On April 2 & 3, 2016, the Music Legacy Project reached an incredible milestone by recording tracks at The Recording Conservatory of Austin in collaboration with musicians from the Grammy-award winning band Grupo Fantasma. Perched in the Westlake hills with a breathtaking view of a sea of green, it definitely felt more like a vacation than an intensive work day. From 9 AM to 8 PM for two days in a row, our musicians were hard at work making their creative visions into reality.
The Recording Conservatory of Austin functions both as a recording studio for artists and a school that teaches musicians the mechanics of mixing their songs. It offers three comprehensive educational programs: beginning audio engineering, recording arts, and recording and visual arts. TRCOA also offers online screensharing courses, which enable any musician in any city to participate in learning the ins and outs of music production. Greg Gonzalez, one of the instructors at TRCOA, sat down with Damian Flores and I for an interview. He explained what it’s like to work with musicians of all walks of life, and keeping up with the technological advances of music mixing. As if his expertise couldn’t get any more dizzying, I later found out that he is also the bass player for Grupo Fantasma and would be entering the studio himself to collaborate with the e4youth musicians. To learn more about The Recording Conservatory of Austin, visit https://www.trcoa.com/.
There were three professional musicians at the studio to work with our students – Greg Gonzalez on bass, John Speice on drums, and Adrian Quesada on guitar. Quesada, one of the original founding members of Grupo Fantasma, mentioned that he was excited to work with such young, ambitious musicians, He told me that an opportunity to teach young artists in new, innovative ways was always a chance he jumped at. Cultivating the next generation of musicians is obviously important to them, as it should be to all musicians. They have been incredibly generous in facilitating the continuation of unique, diverse art from Austin’s youth. If there ever was a time to feel as if we were making history and leaving a legacy, that time in the studio was it.
The students of the Music Legacy Project are certainly getting a one of a kind experience that most young musicians could only dream about. Within a month, they’ve met each other, welcomed each other’s talents and worked hard to use everyone’s skill sets to create songs that will speak to the community. They’ve been in a professional studio with seasoned musicians, getting a fleeting taste of the daily grind of aficionados like Greg Gonzalez and Adrian Quesada. In the coming weeks, the recordings will be layered, mixed, and mastered to create the EP we’ve all be waiting for. Our musicians manifested their ideas into real components to work with, whether it’s an infectious beat or resonating vocals. Now, it’s just a matter of tailoring it into a finished product. Stay tuned as the Music Legacy Project progress into post-production and their much anticipated release.
One comment