Studio Session Guide
Purpose
Wednesdays are studio days: hands-on build time in the Digital Music Lab, with the instructor and your peers in the room. Monday introduces a concept and demonstrates it; Wednesday is where you use it. During a sprint this is your main working session — solo or with your group depending on the sprint — and the best time to get unstuck. Ask for help while you’re stuck, not after the deadline.
The semester opens and closes with a jam: a low-stakes small-group session used to feel and measure collective progress. Jams are about community, not graded performance.
Session Format
| Beat | What happens |
|---|---|
| Check-in (first minutes) | Where is everyone in the sprint? Any blockers from the reading or Monday’s demo? |
| Build (most of the session) | Work on the current sprint deliverable. The instructor circulates; short demos happen at the front when several people hit the same wall. |
| Wrap (last minutes) | Save, back up, and make sure you know what you owe by Sunday (WIP post, final post, or plan). |
Wednesday roles across the semester follow the sprint cadence: kickoff the Wednesday after a feedback week (brief, groups, plan), studio the next week, studio finish the week the sprint is due. See the Sprint Guide.
Solo Sessions
Sprints 2 and 4 are solo. Use studio time to work with the instructor within reach: record the take you’ve been avoiding, test a comp, try the arrangement idea from Monday. Headphones on; the room stays quiet enough for recording.
Group Sessions
Sprints 1 and 3 are collaborative. Groups form on kickoff Wednesday, agree on tempo and key before splitting parts, and decide who owns which track. One person keeps the canonical session; everyone else works from stems or a shared project and hands off with clear version labels. Each member contributes at least one part, and the team’s post credits who did what.
Guidelines
- Bring your instrument. Laptop (charged), wired headphones, and the USB-C/HDMI adapters you need to connect to the lab’s docks.
- Install the lab’s MOTU 828es drivers before your first studio session, so the interface is one less thing to solve in the room.
- Arrive with a session open. Studio time is for making progress, not for setting up.
- Uploads are desktop-only. Post work to StemShare from your laptop; listening and commenting work on a phone.
- Good digital hygiene applies in the room. Save early, name files clearly, and back up before you leave. See Good Digital Hygiene.
Documentation
Every sprint post carries Work → Notes: process and reflection in markdown — the goal, key decisions, what was hard, what you learned. Write a few lines at the end of each studio day while it’s fresh; the notes you owe Sunday will already be half done, and they’re the record you’ll look back on when you pick your strongest piece for the final.