Take 10

The man with the dreadlocks slams down his headphones. For two days and nights, Rodney Marable has been huddled over a PowerBook, packing the computer with RZA, Black Uhuru, and Gipsy Kings samples. He's trying to turn these clips into a song. And he's failing. As a DJ at bars in Somerville and Cambridge, Marable has been stuck spinning other people's stuff. That's why he applied to participate in the Red Bull Music Labs, an intensive four-day workshop paid for by the caffeine-spiked energy-drink company. To make his own track.

"I know what good music sounds like, and I've got sounds in my head I need to get out so I don't go crazy," says Marable, 33.

But he's never used this technology before, the sound-mixing programs that can turn a laptop into a full-service recording studio. As user-friendly as the machinery might be, there's one thing it can't do: write his song. Marable has to compose the rhythms, melodies, and structure. By Friday night, he's struggling. The samples on his G4 aren't coming together. Lorin "Bassnectar" Ashton and Craig "Sayr" Russo, the Los Angeles-based instructors leading the Music Labs, try to help. But it's no use.

Marable heads out of the temporary studio set up in the common room of the Kingdom Fine Arts Bed & Breakfast in Boston. Quickly, he's down the steps and on Massachusetts Avenue. He paces the block, his hands in his jacket pockets, and makes a declaration. Halfway through the workshop, he's starting over.

"I'm using my own stuff," he says. "It's time to see if I can get this music out of my head."

He's not the only one with that mission. The 10 strangers in the free workshop, which started on a Wednesday, are aiming for the play-and-tell party that will cap the sessions at the Phoenix Landing in Central Square. During the week, they will start slowly, learning how to create basic beats before launching into the seemingly limitless applications and sound clips found inside their PowerBooks. They will work through the night, taking catnaps on one of the B&B's waterbeds. They will debate the politics of sampling and do their best to recover when their machines -- and sleep-deprived brains -- crash.

This is not just for fun. In fact, most of them are here because they want to become professional musicians and producers. In an increasingly automated industry, mastering the latest sound-mixing programs may be more important than practicing scales.

"If you want to be in the recording business, you've got to know this stuff," says Paul Lehrman, a musician who teaches digital recording techniques at Tufts University and writes a column for Mix Magazine, the leading journal for professional audio production.

But the dance party is a long way off as the group gathers for the first time on a Wednesday, at 6 p.m. Sitting in a circle, the aspiring producers introduce themselves. It's quickly clear that the group the company picked is as diverse as the cast of MTV's "The Real World," with an age range from 19 to 33. There are college kids and dropouts, aging professionals and production prodigies, African-Americans, whites, and a guy born to Swiss and Lebanese parents. They all have one thing in common: They dream of creating their own tracks. With thousands of dollars of equipment and two professional producers at their disposal, this is their chance.

To give them space, Red Bull has rented out both floors of the Kingdom, a storefront B&B a few doors down from Daddy's Junky Music and across from the Christian Science Mother Church. The company has stocked the space with Oreo cookies, chips, and 15 cases of the sugary-sweet energy drink. The main lounge has been converted into a classroom, with Ashton lecturing from behind a pool table covered by turntables, computers, and keyboards. Microphones have been placed in each of the bedrooms, upstairs and downstairs, to create semiprivate sound booths.

That Wednesday, Ashton, 26 and skinny, with a scraggly chin beard and waist-length hair tied up atop his head, asks all the participants to talk about their musical influences and what they're hoping to get from the Music Labs.

The reference points range from funk to hip-hop to folktronica, a kind of acoustic-driven dance music. Northeastern whiz kid Ryan Sciaino, 19, says he's used much of the equipment before and confesses his love for "booty house," which cracks up the room. The personal stories vary only in detail, not theme. They are about obsession -- with music, technology, and performance. Sam Mohtady, 22, a student at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, talks about getting into hip-hop as a teenager and then, as an adult, cutting way back on his job as a waiter so he could devote more time to his sound equipment.

"It's like crack, isn't it?" he says, sparking nods and laughter around the room.

Ashton asks Mohtady why he's here.

"Because," he says, "I'm sick of playing other people's stuff."

After the revolution The equipment is basic: laptops, turntables, and keyboards. The samples range from Ringo Starr drum patterns to distorted guitar fills and dobro licks. The program being used is Reason, which simulates a full-service recording studio.

This is a long way from the days of Phil Spector, when recordings were done in a studio with engineers behind glass turning knobs and dials. In the 1970s, the first portable four-track recorders arrived on the market. Within a decade, they were affordable enough to spawn a lo-fi revolution. Guided by Voices parlayed its homemade tapes into a record deal. Troubled Daniel Johnston became a basement legend as he wandered the club scene in Texas, passing out cassettes. In the early '80s, another technological advance occurred: the creation of MIDI, a language that allows digital instruments and computers to talk to one another.

Since then, advancing technology and booming hard-drive capacity have enabled enthusiasts to mimic the sounds achieved in a professional studio. A do-it-yourselfer can record 100 different tracks for a single song. Sampled instruments sound authentic, not as if they were processed on a synthesizer, and missed notes can be erased or cleaned up.

Andy Kershaw, 24, a three-time college dropout, has been working 10-hour days as a pharmacy technician to try to save up for his own setup. He dreams of the day when he won't have to report to the pharmacy, comb his hair, take out his piercings, and put on a lab coat. He can make extra cash DJing at parties, but not enough to sustain a career. Ashton, by comparison, might remix a String Cheese Incident track, play a party, and record his own song in the same week.

"If you don't produce your own music, you're not going to make it," Kershaw says.

Courtney Cooper also has a plan. She's 20, goes to Berklee, and hopes to become a studio-savvy Britney Spears. She's already got her own web page at www.artistgigs.com, on which the former Miss Teen Maine has posted a photo of herself in a skimpy skirt and sheer pink blouse.

"As much talent and musicianship as there is at Berklee, I almost like this better," Cooper says: There's no "Berklee flinch" here, that notorious, reflexive critique that comes after virtually any student performance. Instead at midnight, Ashton marks the end of the formal part of each session by having the class members plug into the room's sound system and play their work in progress. When Jamila "Lady J" Wilson plays her loop, the others nod, smile, or bob and weave to the beat. Ed Aten, a New Hampshire guy sitting in front of her, turns to offer a high-five. Marable, directly behind Wilson, smiles. "I'd buy that record," he says.

Ashton offers encouragement, and suggestions. Bring the bass up on the track. Make the highs more pristine. Develop a more consistent groove.

"I was aching for a bass variation," Ashton tells Mohtady. "Other than that, that hook is so sick."

Liberation at a rave Ashton is no rent-a-DJ. He developed the Music Labs program.

He came late to the music. In high school, Ashton got into death metal, including groups like Cannibal Corpse. His life-changing experience came at 18, when he went to his first rave.

"I would head-bang, I would mosh," says Ashton. "This was the first night I danced, and it was incredibly liberating."

Always politically active, Ashton -- who wears a George Bush "International Terrorist" T-shirt to one session -- immersed himself in electronic music. By his junior year at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the Community Studies major had developed a program at a juvenile home. He brought in four turntables and a four-track and started recording the teenagers' drum circles and showing them how to dub and mix them. That same DIY ethic helped Ashton establish a career after college, touring to play dance parties around the world and recording for Virgin, Om, and a handful of smaller labels.

The idea of the Music Labs emerged when Ashton met Kurt Sonderegger, Red Bull's national culture marketing manager. The Austrian company tries to link itself with extreme sports and underground youth movements -- running a car racing camp and Flugtag contests, in which competitors see how far they can ride homemade rafts. It also runs the Red Bull Music Academy, which offers two-week DJ programs around the world. Go to www.boston.com/ae/music to hear clips of tracks created by Red Bull Music Labs participantsAshton's program started slowly last year with a two-day workshop in Missoula, Mont., expanding into the Music Labs that touched down in Portland, Ore., and Ann Arbor, Mich., before coming to Boston. While Ashton lectures, his musical partner, Russo, scoots around the room, helping with computer problems and giving production advice. By Saturday, they're starting to race the clock. Formal class time has been cut back. There's a making-it-in-the-biz tutorial from Paul Anthony, who runs Rumblefish, a music identity and licensing company. But the class members, tired and crunched, are getting antsy. During an afternoon play-around, a debate breaks out about the ethics of sampling. At issue: Sciaino's use of a field recording of Peruvian children singing on his track.

"It's bordering on exploitation," Wilson says.

This sparks a circular discussion, and Kershaw, in the back row, starts to lose patience. He stares at his screen, arms crossed, foot tapping nervously on the ground. Finally he throws up his hands and speaks.

"We need to clip this because this could just go on all night," he says. "Please."

Many of them do rework their tracks through the night. Ashton and Ross don't head to their hotel until the sun's coming up. A few hours later, they're back at the B&B. It's Sunday and the songs are coming together. Marable, who has developed a thumping dance track off his beats, takes another walk. He stops in a used-record store and picks up Prince's "Controversy." He stops in a liquor store and buys two bottles of champagne and brings them back to the Kingdom.

There's no time for a formal toast. They drink as they work. The Phoenix Landing show starts at 9:30 p.m., and it isn't until 7 p.m. that Ashton and Russo have all the Music Labs tracks burned onto a disk.

Snippets, not samples All 10 of them are here. When the doors to the Phoenix Landing open, they wander in, heading for a snack at the food table or a drink at the bar. They see friends and parents who have been invited. They mix, they mingle. Until, that is, Ashton steps up to the platform. As if out of reflex, the class members gravitate toward the front of the room. Sciaino's track plays, spacey keyboards floating over the Peruvian voices before a booming, Led Zeppelinesque drum kicks into the mix. Marable is next. He stands on a bench to one side of the room as his song kicks in with a funk-heavy bassline. There's no RZA, no Gipsy Kings. The samples he does use -- D'Angelo and Charles Mingus -- are just snippets, barely identifiable over a dissonant keyboard groove and his programmed drum lines. That's when he knows his track has worked. People on the dance floor, his classmates, raise their arms toward Marable, hooting and saluting. He jumps off the bench and into the crowd, head bobbing as the next verse begins.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.