Genelec Supports Global Songwriting Camps Initiative
Over the last few months, Genelec has been supporting the Songwriting Camps organisation, supplying and setting up 8000 Series and M Series studio monitors for camps in Paris, London, and Stockholm - with plans to extend the relationship as the series of camps expands globally.
Founded in 2015 by Swedish songwriter and producer Niclas Molinder - with early support from Bjorn Ulvaeus and Max Martin - each camp brings together hand-picked songwriters and producers from all over the world to collaborate, write and record in an intense burst of creativity. The most recent camp in Stockholm was the largest yet, with 45 writers and producers from 12 countries coming together for 5 days at the city’s famous Pop House Hotel. The participants - who between them have helped to create tracks for artists such as Katy Perry, Sam Smith, Lorde and Ed Sheeran - included Maegan Cottone (UK), Neiked (Sweden), Kream (Norway), Tamas Molnar (Hungary) and Hitimpulse (Germany).
At each camp, the participants divide into groups of three - usually a songwriter, a producer and a vocalist - and each group works together for one day before dispersing and forming a new group of musical collaborators for the next day. Each group is based in a ‘Producer Room’, specifically a separate hotel room where a laptop-based recording system is set up to allow every song to be captured and developed, and this is where Genelec’s monitor calibration features become invaluable.
Since most hotel rooms have different sizes, shapes and room orientations, and the entire recording system (monitors included) has to be placed on a standard table, Genelec was able to assist the camp’s Technical Manager Fredrik ‘Polen’ Kurzawa in ensuring that each pair of monitors were quickly tuned to the individual room by using the rear panel room response switch settings. As well as table-top mounting, most of the monitors were unavoidably positioned near a wall or a room corner - which traditionally boosts the LF response significantly - so the ability to tailor the monitor’s response to counteract any difficult room acoustics was invaluable.
It obviously worked brilliantly, since Kurzawa himself reported that “I had the opportunity to check most Producer Rooms with the writers in action and everyone loved the sound – I had only great feedback.” Camp organiser Laura Tomlinson echoed this by commenting that “Writing songs like this in a hotel environment demands a monitor that can provide a reliable sonic reference, but also create a vibe and help feed the whole creative process. All the reports that we had back from our camp participants confirmed that the Genelec monitors not only provided pinpoint accuracy, they sounded incredible too – at any listening level!”
With further camps planned for Australia, Asia and the US in the future, Genelec looks forward to a very long and successful relationship with the Songwriting Camps team.