On Friday and Saturday I was at Beatcon at the House of Music in Berlin. Beatcon is a conference for hip-hop producers, organised by the Producer Network: producer talks on the main stage, workshops in five labs, and plenty of manufacturers who set up their gear and plugins for you to try.
I was there as a visitor, with no booth and no appointments. In the end I spent two days doing mostly one thing: meeting people. And that is exactly what made me so happy.
Who I met again after years
Anyone who has worked in this industry for a long time knows this: you don't see each other for years, and then one weekend everybody is in the same building. I met Andy Mac, my former colleague from my time at inMusic and Akai, and Boris Kummerer from Neumann Berlin, a good acquaintance.
I also saw Lars Hemmerling again, and Henry from u-he, another colleague from back then. On top of that there were many producer friends and fellow DJs whom I have partly only followed through releases and Instagram for years. A weekend like this replaces a lot of emails.
What the manufacturers brought along
Steve Baltes showed the motorised controllers from Melbourne Instruments. The knobs have motors and move by themselves to the position set by the preset you load. Really great devices.
Bitwig demonstrated the latest version with the new slice sampler, which of course was especially interesting for me as someone who comes from drum and bass.
Celemony, the makers of Melodyne, were exhibiting too and demonstrated their new plugin Tonalic. Tonalic works with real recordings of studio musicians on guitar, bass and drums and adapts these performances to the chords, the tempo and the groove of your own song. I find that very useful and innovative, and I hope the sample library keeps growing.
New to me were the people from HEDD Audio, who develop their monitors in Berlin, and the team from Zaor, who make studio furniture. The partner list also included u-he, Neumann, Akai, Moog and Universal Audio, among others.
Two workshops that stuck with me
Serdal Aygün from SAE gave several sessions across both days: beatmaking for Jersey club and UK drill in the Creative:Lab, plus a vocal production toolkit in the Vocal:Lab and, on Saturday, the "Vocal Editing Deep Dive" on pitch, timing and doubles. That was super interesting. Props to SAE Munich!
On Saturday evening the Creative:Lab hosted the Live Songwriting Session with Wanja Bierbaum and Paul Wetz. For two hours the two of them and their colleagues showed in front of an audience how songwriting and production work together. I found that really exciting too.
Why the House of Music is the right location for this
The House of Music is on Revaler Straße, on the RAW site in Friedrichshain. Inside there is the main stage and enough rooms for the labs, outside a courtyard where you keep talking between two sessions while people skate next door. In the evening people sat at the beer tables with their MPCs and worked on beats. For a conference that is about music and about meeting people, it is a brilliant location.
The weekend was exciting for Kreuzberg Audio as well, because new connections came out of it, with manufacturers as much as with producers.
Thanks to the Producer Network team for two really good days. I am already looking forward to next year.
Cheers,
Frank
