THE STORY OF COHORT
// So last year, I was offered a residency at one of my favorite clubs in SF - Monarch - and they thought maybe I'd play every week, and maybe teach a class or something, but I decided to turn the use of this club into a protracted/expanded version of my PLAY LIVE! Seminar.

I've taught these before, in fact wherever I go I make myself available to show up in the local synth shop, or record store, or wherever they'll have me (sometimes even in the club after soundcheck, but before doors), set up my spaceship and talk with everyone about the equipment I use, my philosophy of live, improvised performance, and generally share myself and my experiences which lead me here. Then I take questions from the crowd, and we then have a wonderful conversation which by the end it goes without saying is this place's very own electronic music community. The experiences have been lovely, from 350 people crammed into a room to a dozen or two huddled around the stage, teaching, sharing, and connecting has become an integral part of my métier. I've done this for over 30 years, completely live, virtually alone. It's time I had a posse.

I spread the word, made a poster, and shared it. I made up hand made workbooks with diagrams, hand stamped title covers, and perforated note pages at the back so that we could exchange numbers. Technically this whole experience was a formal release on The Urgency Of Change (TUOC-09PLS) which you can read about below. I invited anyone and everyone to join me in the basement of this club and we would go over the basics of my philosophy of live, improvisational electronic music. A lot of people showed up, and it was a great group of people.

Week One: INTRO / OVERVIEW
Basically everyone arrived as if I were about to perform, but instead we talked about my spaceship, my experiences, and how I came to choose each piece of gear onboard. I answered all questions, and then turned it around and asked a lot of questions, and we got to really talking. My basic seminar.

Week Two: ELEMENTS
An overview of modern hardware, vintage hardware, and eurorack modular. How to curate equipment. What's really needed to construct a track? Shopping locally vs browsing the internet. Broken gear, vintage gear, why is everyone so angry about gear?

Week Three: SEQUENCER
What is a sequencer? How is that different from a computer? What are the advantages of using a sequencer vs a laptop? Live looping, live sequencing, live arrangement, pattern switching, pattern chaining, real time pattern composition, sequencing the sequencer. How does this create a song? What about the next song? How do you mix it in? Do you stop? What should we do? How do we do it? How are we supposed to remember all of this?

Week Four: SPACESHIP
Now, if you've done your homework, you have your songs and you want to play a set for your friends, or at a club. How are you supposed to navigate all this gear without making a complete fool of yourself? How do things connect? What do we do if they break, or don't work, and you already started playing? How do you travel around? Why don't you just use a laptop? What's wrong with us?

Week Five: SHOWCASE
At the end of all this we had a Showcase. We took over the middle room of Monarch, and everyone who was comfortable to do so performed live. It was mind blowing. I didn't play. I just danced, and cheered, and loved every second of it.

Not all of my students did their homework, and some of them did, but did not choose to submit for this project, but this is a document of the homework assignments from our group's efforts together. It is 16 new, original songs, from 19 local, San Francisco electronic musicians. We got a chance to connect, team up, relate, and found that we aren't just strangers with a common interest, but rather we are the basis of the San Francisco live electronic community, we are friends, a kind of a family, a cohort.

RELEASE/PRODUCTION NOTES //
COHORT was recorded by the artists (respectively), compiled, organized, and encouraged by Sunshine Jones, mastered and pressed with love in the USA, and will be packaged with recycled materials, and shipped individually by hand from right here in San Francisco.