what a crazy week it’s been! until now, i’ve been at a bit of a loss for words trying to explain what exactly zoolabs is, and what we (mad satta) were going to be doing in oakland for two weeks. but now, after wrapping our fourth day here, i feel much more comfortable explaining what our goals and tasks are here, what zoolabs is trying to accomplish and i want to share with whoever is interested what a day looks like here at zoolabs. so in a nutshell, zoolabs is a ‘creative incubator,’ an organization that provides a state-of-the-art facility equipped with two industry-level recording studios, tons of top of the line gear and instruments, a full, stocked kitchen (and chef that provides two banging meals a day), bathrooms/showers, multiple workshop rooms equipped with paper, pens, art supplies and pianos, a beat lab, comfortable lodging, a gorgeous patio and most importantly, a staff of brilliant, lovely, relaxed, forward-thinking, funny and welcoming people that are dedicated to providing a fully funded, safe environment to musicians who are interested in innovating and experimenting with their approach to the (rapidly changing) music industry. mad satta found out that we were selected for a residency last may, after a very rigorous and in-depth application process (our application turned out to be about 15 pages long) and we are now here for the two week residency alongside an indie-art-rock band from los angeles called wages. we are focusing on recording an EP and also taking workshops every day that are targeted at building a strategic business plan for our band and adopting some techniques to try treating our band as start-up company. these workshops are every morning from 10am-2pm and range from topics like ‘sonic branding’ and ‘building engaging campaigns’ to ‘team dymanics’ and ‘product/market fit’ with some of the most successful start-up business folks in the country. after the workshops, which have been amazing, we head to the studio, where we spend the next 10 hours tracking and mixing our songs with amazing engineers. we have tracked four complete songs so far. it’s been a lot to soak in, but we are taking it one day at a time, and it’s definitely been an incredible experience. for mad satta to be given this opportunity to have this uncompromised, undistracted time in this environment with one another has already noticeably helped us grow as a team, recognize our strengths and our weaknesses individually and as a group, create and produce music that we are super proud of and be a part of the movement towards the new phase of musicians in the music industry (so much bigger than these two weeks) that zoolabs is continuing to foster and share with the world. next monday we will be stoked to have the horn players join us on the west coast to record on the four songs we’ve already tracked (loooook outtttt!), hang with us, play our debut show at yoshi’s in oakland and perform at the final zoolabs performance. big shouts to our homie chrys johnson for coming through today bringing emg/dunlop goodies to the boys and being so supportive, to sylvia marton for putting up with us this past weekend and being the best host, to david marton and teri leichinger for hosting the horn players in a pinch, and to everyone continuing to support us! if you guys have any questions, please just comment below. i’ll try to update once more before this is over. xoxo joanna
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 08:06:09 +0000
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