Beats & Bass Workshop With Sam Binga

Mess with stuff, and make it sound shit… in a good way.

Sam Binga’s teaching style was that of abolutely zero bullshit. He picked apart some of his biggest tunes element by element for us, an audience of six buregeoning producers. In a laid back session in the studio at Kay House, we recieved some truly insighful pearls of wisdom, delivered in a truly straightforward way.

Binga fielded questions about the specifics of production workflow, from when to start your mixdown, to whether to arrange your drum patterns as audio. He also spoke more generally about how to set your music apart. Conceding that his speciality was neither clinically crisp sound design nor melodic composition, Binga said that he focuses instead on his strengths: ‘fucked up, weird sounds’.

The workshop was relaxed enough to allow for those questions you were usually too afraid to ask, but the room assumed enough know-how that no time was wasted with foundational topics or jargon busters. Sam Binga was an enigmatic presence, and one whose delightful turn of phrase was enough to lodge his advice firmly in your brain.

I’m incredibly impressed, and incredibly thankful, that Beats & Bass Society manage to convince so many of their impressive headline-slot bookings to spend a bit of their time before dinner speaking to a select bunch of rookies. I’ll certainly be coming back to glean whatever wisdom I can from their next impressive booking coup.