By Josh Anderson
The TAFE NSW music department at Ultimo is one of nine Ableton registered training centres in Australia, where students have access to the music industry’s most acclaimed software, Ableton LIVE.
The partnership can be attributed to Eric Chapus, an Ableton certified trainer and course co-ordinator of creative composition at Ultimo.
“I’ve always said what takes two clicks in Ableton takes 10 clicks in another program,” said Chapus.
Chapus, who performs under the name Endorphin, has received multiple ARIA nominations for his work in Electronic Dance Music (EDM).
He has toured with EDM stars Massive Attack, Moby and Faithless, but now dedicates his career to “passing down knowledge to the next generation”.
Ableton LIVE is renowned for its ability to create a non-linear workflow, something that was attractive to Chapus as an artist.
Chapus breaks this down to students by saying “if you’re on stage, and have a guitarist doing an amazing solo on your verse, and they look at you to say ‘let’s keep going because the crowd is really going, yes!’ then you don’t need to go straight to your chorus, you’re not stuck in a ridged environment.”
Solo Artist Joe Shield-Anderson holds a Bachelor of Music Performance from Melbourne’s Collarts and relayed the importance of flexibility when performing.
“It’s important to be flexible when playing, you’re performing in front of a live audience and you want to be the best you can,” said Shields-Anderson.
“Ableton LIVE is great for performing, you can use it for backing tracks … [and] students would use it for mastering tracks too.”
Becoming an Ableton certified trainer is not an easy process, but one is needed if an institute wishes to become an Ableton Training Centre.
Applicants must provide a written curriculum, along with a 20-minute recorded demonstration of them teaching before being considered for an interview.
Promising applicants are then invited to an intensive multi-day certification event and tested on their technical and teaching skills.
Chapus was not successful in his first attempt and said that spoke to the standard set by the Germans.
“To be honest with you, I’ve done a PHD and I found that this certification was harder, well, it was quite an overwhelming two days,” he said.
“It happens quite frequently that you have a first attempt, it’s really rigid, the certification process is extremely painful.”
However, by 2015 Chapus had attained Ableton certification and in doing so was successful in registering Ultimo TAFE as an Ableton Training Centre.
Currently the centre holds multiple registered trainers while also offering multiple EDM Diplomas.
Featured image: Eric Chapus in his office at Ultimo TAFE. Photo: Josh Anderson
Listen to this story and much more by catching the Try TAFE show which will stream on TAFE Radio from 10am to 3pm today, September 10.