Danny KuperbergOliver Som, a talented mixing engineer and sometime producer who has worked with such international names as Robbie Williams and James Blunt sought Danny’s help with piano and keyboard playing techniques in order to aid his work. He works closely with celebrated producer Guy Chambers. This has fed into all of their musical ambition and creativity.
Jamielisa Jacquemin is a highly talented and successful DJ and now remix artist.
With Danny’s help, she is now branching out into keyboard composition, original material, as well as being resident DJ at Boujis in Chelsea, a rich-and-famous hangout club, well-known across the world for its clientele (including certain members of the Royal Family)…
Danny and Jamielisa have spent much time together working in his project studio, and her versatility has improved no end.
She’s sung live on the West End stage, DJs internationally, writes industry soundtracks from her Soho studio and is an expert at marketing herself.
Jamielisa…jack of many trades. And becoming master of most of ’em…!
I worked with Scarlett for over seven years, mainly when she wasn’t on tour. It was productive, creative and most importantly, fun.
We focussed on piano, song arrangement, audio production techniques as well as her understanding of musical harmony and vocal layering. Often I’d help her prepare for her shows and demonstrate how she could best accompany her vocal on the piano. For example in 2014 I helped Scarlett prepare for her splash at The Burning Man festival in Nevada. This was more intensive and creative than my work with any other name dance music artist I’ve ever worked with. Scarlett introduced me to other international dance music stars.
Very little surprises me with Scarlett anymore.
Composing a high end catwalk show soundtrack? Performing live on stage with Johnny Marr or Daft Punk? Star attraction DJ/producer at an international dance music festival? Stand out star at an outdoor EDM rave? Scarlett’s your go-to girl. If you need any further proof, see this interview with Point Blank https://youtu.be/nVjz-NdoPwM). How about a global weekend trek to a major music festival? Maybe a celebrity after-show party? Scarlett will always be first on the contact list.
Here she is, below right, working on an arrangement with the brilliant producer, musician and songwriter Nile Rodgers (David Bowie, Chic and Daft Punk etc).
Our most recent collaboration was a two-week stint in her impressive Shoreditch recording studio, two to three hours a day.
That was for last Summer’s legendary Burning Man festival where, as you can see, she made quite a splash. As usual.
Scarlett’s a very gifted musician too.
She’s now an able jazz pianist and singer-songwriter. I gave her a separate series of lessons on jazz harmony progressions, piano accompaniment styles and keyboard techniques for performing standards with vocals.
She’s also handy with a guitar.
Shame that she recently relocated to NYC. But I have no doubt we’ll work together again one day.
Trevor Horn; absolute studio and musical hero of mine. It was a real pleasure to meet him and discover that I have a near neighbour (and great sound engineer) friend in common who he had worked with.
Trevor’s recording studio Sarm West is where some of the greatest music, certainly of the eighties and nineties was produced. For example, it is where the stars gathered for Band Aid to record Do They Know Its Christmas. He produced ABC, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, The Art Of Noise, Seal and many many more. His own Buggles classic Video Killed The Radio Star was the first video to be played on MTV.
I developed Amped for over ten years (2005 – 2017) into a showcase gig at authentic London venues for talented 16 and 17 year old musicians to really show off what they can do. They were from all backgrounds and performed all styles with true style, displaying real creative talent. The genres ranged from rock to R&B, from hip hop to soul. And crucially they played authentic gigs (no school halls or churches) in and around Camden Town and beyond. They played their instruments live – quite the opposite of the plethora of karaoke identikit celebrity wannabes sadly striving to make a name for themselves on TV talent shows nowadays.
Our young talent actually wrote their own songs, played actual instruments and, thank the Lord there were no manipulated vocals and certainly no Autotune to hide the fact that they probably couldn’t hold a vocal melody. No dance routines either! They gigged at venues which are the real deal. Yes, it’s nerve racking but also so very rewarding. Many of them told me that they would never forget the experience. I’m so proud of them all!
BEAT and Woodhouse College pick students, mainly from the London borough of Barnet, but also Camden, Enfield, Haringey, Islington and Brent London boroughs. They must audition and pass a music theory test, and the standard is high. We can realistically claim that we have some of the finest young talent potential in a large area of North London.
All of this is the absolute antithesis to the reality TV vocal talent shows that grace our screens so routinely nowadays.
Every student must produce and engineer all of their own performances in our state-of-the-art recording studio at Woodhouse College.
This afternoon gig NEVER takes place in a church or school hall. Most 16 year olds I’ve come across know that isn’t very cool. And I agree.
I want to give them an authentic, tough, realistic but above all fun experience. To show them how gigging can be both extremely nerve-racking, thrilling and creatively fulfilling at the same time.
If it goes well and they’re inspired by the experience, they’ll have the bug for life.
The BEAT contemporary music technology A-level department at Woodhouse College was headed by Danny Kuperberg (2005 – 2016). And our wonderful talented alumni have a lot of success stories to show for it, for example:
Sophie Hiller: main backing vocalist on all of Tom Jones’ international concert dates. Sophie studied Music A-level at Woodhouse.
James Turner: Works at The Dairy recording studios. James is chief sound engineer. He’s mixed and recorded for Joss Stone, Nitin Sawhny (who owns the studio) and other international star names. He also helps on live sound and PA at Glastonbury. James is a talented guitarist too.
Michael Jablonka: Brilliant blues lead guitarist. Has toured internationally with countless acts including NDubz. His own band The Dark Tides, is highly respected within the industry and often plays backing for name acts.
Our students mainly gig in Camden Town, legendary hub for much of the UKs pop and rock talent.
They also gig in Crouch End where Danny lives. Crouch End is very much a part of the London studio and musician scene. Konk studios, owned by Ray Davies of The Kinks, still hosts name bands, and over the last forty years, has been the home for some of music’s most legendary recordings. Our base here was The Music Palace – now trendy indie cinema The Arthouse.
The Church state-of-the-art recording studio in central Crouch End was formerly owned by and was the studio home of Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox of The Eurythmics. It later belonged to David Grey, the piano singer-songwriter. Now it is the creative hub for Paul Epworth, the multi-grammy winning key songwriter and producer behind Adele. He also composed James Bond’s Skyfall theme.
Coincidentally, Dominic Betmead, a Paul Epworth collaborator and signing with his new Wolf Tone signings, is one of Danny’s clients.
Here is an example of some press coverage for our Music Palace Crouch End gig all the way back in March 2011:
The year was 1996. It was in a Gospel Oak terrace, not far from Hampstead Heath in North London. Britpop was in full force, where me and a flatmate would be mastering, mixing or generally tweaking our ’kit’ or cool studio gear that we’d covet. Vaguely, these days we’d be known as Gear Sluts (www.gearslutz.com) on account of us doing anything to get, swap, buy or barter for synths, drum machines, samplers, mixing desks, not to mention microphones. Even our floppy disk sample library (orchestral sounds, bass and vocal samples etc) were in demand and advertised in Sound On Sound. (See my Bernard Butler / Suede post #3 Danny’s Brush With…). The samples would be loaded onto my Akai S900. These days, the equivalent are just plugins installed into one’s DAW.
It was here that I met Steve Diggle, The Buzzcocks’ (www.buzzcocks.com) lead guitarist who wanted to remaster their Live In Paris album with my flatmate. Pete Shelley, who sadly passed away, was the lead singer and main songwriter and their hit was ’Ever Fallen In Love With Someone You Shouldn’t Have Fallen In Love With’.
Anyway, we hit it off immediately with our similar music tastes. They were really a seminal punk band. They helped define the punk ethos too, plus they put Birmingham on the musical map.
Steve Diggle: what a talented guy and guitarist, not to mention great musical taste. We smoked and drank a lot well into the night. I was mildly surprised to learn that he didn’t have the passion for punk style music that I’d anticipated. He was heavily into classical electronic music. This is complex music with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varese (musique concrete) and Pierre Boulez amongst those brilliant mid 20th century composers. The Buzzcocks experienced some pretty cool and funny escapades which Diggle enjoyed telling me about.
Cast your minds back to Summer 1986. It’s the control room of the legendary Spaceward Studios in Cambridge www.spaceward.co.uk. I’d just turned seventeen and I was up there to record audio overdubs for my Mum’s animation film ‘Snow Magic’ for which I had composed the soundtrack. She knew Gary Lucas, one of the key producers and founders of the studio itself.
I was a very brief intern there, but oh my G-d, what a place, what an atmosphere, what talent everywhere I looked. Just being there had a big impact on me. It was a creative hub – and these people were both serious and talented yet seemed to maintain a matey confidence that was just beyond cool for my teenage mind. I’d been in studios before. Through my parents’ encouragement for my passion, I had already developed my own decent studio next to my mother’s animation editing room. I had a Fostex 1/4in A8 reel to reel multitrack and new Akai S900 sampler. I’d recorded a few local bands at my studio, but what I was witnessing was the real deal – on quite another level.
Everyone from The Stranglers to Iron Maiden to Teardrop Explodes to assorted new wave acts that I worshipped seemed to be drifting in and out, full of cool easy breezy banter. These were rock titans, of that there was no debate. Even the likes of Gary Numan and The Damned had been in recently and recorded there. Right in front of me were bona fide artists (and not the usual blaggers) recording exciting vocal and backing vocal overdubs, instrumental takes and creatively arranged parts, not to mention the original live takes. Was I wide-eyed? Yes. Did I want to let on? NO! As an Assistant Tape Op, I was hardly noticed anyway. Here’s a great anecdote from that period:
I wasn’t at the session, but the producer and assistant producer/sound engineer Gary Lucas had told me that there was a worrying issue festering. Apparently while Julian Cope was recording World Shut Your Mouth, he’d been smoking so much dope that the vents started emanating the sweet smell of refined marijuana which permeated all the grounds around the studio complex.
The studio manager and staff began to worry about the ramifications and possible imminent police presence!
While I was there I had the laborious task of shooting 100Hz, 1kHz and 10kHz sine wave signals through each of the 24 tracks into the giant reel to reel multitrack machine. It’s called calibrating and basically ensures that what you hear in playback is as close as possible to the audio going in being recorded live. This slowly spooling tape was two inches wide compared to the measly and hissy 1/4in tape in my home studio. It was basically like lasagne compared to my spaghetti.
I only ended up interning for four visits, mainly because I was London-based and it was a shlep. Plus I had A-levels to think about in the Autumn. My brief job title? Assistant Tape Operator. Only four visits, but what a creative revelation…
My ‘kit’ or studio setup was on the floor below. I was proud to own two stacked synthesisers, one a digital FM synth, usually something like a Yamaha DX-7, the sounds of which really did shape the sound of eighties pop music. The other was an analog synth, for example a Roland Juno-106 or Minimoog. (I’d sold my wonderful Roland JX-3P with PG1000 controller in 1992. Bad move). I also had some rack mounts, rectangular metal units you must all have seen at gigs. Lots of knobs, sliders and buttons. At the time it was an orange Emulator rack which suited post rave-style sound popular at the time. It was basically the kit that enabled me to make Orbital or The Orb-style dance music which all sounds very dated now, especially in the ultra-fast moving and creative world of modern dane music. It had arpeggiated synth lines and proto-sampled beats, certainly not the cookie-cutter identikit loops available on tap now at the click of a mouse. I also had a Quadraverb GT, a multi-fx unit which I still have. It was particularly effective because the GT (guitar) included a guitar preamp that could even make the most basic sine wave synth sound like they’d been overdriven through about five stacked Marshall amps. I was proud also to own Yamaha SPX-90 reverb. My dad had bought this for me in 1983 when I was fourteen. This was the standard echo (reverb) unit used at live music and theatre venues. Anyway, all this kit was very very sexy to us musicians. There is a name for the likes of us: we are ‘gear sluts’. There’s even a great website worth checking out called www.gearslutz.com all about us saddos. We would be constantly exchanging and upgrading our kit, primarily via the advertising papers Exchange & Mart as well as Loot, where I worked one day a week copytaking and met some lifelong friends.
Anyway, my pièce de resistance was my Akai S900 sampler. It was one of the very first to be imported into the country which made me very proud. My late father bought it for me in 1984 when I was fifteen. He always supported me in every creative endeavour I ever pursued, as did my super-creative cool and artistic animator/artist/lecturer mum.
