Jacopo Chiari

What did you do before joining dBs?  

Before joining dBs, I was juggling with different streams of income as a freelancer. I have been wearing many jackets, from curating the sound aspect in sectors such as documentaries or advertisement, to being a sound engineer for jazz and classical recordings, and a promoter and DJ at music events.

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Why did you first get into live sound engineering?

Luckily I had a strong passion for music from an early age. Originally I was playing guitar at age 12 or so, but in those years I discovered Hip Hop culture and started to learn to scratch vinyl. From then I got into beat-making and started to work with a copy of Logic 5 on my Windows machine and never looked back.

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Any special areas of interest?

Reggae music has influenced me strongly, from the sound system culture to live dub mixing. My approach is to incorporate these styles and techniques into more electronic based music, both designed for club and pure listening. I love to revisit forgotten techniques from the past and combine them to produce new pieces of work.

What do you love most about what you do?

I find teaching music production here to be extremely rewarding. This is because of the nature of the act of transferring knowledge about creativity, and because it is a job that involves connecting with other people on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, I love being in touch with younger generations as they keep me up to date with the more recent musical currents.

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Tell us about your proudest career moment?

Looking back, the proudest career moment has been touring with my old band around Europe. There is something special about playing music live with others, and doing it in different countries on larger stages is not easy to forget. Releasing music is also something I get proud about, as it is where the true craft of an artist shines.

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What do you get up to outside of your role at dBs?

I try to keep active with music works. At the moment, I am launching a label for non-club related electronic music, encompassing ambient, soundscape, electroacoustic and all other forms of electronic genres. The rest of the time I work to produce my own releases, mixing other people’s music, promoting events, DJing… these kinds of things.

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Tell us something our students may not know about you?

I used to promote events in a small club in Milan around 2010, called Queen Club. My crew and I were in charge Room B which had a very small capacity, around 100 people max, or even less. We booked artists such as Blawan, Objekt, Pinch, Jack Sparrow, CosminTRG, Mike Dehnert. Looking back, the artists that we invited to play now perform in front of much bigger crowds. I am very proud and think we were ahead of the time in terms of artistic direction.

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