Shawn van Staden
I’ve been playing as a professional freelancer since 2001. I started early-on playing in a salsa trio of guitar players for a theatrical troupe called “el Ritmo Latino”. From there I started getting teaching positions ay schools around JHB, one being the National School of Arts in Braamfontein, at which I became acting head of the Contemporary Music Department in 2010.
The gigging continued from 2003 -alongside teaching- and I soon found myself working/touring with Denim till about 2008 and then joined a few independent bands (mostly rock+pop). The live cover/gigs started dwindling around 2011 and I got a good couple of years’ worth of work in the theatre (reading gigs) scene. I used to thrive in that environment playing alongside brass-sections+orchestras for live theatre, but from 2016 I noticed a serious decline in my calls.
I made the decision to stop teaching in 2016 to help out with family while self-studying orchestration/scoring for picture to eventually get work as a composer in multimedia/games/film, and that is still my current goal. Covid’s lockdowns granted me the chance to push harder into the videogame music sphere and I noticed a massive gap in S.A. Musicians arent ready for the coming digital entertainment world, even more so, the children won’t be prepared either.
My production experience is lacking, which cost me an opportunity of working as an assistant for a composer in the Cape (Deon van Heerden). However; I’ve used Cubase/Nuendo from 2006-2011, Ableton since 2011. I’m at a point now where I have to consider Logic audio and Reaper, and whatever new additional DAWS to get comfortable with, particularly for the coming implementation of ATMOS into videogames/films, I have some catching up to do, but always looking for people to learn from/collaborate with.
I miss teaching -a lot- and have been asking around community centers for available rooms to teach in, but the managers of most community centers don’t seem interested in free/low-cost lessons for small communities.
Looking forward to meet whoever reads this.
@shawnvanstaden
#shawnvanstaden
Shawn van Staden
