When SongWriter Camps Co-Founders Richard Harris and Pam Sheyne did their first event in October of 2018, the response was hugely positive: budding composers learning the songwriting and the collaborative processes, guided by music-industry professionals during three-day immersive tutorials held at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. At the end of each day, the songs they’ve written are performed live through an L1 Compact PA system from Bose. SongWriter Camps has been wildly popular, and the next camp is taking place in September 14 – 17, 2020. For more details and to apply for the camp, visit www.songwritercamps.com.
“We have as many as three-dozen students in a class, as we did in May [2019], and they break into groups of three, each group guided by a mentor and with a writing assignment,” explains Harris, an accomplished songwriter and composer himself. “At the end of each day, we’ll have each group perform the songs they’ve created for the rest of us. The Bose L1 Compact is the perfect piece of technology for this.”
A small room with a balcony is the setting for these performances. The L1 Compact sounds excellent, says Harris, but that’s just the start. “It sounds great and it’s the perfect size for the room and the groups, very transportable for use in the hotel, but it also has plenty of very useful features for us,” he says. Those include the integrated ToneMatch processing and zEQ, which lets him prepare each channel for specific microphones ahead of the performances. “I’ll have specific presets for the guitars, the piano and the vocal microphones, as well as a separate preset for the Q&A sessions we do with visiting professionals during the Camps,” he explains. “I can have the EQs and the reverbs all ready to go, tuned for the space we’re in.”
In addition, he says he and Pam Sheyne love that the L1 Compact is so easy and intuitive to use. “And there is never any feedback,” he adds. “And it fills the space effortlessly. I know Pam was a bit concerned about that in the beginning, considering how compact the system is. But once I looked at the specs I knew that it was going to be everything we needed and more, and it is. We love that our students leave here knowing what their songs are supposed to sound like, because that’s how Bose makes them sound.”
