Guest Masterclass from Beatles' Former Sound Engineer

Big news just in! Our final guest masterclass of the year will feature Richard Digby Smith, chief sound engineer for Island Records during the record industry’s 1970’s heyday. Since then he has had a prolific career as a musician and recording engineer for an incredibly diverse range of artists before going on to design, construct and manage his own seven studio complex in West London. Although the list of artists he has worked with is far too long to go through in its entirety, some notable names include The Beatles, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Cliff, Grace Jones, Phil Spector and Aswad!

The Beatles - Amongst the many famous artists Richard has worked with

Having recorded at Abbey Road, Olympic Studios Real World and Sunset Sound, he has a serious amount of knowledge and experience to share about the music industry. The lecture will take place at 1 pm on Friday 10^th December and is free for all Point Blank students. Places are limited and allocated on a first come first serve basis so email us now to reserve your place. Make sure you don’t miss this great opportunity to learn about working at the very highest level as a professional sound engineer!

Check out all of our Sound Engineering Courses.

Point Blank and Pioneer at BPM 2010

Point Blank had a fantastic time at the recent BPM 2010 show promoting our new DJ course in partnership with technology giants Pioneer. The show was a buzzing hive of activity with thuds, bleeps and tweaks emanating from every corner, and professional and amateur DJs coming together to coo over the latest batch of impressive technological advancements.

This included Pioneer's latest series of CDJs, the 2000s, 900s and 350s which are revolutionising the way DJs perform and prepare for their sets. Having set the industry standard for clubs for well over a decade, Pioneer look set to continue this dominance of the DJ market with these new digitally enabled CD decks. Any ambitious DJ would be wise to swot up on the capabilities of these players as more and more clubs around the world install them into their set up.
On our Weekend Pioneer Course you have the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of how to DJ using the CDJ 350 and Rekordbox software. Aimed at beginners, the classes consist of small groups with CDJs and a mixer for each student. Substantial discounts are available on the Pioneer gear too if you buy combined with this Point Blank course!

Check out Pioneer’s interview with the Point Blank DJ tutor Mr Bristow at the show in the player below (skip to 4mins 46)

And remember, once you know your way around the 1s and 2s, the best Point Blank DJ students get the opportunity to play at Camden's legendary Bar Vinyl where we host our weekly DJ night, Ambideckstrous in association with DJ Magazine Management. You could be the next star signed to their DJ agency!

Make Your Career in Music a Reality

If you regularly read this blog, we can safely assume that you love music, it is your passion and it would be a dream to make a living out of it somehow. But the reality is that it is not easy to make ends meet as an up and coming musician simply by selling music and playing gigs. Being a talented musician is rarely enough these days, you need entrepreneurial skills and a business minded outlook if you are going to maximise your earning power.

At Point Blank we recognise the importance of this for those who are aiming for a career in the music industry, which is why we have developed the Music Business Course as a core module of the 2 year Diploma. To supplement the concepts and theories taught on this module, we want to lend a further helping hand by inviting you to join our affiliate program, one of the many alternative revenue streams out there to be exploited.

Affiliate programs are common throughout the Internet and offer website owners an additional way to profit from their websites. Affiliates generate traffic and sales for commercial websites and in return receive a commission payment.

So if you run a website or blog you could be earning up to £70+ for every person that clicks through from your site and ends up booking a Point Blank course! The program is open to anyone, whether you have studied at Point Blank or not and the commission is applicable up to 90 days after the person’s first visit via your link.

How Does It Work?
When you join our affiliate program, you will be supplied with a range of banners and textual links that you place within your site. When a user clicks on one of your links, they will be brought to our website and their activity will be tracked by our affiliate software. You will earn a commission based on your commission type.

You will then be able to login 24 hours a day to check your sales, traffic, account balance and see how your banners are performing.

So if you do own a website or blog there is really nothing to lose!

Head over to www.pointblankonline.net/affiliate to sign up and start earning now!

Student Remixes Released on Tutor's Label

Point Blank tutor Danny J Lewis recently offered up his track ME2U to anyone who wanted to have a go at a remix with the best ones to be released on his Enzyme Black imprint. He got a healthy response from willing producers resulting in a great package of Danny’s original version plus seven hot remixes. This included versions by Point Blank students Hans Berg, and Logistix who completed the Deep and Soulful Pro Prodcuer Course and the Remix Pro Producer Course.

Danny talks about the interesting way this idea came about and what he thinks of the final results in an interview on Niall Redmond’s Digital Groove show on Irish radio channel, RTE Pulse. You can listen to that and preview the tracks from the release over at his soundcloud page.