The Rural We: Geoffrey Carter
The Lenox native opened a new kind of community music school that concentrates on beat making and music production.
In September, Geoffrey Carter opened BeatNest, the “premier kids electronic music program” in the Berkshires. At his studio in Pittsfield, kids can learn about electronic music, beat making and music production. Born and raised in Lenox, Carter studied piano as long as he can remember, and majored in electronic production and music technology at Berklee College of Music in Boston. After he graduated, he worked in Boston, providing live sound at a nightclub. But being out late every night was rough, and when COVID came around, the club closed and he moved back to the Berkshires. He was looking for a career path, and found one as an instructor in the field of music technology.
When I came back to the Berkshires, I began working at the after-school program at the Lenox Community Center and was asked if I wanted to teach a class. I started teaching kids music: beat making with computers, synthesizers, and some recording. It was a group activity where we made a song at the end. I like working with kids a lot, and saw that there was a lot of interest at the community center for this kind of thing.
I rented a small space in downtown Pittsfield and opened BeatNest, where I teach private and doubles classes. I have kid-friendly synthesizers that are easy to use. The kids like to play with those. Technology is so good now you really don’t need to know music theory or how to play an instrument to make good-sounding music. You can use a lot of the tools to make cool sounds and the kids get really excited.
Music technology makes it very easy for a young child to get quick and satisfying results. I think that having a creative musical outlet where a child can create interesting music — without being able to play a traditional instrument — is something parents don’t often consider possible. And there are also so many different levels to it, where a child can go from experimenting with recording household objects (which is something I like to do in class) or twisting knobs on a synth, to making a fully arranged song. And a lot of kids just like to record their own voices and manipulate them in the computer.
I plan to stay in this area; there’s a good opportunity for this kind of music in the area. Outside of the BeatNest studio, I DJ for yoga studios, and play shows and clubs.
