Every few weeks, Chelsea Katz will introduce readers to a member or group on Stony Brook’s campus. 

When Ardit Piroli walked onto Stony Brook campus for the first time last year, he almost immediately started looking for others who shared his passion for producing music.

He found that people were definitely interested but, there was no one collective group just for audio engineers.

“All there was, was the marching band and orchestra,” Piroli said. “There wasn’t an actual music production like slash audio engineering based, you know, more of the digital stuff, modern based stuff.”

So he decided to change that.

“We’re all interested. Why doesn’t somebody start a club, you know?”

He walked into the music department and started connecting with different professors to find a faculty adviser. He found some rappers and interested students.

A year later, 60 or so music lovers filled SAC 302 on Wednesday for the second ever Music Production/ DJ Club meeting.  Half stuck together, talking about their mixes.

The less experienced half stuck with Piroli, who gave a crash course in the science of sound and how there is no really good way to make music.

“For the beginners, it’s tough,” he said. “It’s kind of like if you’re a sculptor. Here’s a block of marble. Here’s a chisel and a hammer. Good luck.”

While music producers might not be using a chisel and a hammer, they do use programs like GarageBand to put together their tunes.

They use launch pads, which are kind of like keyboards, to emit sound.

Hitting a button on the launch pad can make a certain sound come out. It can also make different color lights appear.

Because the club just started the path to official USG recognition, they are still too young for USG funding to buy equipment. For the time being, they are using Piroli’s speakers and launch pad.

Piroli also said that he has supplementary materials for novices to read and YouTube videos for them to watch.

After all, that’s how Piroli taught himself.

“Honestly, I haven’t been to any, you know, program or school for this. It’s all been self-taught,” he said.

So when intermediate and advanced students come into the club, they feed off each other’s knowledge and they can come up with new ideas.

Chatrik Sodhi is one of those students. He has been producing music for two years and welcomes the group work.

“Even professional producers can learn something from another producer every single day,” the senior engineering science major said.

“There’s no one way of doing things in music production so collaboration is very very important to learn.”

The main goal, Piroili said, is to get the music producers out onto campus and off-campus performing or deejaying.

He would love for his club members to open for artists at a university event like Brookfest, kind of like DJ Enclave did last spring for Diplo and Childish Gambino. He is not quite ready to take center stage yet.

“I could never be Diplo.”

That does all depend on “the people.” If club members want to dabble in different areas of music or try new types of producing, the club will morph in order to  meet their needs.

It is still important to understand just exactly who those “people” are.

“Any type of musician that has an idea and basically wants to have it from idea to listening to it in my headphones,” Piroli said.

The Music Production/ DJ Club meets every Wednesday during campus lifetime in SAC 302.