engineer. They have used various solo guises and played in countless groups over the last decade. In early 2018, they released a retrospective experimental solo album, Reflection Is Torture, under the name Horse Pills. They’re one half of industrial/darkwave duo Activities of Daily Living, and DJ across Melbourne as Hamburger Lady. Jonnine works as a live sound and lightning engineer, stage tech, and mixes and masters recordings for all manner of projects

Moe McGlashan

Moe McGlashan is a passionate community music educator and current kaitiaki (board member) of Girls Rock Aotearoa. They have 4 years of experience working in community and youth education. They are currently undertaking their Masters of Arts and Cultural Management at the University of Melbourne.

Patrick Hase

Patrick Hase is Sound School’s videographer, and a media artist/researcher living and working on unceded Wurundjeri land, who specializes in VR, animation and live A/V. His work explores the emotional impact of embodiment in virtual spaces by creating visceral non-mimetic experiences across varying digital platforms.

PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS:

Sound School operates on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and future, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.