Sonic Academy Blog

May 07, 2010 - Good Vibrations Film Auditions at Sonic Academy

The production team of the forthcoming feature film "Good Vibrations" are are looking for Northern Irish male musicians to play members of The Outcasts, Rudi, The Hopeless Cases, The Tear Jerkers and The Undertones.

The film will chart the rise of Terry Hooley's seminal record label which has left an indelible impression on Northern Irish music. 

There will be auditions at our training centre on Sunday 9th May from 12 noon til 5pm.

The full address is: Sonic Academy, 25 Talbot Street, 1st Floor Midtown Centre, Belfast, BT1 2LD - view map.

If you are between 16 and 25, male, and are a front man, or play guitar, drums or bass come along. If you have any promo material of you and your band bring it with you.

You won’t be required to play at this stage, but you will be asked to read a short scene. Your audition will be for the directors, not in front of other performers.

Be prepared to stay for a couple of hours - people will be seen in order of arrival.

This is an amazing opportunity to be part of the NI music and film event of the year!

April 26, 2010 - Sonic Academy on the iPad

Sonic tutor, producer and trance legend Chris Agnelli spent some time this weekend playing around with the iPad and working on ideas for Sonic Academy and how we can deliver our content on it.

I don't know about you guys, but I think the site looks great on the iPad. Watch this space for info on how you'll be able to access Sonic Academy video tutorials and our content on the iPad iPhone and other cool things we have in the pipeline!

April 19, 2010 - Sonic Academy Open Days Report

 We've just finished our first couple of open days here at our new Sonic HQ in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter and we had an amazing response to our new training centre and facilities.

We had a roadblock on both days with people queuing up to get in at 10am (!) on Saturday morning before we had opened the doors, and our training rooms were rammed all day.

From a DJing perspective, the highlights included Gleave's Traktor and Native Instruments X1 Masterclass and Paul Hamill's APC40 and Ableton session.

We also ran ProTools and Logic sessions in the studio with local singer/songwriters getting a chance to record their demos and Phil's (now rare) classroom based session on "making the rave" in Ableton also saw a packed out training room.

Big thanks to all of the support we received from Apple, Propellerheads, Soundcloud and Toolroom Records for all of the goodies that went into the bags.

Thanks also to everyone who came down and we'll be running some more events soon!

Some pics of the event below...

Our DJ Training Room In Full Swing

Gleave shows a future hero how it's done on the Kontrol X1 and Traktor.

Phil: "Listen up everyone, this is how you make the rave!"

Training Centre Manager and all round nice guy, Graham, looking corporate for the camera!

Chris Agnelli aka The Demo Doctor 

Cathy and Sara checking the footie scores online...

Clarke and Karl mastering the competition winners' tracks in Sonic Studios.

Bry, Gleave and a startled Kev

Slick Nik Muzka's Scratch Workshop in action.

January 31, 2010 - Favourite features of the new site?

Such a huge amount of hard work has gone into building this new site, so firstly I'd like to say a well deserved thank you to all involved. That includes you guys by the way! We scoured through all feedback ever received and really took that on board when building this new site. We've worked to improve the back end of the new site, as well as all the aesthetics.

My favourite features of the new site are:

The navigation - the site is now divided into user groups. So if you're a DJ and you want DJ resources or tutorials you can go straight into the DJ section of the site from the homepage. If you want help with music production, then there's a place for that. The same goes for those interested in recording live music and school groups.

More video content - There's now lots more free content for all Sonic Academy users whether you have registered, subscribed or are just visiting the site. If you register you'll get access to more content than previously and if you subscribe, you get all videos. There'll be a subscriber account available at the current £59.99 /$100 U.S. rate and a new subscriber plus account for £99.99 / $165 U.S. per year. See more information on subscription details here.

Full screen video player - You now have the option to watch all of our video tutorials in full screen mode. Simply click on the little video expansion icon on the right hand corner or your video.

The Live Recording section - This is a section that will soon be filled with high quality tutorial videos, resources and articles related specifically to recording live music / vocals. So whether you're in a band, or a singer/songwriter or just curious, I'd strongly advise you to keep an eye on this section over the coming months. To get a heads up on when the live recording videos will be added, simply register and sign up for our free newsletter. This will tell you what new content is being released each week.

What are yours? Let us know in the Sonic Forum!

January 31, 2010 - Welcome to the New Site!

Welcome to the new, refreshed version of SonicAcademy.com! We listened intently to you throughout the first year of SonicAcademy.com and from that have created a whole new beast of a site for you to get stuck into. Take a wander around, and keep the feedback coming. Add your comments to the Sonic Forum or contact us directly via email on info@sonicacademy.com.

On this blog I’ll keep you updated on the big goings on with Sonic Academy. You can look forward to hearing about my recent trip to NAMM 2010. There’ll also be other festivals, the odd comment on something new that really catches my eye, and any new major Sonic developments. You may notice that I’m a Sonic Forum member too. You can catch my opinions on specific threads and see direct replies to the stand out comments there.