Jami Creator Clubhouse, Signing Off

Wow, Austin, thank you! We’re still catching our breath after two jam-packed days celebrating with the community at the SoundCloud Creator Clubhouse.

We kicked off by welcoming Tumblr and SoundCloud community members to a joint meetup. We hosted performances by established and emerging SoundCloud artists and podcasters.

And Snoop Lion even dropped by to premiere his new film, Birds of a Feather, about his collaboration with Polish pop star Iza Lach. Snoop and Iza started making music together after he came across her tunes on SoundCloud; less than a year later, they’d co-produced 160 songs.

SoundCloud Pro user singer-songwriter Luke Sital-Singh took to the mic at the SoundCloud/Tumblr community meetup.

Mitzi’s smooth electro disco was a perfect accompaniment to the lakeside sunset.

While violin riffs by Barnaby Saints added unique flavour to the Grammy Amplifier Showcase.

We had a packed house at 4 PM for Red Bull Sound Select pick Cherub, with a unique, stripped-back take on their usual electro-pop sound.

There were live comedy performances, featuring Chris Hardwick of The Nerdist who spoke with Rooster Teeth as well as Earwolf, creators and producers of hilarious comedy shows.

The line was around the block to catch Island Def Jam’s The-Dream, while Usher and Snoop Lion watched from the decks.

SoundCloud’s CTO Eric Wahlforss announced the launch of our new Pro accounts. Afterwards, he talked all about it with SoundCloud Chicago Hero Jaime Black.

Thanks to Feedmagnet, we were able to keep up with all the #creatorclubhouse buzz.

We were also excited for everyone to experience our collaborations with local artists, who experimented with sound as a design tool.

Creator Clubhouse art directors Public School created a living waveform from 5000 feet of paracord.

And Houndstooth Studio built a lighting installation that responded to the sound system and a midi controller in the crowd.

Big thanks goes out to all of our partners who worked with us to make the Clubhouse Austin’s unofficial creative hub for two days last week. But our biggest thanks goes out to you, the community, for creating so much that’s worth celebrating. We loved meeting all of you who made it down to the Clubhouse last week. Hope to see even more of you in Austin next year!

Jane Hello Heroes: Audiobiography #5: Musical soundscapes, community storytelling and more

This is a guest post by SoundCloud Hero and singer-songwriter Zefora, who is based in Portland, Oregon. Follow and connect with the SoundCloud Heroes to find out more about community projects, collaborations and more.

This past week was a diverse, creative week for the Audiobiography project. We had submissions in French, Norwegian, German and English with poetry, music, and stories galore.

Here are some highlights from this week’s set:

Bill Kirton took a fictional heroine to SoHo for dinner. She’s been dead for 160+ years. Mystery, murder, a good guy with a cellar…and his prisoners. A policeman standing on a coffee table, wearing a dress.

Meet Ändy from Hamburg, Germany. “I’ve been born in the early 50s last century in Germany. I’m a post Rock’n Roller. Grown up with stuff like the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks and many others from the very first beginnings.”

Alisa DelTufo hails from North Bennington, Vermont, in the US to talk about her organization, Threshold Collaborative, which uses story gathering and other community engagement techniques to work towards effective community change.

Skye Milan found a way to incorporate sounds from his everyday life around the house with some dramatic dialogue between himself and his sons to create a musical soundscape that reveals more about himself than words. From the sound of keys to ice cubes in a glass bowl, percussive elements create this unique Audiobio.

D. Murali, from Chennai, India, was a staffer at a print newspaper until a whistle-blowing incident caused his abrupt exit for speaking out against gender and racial prejudice within the organization. Hear the inspiring story that makes his Audiobio.

Keep the unique Audiobios coming. See all past recaps here. If you have uploaded one and it’s not here, send us a message at @SoundCloudHeroes. We’ll be sure to include it in the next set. We still want to hear more until the end of this month, so share your Audiobiography and have your voice heard, too. Remember to give it the “audiobio” tag to help us find it. Find out how to get involved at http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/02/06/audiobiography.

Jane Hello Heroes: Audiobiography #4: Auto-podcast, song-navelgazing, clown memories, and more

This is a guest post by SoundCloud Hero and music critic/organizer Marc Weidenbaum, who is based in San Francisco, California. Follow and connect with the SoundCloud Heroes to find out more about community projects, collaborations and more.

When we set out to create the #Audiobio project, the goal was to connect listeners with the musicians and sound creators they listen to. Anyone who has had a phone call, or met up face to face with someone they had only previously corresponded with online knows the power that hearing someone’s voice can have — not just at that moment, but in all subsequent communications between them.

The idea of #audiobio is that by hearing the voices of the people whose music and sound we admire, we’ll have a deeper sense of connection to them when we hear more of their work in the future — not just because of what they say (the story of their lives, the goals of their art, and so forth) but how they say it: their voice, their intonation, their temperament.

Audiobiographies will be shared every week so post yours to be featured. All languages are welcome to participate. You can find translations of how to get involved in more than 8 languages here. Here’s round-up #4 from this past week. See all past recaps here.

These are some choice entries from new #audiobio posts this past week:

Dave Pickering (of London, England) was a natural for the #audiobio project because his podcast is an ongoing spoken-word exploration of who he is and of the people who know him. “There are lots of shows about famous people,” he says. “This is a show about the rest of us.” His entry was made entirely out of material from his podcast, which is pretty meta.

Liz Massey (of Glendale, California, in the United States) talked about why she’s a self-described “full-on audio geek,” and she traces her love of sound back to her mother’s storytelling. Warning, if you suffer from coulrophobia (fear of clowns), listen at your own risk.

Peter Lehndorff (of Hampden, Massachusetts, in the United States) wrote a witty little ditty about himself and his music: “I tell stories with my songs / about the stuff I see / Some of it is made-up crap / Some is about me.”

Bidoche Musique (aka Joe Fleury of Fribourg, Switzerland) recorded a psychedelic, echo-laden, and artfully opaque message: “spoken word, sound array / gotta tell the world about the dangers in play.”

If you have uploaded one and it’s not here, we’d love to hear it. Message us at @SoundCloudHeroes. We still want to hear more so share your Audiobiography and have your voice heard too. Remember to give it the “audiobio” tag to help us find it. Get involved at http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/02/06/audiobiography/