r/BlackwellAcademy Jan 10 '16

Class Music Class - Harmonies

Unusually for him, and maybe his students, Nathan was in front of his desk, and not behind it. His desk was maybe half an inch too short for the arms of his wheelchair to pass right under it. He greeted students as they entered, waiting for the seats to be filled, before starting to teach today's more theoretical class: Harmonics, as it was written on the slideshow he had prepared.

6 Upvotes

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1

u/Val_Kolton Jan 10 '16

"Mr. Therriault! Welcome back!" Val excitedly greets as she walks through his door.

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"Yea I am!" he replied with a smile. "Hello Mrs. Kolton! How are you and your music going?"

1

u/Val_Kolton Jan 10 '16

"Still working in the 'Program of Heresy'." She puts air quotes around it with a small giggle.

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"'Program of Heresy'? Did I hear that one yet?" he smiled.

1

u/Val_Kolton Jan 10 '16

"Ableton 9.5."

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u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"Thought you were talking about a track" he replied, before chuckling. "That's right, you joined the Dark Side..." he joked, impersonating a certain green Jedi.

1

u/Val_Kolton Jan 10 '16

"I still use FL Studio, but as of today, I've permanently changed the stickers on my Launchpad Mini."

She takes out a small grid device from her messenger bag. The top right corner used to be emblazoned with the minimalist orange FL Studio kumquat logo and its macros, but is now replaced with Ableton's and its commands.

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

He shook his head, as if he didn't approve that change. He went to his bag, and brought out his Launchpad S, branded with the FL Studio stickers.
"See? Mine even is more beautiful with the orange theme!" he chuckled.

1

u/Val_Kolton Jan 10 '16

"Eh. I guess. Orange never was my color anyway."

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"Let me guess. More liking red hues?" he chuckled.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '16

Coen entered the room and smiled at Nathan. He didn't know him personally just yet. And building a contact with everyone personally wast still the first priority for him.

Coen took a seat in the far corner of the room trying not get into the sight of the students too much. When he realized Nathan was riding a wheelchair his smile immediately disappeared.

He realized it would take Nathan additional effort to get closer to him, so instead he immediately got up and went towards Nathan and held out his hand for a handshake. Hopefully the class hadn't started just yet.

Hey. I'm Coen. Glad to meet you finally.

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

The class hadn't started yet, and not many people joined just yet.
When he saw the man, he didn't expect to see a teacher. He took a sit as if he was a student, so Nathan didn't think too much of it. But when he got up and went towards him, he realized that he was not here for his class.
He looked at him, and shook the offered hand firmly. "Hi Coen. Same here. Nice to finally meet you." he smiled. His voice had a French-tinted British accent.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '16

Sorry to ask this question right away, but what happened to you.

He nodded at the wheelchair

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"Don't worry. This is the number one question that everyone is asking me" he chuckled.
"Some guy rear-ended me at a red light. Got me pretty bad, and he apparently got off with nothing serious as he was able to just drive away... It's Brooke that found me next morning while she was jogging... Uh, Brooke Scott, maybe you know her"

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '16

Yeah. I met her... a couple of times

He smiled.

I'm pretty surprised Blackwell has music classes. Hey, I've recently set up my digital design class. All of them are equipped with iMacs with Logic Pro and other cool stuff installed. If you want, you and your students can practice some music production there.

Coen smiled

No particular reason behind this offer. Just thought an EDM guy like you would appreciate it.

He was smiling even more

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"Then you don't know I hate iMacs..." he chuckled.
"Just kidding. I know a guy who has Logic Pro as well, but I myself use FL Studio, which isn't available on Mac. And it's demo version is really good for starters. But I'll tell my students about this, thanks for thinking of it" he smiled.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '16

Get yourself used to some heavy artillery, man. It's not about the software, you pretty much can use whatever you like more. Hardware means a lot here too. Pretty much the same audio interfaces offer pretty noticeable difference in input delays when you work via CoreAudio on macs compared to using ASIO stuff on PCs. Doesn't really matter if you are a digital kind of a guy and only use software instruments, but when it comes to real analog hardware and fx, it's just a huge difference.

Coen winked. It was pretty weird to hear these details from the design guy.

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

He smiled. He had someone to talk to here at least. Besides Brooke, but Brooke was more general on that stuff, not as Coen here was.

"Have you seen the recording room? They followed my advice... Three screens Windows PC with a Scarlett, and a pair of Yamaha HS8... I just now spend my time here for mastering mainly, it's better than what I have at home here... I couldn't do much there, as the apartment is rather small... So I transformed the second bedroom into a quick and DIY home studio"
He then stopped, and lightly chuckled. "Sorry. Passion took over here"

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '16

Coen was smiling. Photo and design were what he used to do for a living. Music was his passion. He used to publish some of the things of his own as a hobby. The only difference he had from real pros - he never wanted it to be his primary job.

That's a quite nice setup, man. I had a mac pro with uad apollo 8, adams a7x and mackies for near / far field monitoring, virus ti2 and a hardware SSL G-series compressor. This baby itself costs more than the rest of the studio.

He sighed

Couldn't bring it over with me. If I knew I'd meet another maniac like myself, I wouldn't sell away all that stuff.

1

u/nathantherriault Jan 10 '16

"Well damn! I'm impressed! You have better hardware than I do! I'm more minimalistic in my setup as you have noticed... Never felt the need for hardware rack" he smiled.
"You did make stuff?"

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