Saffron is an organization working to address the gender imbalance within music technology, production and the recording arts.
With the aim of creating space, visibility and representation for women, female-identifying and non-binary people within music tech, Saffron provide essential access to resources, workshops and mentoring while maintaining a supportive community that works towards this shared goal. The latest USC Annenberg report shows that less than 5% of the music tech industry is comprised of women, non-binary or trans people and less than 1% of these are people of colour.
Saffron also host an annual digital event called 7 Days of Sound. The event is made up of seven consecutive days of online music tech workshops, covering a broad range of topics within music production, sound engineering, composition, DJing and industry knowhow, and will be delivered by a number of notable figures within the fields of electronic music and music technology.
The lineup for this year's 7 Days of Sound has been unveiled this week. As part of the 2023 edition, mastering engineer Heba Kadry (known for her work with Bjork, Beach House and Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others) will deliver a talk on her journey into the world of engineering, her approach to working with artists and her processes behind the desk. Attendees are encouraged to submit questions in advance of the Q&A with Kadry.
Electronic music producer rRoxymore will be hosting a session called Mixdown Surgery Hour, in which attendees can submit their tracks and receive feedback, while XL Recordings in-house engineer Josette Joseph will be opening up her DAW live to break down tracks she's worked on as part of the Beat Breakdown workshop.
Certified Ableton trainer Pops Roberts will be delivering a workshop based around vocal production techniques, composer and producer Homay Schmitz will be taking a deep dive into composition and arrangement for strings, and NTS resident Elena Colombi is set to explore the process of setting up and running an independent record label in an industry-focused workshop.
We spoke with several members of the Saffron team in March of last year about the event's previous edition. "We invited people all over the world to come and listen to women and non-binary people talk about music tech," Saffron's Glade Sinclair told us. "There were, I think, nearly 300 people in the room, online. It was really beautiful to have that. I think it’s allowed us to connect with everybody a lot more."
7 Days of Sound takes place 27th January to the 2nd February 2023. Attendees can book a ticket for just one day, or the entire week. The event is open to women, non-binary and trans people worldwide.
Tickets for 7 Days of Sound can be purchased via Saffron's website.
Revisit our 2022 interview with the Saffron team to find out more about the work that they do.
