Week 01
Vibe Coding Intensive
Plain-language prompting, shipping a working tool by Friday, versioning your ideas the way you version a beat. Music first, but software literacy is non-negotiable.
Worldwide Enrollment · 12-Week Cohort
Remote Master Classes from the R&B/HIP-HOP INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL REALITY SOFTWARE ACADEMY.
The warehouse is in Eastern New Orleans. The cohort is everywhere. Master Classes meet live in VR, with async stems review and weekly office hours. You sit at your own rig and ship work alongside the in-studio crew. Below: the full curriculum and the kit you need to participate.
Curriculum · Week by Week
12 wkWeeks 02–04
Beats & Production
Sampling ethics, chopping, swing, layering, drum programming on MPC / SP1200 emulation. Live trade rooms in VR — pass the kit, pass the loop.
Weeks 05–06
Engineering & Mixing
Signal flow, gain staging, mic technique, vocal chains, bus compression. Critique sessions on stems you tracked at home.
Weeks 07–08
MC & R&B Vocal Production
Cadence, pocket, breath control, hooks, stacking, ad-lib layering, reverb-as-instrument. Booth tech for whatever room you have.
Weeks 09–10
DJ & Turntablism
Beatmatching, blends, scratching, routines, crate digging. Serato + 1200 workflow translated to remote performance.
Weeks 11–12
Phygital Capstone (VR)
Ship a record and a tool — a cypher signup, a stem-delivery portal, a tour map. Final showcase happens in VR with the in-studio cohort.
Required Virtual Equipment & School Supplies
Before Week 0101
DAW
Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton Live, or Reaper — latest stable build.
Why it's required
Class projects are delivered as session files. Any of the four ship with our templates.
02
Audio interface + studio headphones + condenser mic
2-in/2-out interface minimum, closed-back cans for live VR sessions, large-diaphragm condenser for booth work.
Why it's required
Your input chain is graded. Closed-back cans are required for live-monitored cohort sessions.
03
MIDI / pad controller (MPC-style)
Akai MPC, Native Instruments Maschine, Ableton Push, or equivalent.
Why it's required
Beat work happens on pads, not the mouse. Touch matters for the swing exercises.
04
VR headset + spatial-audio plugin suite
Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, paired with a Dolby Atmos / Ambisonics plugin.
Why it's required
Live Master Classes meet in a virtual control room. Spatial audio plugins are how you mix what you hear there.
05
Mini Dolby Atmos monitoring + analog synth gear
Compact 5.1.2 or 7.1.4 monitor rig, plus as much real analog synth as your room allows (Juno-6, OB-6, Prophet-style, Moog mono).
Why it's required
The brief: experience pure sound — analog sound — at full resolution. Plugins emulate; iron resonates.
How class runs remotely
- · Live VR Master Class — two sessions per week, virtual control room.
- · Async stems review — drop your session, get notes within 48 hours.
- · Weekly office hours — open mic with instructors and the in-studio cohort.
- · Cohort Discord — always-on, moderated, 24/7 trade.
Recommended (not required)
- · Polyphonic analog synth — Juno-6, OB-6, or Prophet-style.
- · Monophonic analog synth — Moog mono (Sub 37 / Matriarch class).
- · 7.1.4 compact Atmos monitor rig for the capstone mix.
- · Outboard preamp / compressor for vocal chain practice.
Industry Keynotes · Strategy Sessions
Business TrackSingle-mic, single-idea talks from the people who built the rooms.
Bass-music engineer
The 808 Was a Drum Machine Until Miami Said Otherwise
How sound systems on the gulf coast rewrote what a low end is for.
Studio engineer
G-Funk's Room Tone: Why the West Coast Sounds Like a Cadillac
Reverbs, tape, and the chassis of a car as a mixing reference.
Houston archivist
Screw Tape as Time Travel
DJ Screw's cassette workflow as preservation, performance, and protest.
Atlanta producer-owner
Dungeon Family Economics
Ownership models that built a regional scene into a global one.
Phygital curator
VR Studio Recreation as Preservation Practice
Why rebuilding a room in VR is an archival act, not a novelty.
Strategist
Political Science Fiction & the Future of Black Music Capital
Speculative governance for cultural IP, rights regimes, and the long horizon.
Tourism · Cultural Heritage Tours
Field ProgramOn-the-ground tours of the studios, blocks, and venues that made the records.
Miami, FL
Anchor sites
Luke Records lineage · bass-music sound-system culture
On the ground
Sound-system listening session and engineer interview.
Atlanta, GA
Anchor sites
Dungeon Family rooms · Stankonia · LaFace history
On the ground
Studio walkthrough and stems breakdown with a Dungeon-era engineer.
Memphis, TN
Anchor sites
Stax · Three 6 / Hypnotize Minds geography
On the ground
Archive visit and crate-dig field session.
New Orleans, LA
Anchor sites
Cash Money · No Limit · bounce club circuit
On the ground
Bounce-night fieldwork, label-history seminar.
Houston, TX
Anchor sites
DJ Screw house · Rap-A-Lot · screwed-tape archives
On the ground
Tape-digitization clinic and oral history with Screw-tape custodians.
Los Angeles / Compton / Long Beach
Anchor sites
Death Row studios · G-funk control rooms · lowrider/oldies record shops
On the ground
Studio canon listening, lowrider oldies dig, engineer panel.
Seed itinerary — cohort cities subject to expansion.
Preservation · Living Archive
4 PillarsPreserving the rooms, the tape, and the practice — not just the records.
Tape & session-stem archiving
Digitization workflow, file integrity, provenance metadata, restricted access for unreleased material.
VR studio recreations
Long-term documentation of working rooms — mic positions, monitor placement, room tone — tied to the Phygital capstone.
Oral history
Structured interviews with engineers, road crew, A&R, label staff. Consent, release, and ethics built in.
Heritage-site partnerships
Studios, venues, and neighborhoods working toward protected status, plaques, and licensed cultural-heritage tours.
R&B / Hip-Hop & Foundational Rock & Roll · Race Music Conservatory
LineageOne unbroken Black-music lineage — from race records to the streaming era — held inside a working conservatory, not a museum.
The conservatory treats R&B, the foundational rock & roll built by Black artists, and hip-hop as a single continuous catalog. Coursework covers catalog rescue, masters recapture, sample-clearance archaeology back to original race-records sessions, estate stewardship, and the rights infrastructure required to keep the lineage in community hands.
1920s – 1940s
Race Records Era
Okeh, Paramount, Black Swan, Bluebird. Field recordings, blues and gospel sessions sold as 'race music' — the commercial origin point of every genre on this campus. Catalog provenance, mechanical-royalty archaeology, and surviving shellac care.
1948 – 1959
R&B & Foundational Rock & Roll
Chess, Atlantic, Specialty, Sun, King, Modern, Vee-Jay. The Black architects of rock & roll — Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Louis Jordan, Ike Turner, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Big Mama Thornton. Restoring authorship and royalty lineage that was stripped at the source.
1960s – 1979
Soul, Funk & Proto-Hip-Hop
Stax, Motown, Hi, Philly International, Salsoul, T.K., Sugar Hill. The break-beat library, the DJ canon, and the studio musicians who built the loop economy decades before sampling had a name.
1979 – present
Hip-Hop & Modern R&B
Sugar Hill through Def Jam, Death Row, Cash Money, No Limit, Quality Control. Sample clearance, masters recapture, estate stewardship, and the continuous line back to the race-records catalog this conservatory exists to protect.
Conservatory track feeds Preservation, Heritage Tours, and Grants & Civic.
Business Development · Four Tracks
ParallelOwnership, operations, hospitality, and the long political horizon.
Track 01
Artists & Producers
Publishing, masters ownership, sync licensing, label-deal structures. Reading a deal memo without flinching.
Track 02
Venues & Tour Operators
Booking, hospitality, heritage-site partnerships, ticketing, live-load logistics, insurance.
Track 03
Studios & Archives
Operating a working studio that also functions as a preservation site — pricing, residency, archival stewardship.
Track 04
Political Science Fiction
Long-horizon strategy: cultural policy, future-of-Black-music-capital scenarios, speculative governance of cultural IP, rights regimes for VR / phygital reissues.
Grants · Civic Development
Funding the WorkFunding the rooms, reporting the work, organizing the block.
Grant Writing
Narrative craft, logic models, budgets, letters of support. Templates surveyed: NEA, state arts councils, Mellon, Ford, Knight, Kresge, city cultural affairs. Includes a 'what a winning narrative actually does' checklist.
Grant Management
Award acceptance, sub-recipient agreements, drawdown schedules, expense allocation, restricted-fund accounting basics.
Reporting
Interim and final reporting, outcomes vs. outputs, beneficiary data collection with consent and ethics, site-visit prep, audit trail.
Civic Development
Partnerships with city cultural affairs, public-school music programs, libraries, parks, heritage commissions. Ordinances supporting music venues, live-load zoning, and participatory budgeting for cultural districts.
Funder map · Seed list
Federal arts, state arts councils, regional regranters, family foundations, corporate cultural-responsibility programs, municipal cultural-affairs offices, and CDFIs.
Tie-in
Grants and civic policy are the present-day mechanics of the Political Science Fiction business track — speculative governance begins at the city desk.
Next remote cohort opens fall. Rolling interviews — no audition tape required.