How The Music Works is transforming the Gloucester music scene

Malaki Patterson, a musician, music producer and artistic director of The Music Works Charity talks about working with young people in challenging circumstances to help them reach their full potential in music.

The Music Works is a charity that harnesses the power of making music to connect and engage with young people, nurturing talent across the country and helping disadvantaged and underrepresented young people access the music industry.

Genelec recently helped The Music Works launch their latest initiative, a mobile recording studio called the Music Bus – a state-of-the-art studio on wheels which takes music-making to new communities throughout Gloucestershire, giving young people the opportunity to collaborate and learn how to play instruments and write songs together, as well as offering music production and recording skills.

The charity hopes that the Music Bus can ultimately reduce anti-social behaviour incidents in the area by giving young people positive opportunities to take part, and a chance to make the music they love.

Tell us about your start in the music world as a musician and then a music producer and recording engineer; you didn’t enter the industry in a traditional way…

As cliché as this may sound, music was always in my household growing up. My mum always used to play it and I always listened to music. When I went to school, it was just a completely different feeling. 

I didn't engage in music at school. It was a completely different language to me and I didn't take music at school because of that. It was a complete disparity to me. I didn't even see the similarities between it – I just didn't relate to it. 

Therefore, I didn't take it as a GCSE or anything like that. But I continued making music at home – I just did everything independently and then decided to buy a computer when I was really young and started doing music production. It was the time where you could start doing DIY music at home.

How did growing up in Gloucester influence your decision to start The Music Works charity? What kind of resources did you think the community was in need of or did you wish you had access to at the time?

Like any kind of rural city and regional area, we didn't have much infrastructure for music. I grew up in a quite deprived area – we didn't have much and there was a lack of opportunities and support in the local area. The creative industries – we weren't even exposed to. Most of my opportunities that did come in music came outside of the city, but the city is brimming with talent.

So when I bought my own computer, I set up my own home studio and then I started inviting friends round. It got to the point where it got really big and I set up my own little community studio down the road, and loads of people were coming through.

It really made me realise, “Hold on, it's not the place that's the problem, it's just the infrastructure and what's around it and the lack of support”. We kind of grew our own culture so it was inevitable for me to set up The Music Works because actually, it needed it. 

I first started volunteering my time doing it and giving back to the community, and as I got more into the industry, I met other freelancers as well, and together that's how it came about.

Tell us about The Music Works and what it does…

The charity exists to transform young lives through music. We support all young people to access music by breaking down barriers and the challenges that they might face to engage in or make music. A high level of our work is specifically targeted at young people in challenging circumstances or those who are underrepresented.

We work in education and community centres like alternative provision schools, youth centres, community centres – all through our outreach work. But then we also have our own central hub and studios across the county where we deliver most of our work and signpost young people to as well. 

We work with young people from first access, from those who have never picked up an instrument before, right through to creative careers, working with various partners like with the youth support service, social services and Youth Justice.

We have creative industry partners as well, like Genelec and Warner Chappell and they support our creative careers programme. All of our work is youth-led from the point of a young person deciding what music they want to make, through to what music activity and programmes we should be delivering for them.

That also includes young people sitting on our board, having influence over governance and sitting on our youth advisory groups as well. It's really important to have that youth-led model that we have as well.

In places like Gloucester, would you say having access to a career in music is generally more accessible for people from more supportive / financially stable backgrounds?

I believe it all starts with education. We work in quite deprived areas where a lot of families are from low socio economic backgrounds. The cost of an instrument is expensive and is just something they can't afford. 

So even for young people that may want to get into music through school, they don't get to do it in their own time or anything like that. So for them to develop and practise at home, because they don't have the money, it doesn't really exist. So to continue their music practice from an early age, it's already a barrier.

For those young people, they might not even think about having a career in music because it's stopped already at an early age. If you're from a more deprived background, or don't have the money, or your family's never been to university, you might not think that's an option.

Then going into the industry when you're starting a career, it's quite expensive. If you're starting your music career you're thinking, “I'm going to start going to a recording studio, and that costs money”. 

If you're going to start putting out music, you might need a PR budget for marketing – everything is an expense.

I was speaking to a publishing company the other day, and they said their advance starts at around 50k. 

They said who they normally give contracts to is more young people from affluent or middle class backgrounds, because actually 50k over three years – when you split that against a tax hike and maybe a manager – you don't have much to live on, especially if you're in a place like London. 

How can you afford the cost of living crisis at the moment? It's so hard to get into the industry if you don't have that financial backing behind you.

What has the feedback been from students; how has The Music Works had a positive effect on their lives?

That's such a difficult question because I have satisfying moments all the time. There's so many young people we work with that it’s the small things like a young person not thinking they’re musical and not wanting to pick up an instrument, and just saying they love listening to music, to seeing them jump on stage for the first time to share a song.

One important one for me is I always wished there was a space that was welcoming, safe, and had opportunities for young people to make and create music. That was one of my main visions, and is what we've created is that space. 

It's the only thing of its kind in the county and it's completely accessible. We have disabled musicians and youth facilities, we have so much adaptive technology – it's just welcoming and open to everyone. So for me, that's the closest to my heart in terms of kind of a satisfying moment.

I speak to so many young people who say this place is amazing and that they've benefited from it so much. 

Just stepping back and actually seeing a shift in the culture and what's happened in the city to the music culture…because we have a talent development programme, we're seeing a lot of those musicians coming together and collaborating, putting on their own events, putting on their own showcases, thinking about doing artist management because there's so many artists around and they want to help them. 

It's so interesting how they're building this infrastructure themselves, and The Music Works is guiding it, but it's all led by them.

The Music Bus was recently launched. Where did this idea come about?

Gloucestershire is a very rural county, and it can be isolating in some areas – transport is not great at all for young people. We wanted to make sure we could reach all young people where they are in their communities. They can access music where also they feel safe, or maybe not be able to access otherwise because transport is a barrier.

So having a music bus, we've got a professional recording studio where you can just rock up to a local community where a young person can jump on and try out music production software, start making music and recording. It's incredible watching that.

What are they learning on the bus?

Everything from recording creative music to music production. They get to do songs, learn arrangements – we have such a breadth of different music leaders as well. We're always doing multi genre things, so they might find themselves recording instruments to rap vocals or singing – it's always different. 

We've got different setups for the bus as well, for instance it has a PA on it so we can turn it into a performance van. Or it can be a standard recording studio to create as well as produce music.

One of the sponsors of The Music Works is Genelec; you’ve got their speakers at the facility in Gloucester, and the new Music Bus features The Ones models. From your experience in the industry and as a producer and engineer, were you very aware of Genelec's reputation as a monitor manufacturer?

I've always been aware of Genelec speakers as being the industry standard. But when I was young, it was an aspirational speaker. It's not the speaker you could get, but it's the speaker you would want, so for young people to actually have access to these speakers now is incredible, because they see these speakers in top end high end studios. 

Now they are working in a professional environment where they can use their speakers. It's great!

Why The Ones?

Do you know what? The bus is actually a van! It's not as big as a bus, we just call it The Music Bus. So it's not that large in size really, so we didn't want huge speakers. 

But we also wanted something which was powerful enough to sound great in a small space. The Ones have excellent low-end for the size and model, but really detailed mids and highs as well. The van itself doesn't need a sub or anything like that, because the speakers sound great across the whole frequency range.

What feedback have you had on the monitors from people using The Music Bus?

That they are amazing. Honestly, our rooms sound incredible. When we first got the rooms, they were acoustically treated and they bought the Genelecs in and they did all the tests on them. 

We brought some young people in there just to hear the sound as well, and they were just all blown away. We've brought in so many new people just because they've heard about the speaker systems.

What are your plans for the future of The Music Works?

We are building and broadening our programmes to reach more young people. We work across the county, and year on year we're reaching more young people and we're developing our events.

We have a festival that we run called Kings Jam festival that's really growing and we're delivering many more events in the city as well.

Another thing we're really focusing on is building our industry contacts locally and nationally. We’ve got partnerships with Genelec and Apple Music, and we're trying to build more of those so we can create pathways for young people to enter the industry.