Abbey Road Amplify 2025

ABBEY ROAD AMPLIFY 2025

Manchester | 19 - 21 November

ABBEY ROAD AMPLIFY 2025

Manchester | 19 - 21 November

Our annual Amplify programme returns for a fifth edition!

This year, we're bringing Amplify to Manchester for the first time. Join us for two days of recording workshops at our new studio in the Co-Op Arena on 19 and 20 November concluding with a full day of insightful panels at Aviva Studios on 21 November.

Sign up for a ticket

Sign up here for the MANCHESTER recording workshops

Sign up here for the panels

Ballots close & winners announced

The ballots will close on 9 November at 23:59PM. Winners will be contacted the following week.

Please note, if you are travelling from abroad, we will not be able to cover travel or accommodation.

SCHEDULE

Hover over each image below for more information.

19 November Ross Orton is a producer and mix engineer known for an eclectic catalogue of successes. Based in Sheffield and most notably credited for his work on Arctic Monkeys’ Brit Award-winning album AM, M.I.A.’s Mercury Music Prize nominated Arular, and work with other acclaimed artists including Roots Manuva, The Fall, Amyl and The Sniffers and The Vaccines. Crafting his distinctive sound from his musical origins as a drummer, Ross works with everything from the heavier side of guitar music, right through to a diverse range of electronic and dance music. He creates a signature sound with the Artist and his work as a musician informs his relationships in the studio. Due to his wealth of experience and knowledge in the music industry, Ross is passionate about developing emerging artists and building their sound. He’s produced many successful debuts for bands ranging from Working Men’s Club to Amyl and The Sniffers and Yard Act. Opening McCall Sound Studio in 2011, Ross is dedicated to creating an engaging, professional environment for artists in which he provides full production, engineering and mixing services.

20 November Alex Greaves is a music producer, recording and mixing engineer & multi instrumentalist based in Leeds, England. Having grown up in Leeds, playing in bands on the local music scene from the age of 13 and beginning his first ventures into recording on his Tascam 4 track, he eventually went on to gain a degree in Popular Music Production BA (Hons). During his studies, he found his first studio placement as an intern engineering for in-house producers. Alex quickly began producing bands himself, relishing the opportunity to focus more closely on the more creative and artistic aspects of working with different bands and artists. Alex is now a resident producer and engineer based at The Nave in Leeds - a beautifully converted church just on the outskirts of Leeds, fully equipped with a collection of carefully chosen analog equipment, drums, guitars and synthesizers. Alex’s work has received glowing reviews from the likes of the NME, DIY, Line of Best Fit & The Guardian and have been featured in BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music playlists as well as gaining notable syncs. He has also produced work for a number of labels from independent labels like Partisan and Domino to major labels including Polydor and Universal.

Recording Workshops

Step directly into a professional recording session as we pair an established artist with an established producer and one of our recording engineers for a full day in the studio. We're inviting six aspiring engineers, producers and/or artists to completely shadow this experience.

You'll be greeted by the engineer and producer who will start your day with a tour, explaining the careful setup of the live and control rooms, including the rationale behind the selected microphones, instruments and gear.

Throughout the session, you'll gain hands-on experience while learning critical skills like studio etiquette, session dynamics and understanding the vital artist-producer relationship.

All questions are welcome!

Stems & Secrets: A Track Breakdown with Rich Turvey

11:00AM - 12:15PM

Step behind the console for an exclusive track breakdown with producer Rich Turvey on a key track he's produced. Rich dives deep into his process, revealing his techniques and creative decisions.

To Be Announced...

12:30PM - 13:45PM

The Craft of Hitmaking

14:15PM - 15:15PM

John Robb is a many-faceted creature. Not just a well known face from TV but also a best selling author, musician, journalist, presenter and pundit, music website boss, publisher, festival boss, Eco champion vegan behemoth and punk rock warlord as well as TV and radio talking head plus singer from post-punk critically acclaimed mainstays The Membranes. John Robb is all these things and more. His recently released book The Art Of Darkness – the History Of Goth is a worldwide pop culture best seller and his soon to be launched ground-breaking new scheme – the Green Britain Academy, is set to train up people in thousands of Eco jobs whilst Borders Blurred is a gaming and music agency with a twist. He grew up in Blackpool before punk rock came along and saved his life and he formed the Membranes – the highly influential post punk band whose current albums keep pushing forward with added choirs and textures and are critically acclaimed. He was one of the leading post-punk fanzine writers in the UK with Rox before he went on to write for the rock press with Sounds in the 80s. He was the first person to interview Nirvana and coined the expression Britpop and was instrumental in kick starting and documenting the Madchester scene with his writing. His music and culture website <a href="https://louderthanwar.com/">louderthanwar.com</a> is currently one of the top 3 most read music and culture sites in the UK and at the front of diverse modern culture. He is a constant on TV and radio commenting on music, culture and politics and one of the UK’s leading in conversation hosts who has his own successful youtube channel and his own books and music festival in Manchester every year called Louder Than Words. He has written many books like best sellers like Punk Rock – an Oral History and The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop and in 2022 a book about the leading Eco energy boss Dale Vince from Ecotricity called Manifesto and a collected works of his journalism. Meanwhile 2024 will see the release of a new book with Alan McGee as well as his own autobiography.

A classically-trained cellist and singer, Jeremy has been involved in music since childhood, and started playing bass guitar aged 14. Growing up in the shadow of grassroots venue The Forum and its own independent imprint Unlabel in Tunbridge Wells, he played and promoted numerous shows on the south east’s DIY scene in the 2000s. Having graduated with first class honours in Popular Music and Recording BA (Hons) from the University of Salford he formed Everything Everything in 2007. Jeremy has released seven critically and commercially acclaimed top 10 albums with the band, and toured extensively around the world, garnering many awards and nominations, including five Ivor Novello and two Mercury Music Prize nominations. Inspired by his time working with The Forum, and his early experience of touring grassroots music venues, Jeremy became a patron of The Music Venue Trust in 2014, later becoming a Trustee. He was invited to join the Featured Artists Coalition’s (FAC) board in 2016. In 2017 & 2018 he hosted a monthly music radio show on MCRLive. Throughout 2019 he toured internationally with Foals, on bass, vocals and keys, playing in excess of a hundred shows that year. In 2022 Everything Everything scored their highest charting album to date with Raw Data Feel, and followed it in 2024 with seventh top 10 LP, Mountainhead. In 2024 he began teaching Live Performance at Waterbear music college in Sheffield, interviewing Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis and Jeanette Lee for the college’s Development Week, and providing the keynote speech for the Brighton campus’s graduation ceremony. He is based in Manchester.

Join our panel of songwriters for The Craft of Hitmaking. We’ll pull back the curtain on their creative and technical processes behind songwriting, revealing each speakers' different formulas for writing hooks, song structures and navigating the complexities of collaboration and production.

Getting Signed

15:30PM - 16:30PM

Learn more about the A&R process, exploring what promoters, managers, and labels are truly looking for in a developing artist, from building a national buzz and navigating the live circuit to crafting the perfect pitch that secures representation and a deal.

The Road To Becoming A Studio Engineer

17:00PM - 18:00PM

Mirek Stiles started working at Abbey Road as a recording engineer in 1998, working on a diverse range of projects including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Beatles Anthology, Muse, Kanye West, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and** Paul McCartney**. Mirek also worked as a Digital Producer in the Abbey Road Interactive department on a range of Blu-ray titles including Roxy Music, Ringo Starr and Reservoir Dogs. Today, Mirek runs the studio’s Audio Products department leading development of a range of software and hardware releases based on Abbey Road’s historic recording IP, acoustics, and engineering expertise with partners Spitfire Audio, Waves Audio and Chandler Limited. Mirek also sits on the board and acts as an advisor on the Abbey Road REDD incubation programme and is currently exploring and experimenting with Spatial Audio over headphones, ambisonics, spatial microphone arrays and game engine workflow. Recent projects include collaborations with film and video game composer Stephen Barton (Jedi: Fallen Order), joint research with the University of York and University of Huddersfield and chairing the Abbey Road Spatial Audio Forum, bringing together members from gaming, broadcast, VR, music production and film. Mirek’s expertise spans over 20 years within the studios, from analogue and vintage recording workflows through to the latest immersive medias including 6 Degrees of Freedom Virtual Reality and Dolby ATMOS capturing and rendering options.

Abbey Road engineers explain how to gain hands-on experience and land a job in a studio, exploring real-world challenges and understanding the skills needed to succeed and how to improve them.

Composing For Film & TV

18:15PM - 19:15PM

Benson Taylor is an british composer & record producer, working between his studios in Tuscany & Los Angeles, where his orchestral & experimental synthesis backgrounds unite. David Bowie’s publishing company signed Benson in his early twenties and he has since carved out an incredible career writing & producing music. He is an alumnus of the University of California, Los Angeles. Benson’s music is heard in Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black, Suits, Grey’s Anatomy, Ray donovan, The Big Bang Theory, and 13 Reasons Why. He recently scored Paul Leyden’s Chick Fight, an Amazon Original starring Malin Akerman, Bella Thorne & Alec Baldwin. In addition to the score, he also co-wrote & produced original songs for the film with GRAMMY-nominated, Bones UK. In 2018 he wrote the soundtrack for the film adaptation of the notable Martin Amis thriller, London Fields. Directed by Mathew Cullen & starring Billy Bob Thornton, Amber Heard, Jason Isaacs, Jim Sturgess, Cara Delevingne, and Johnny Depp. Benson founded A Remarkable Idea, a sub label with Universal Music Group in 2017. He has co-written with and produced artists including Bloc Party, Maxïmo Park, Bat For Lashes, The Hallé Orchestra, The New Mastersounds, Daedelus, Bo Ningen, Alex Maas (The Black Angels), Pulled Apart By Horses, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Meshell Ndegeocello, Temples’ James Bagshaw, Lower Dens, MOBO-winning Kairos, Four Tet, Menace Beach, Robot Koch, The Kingdom Choir, & GRAMMY-award winning Good Charlotte.

Go behind the scenes with leading composers as they talk about their pathways into the industry before demystifying the art and craft of scoring for the screen. This panel explores the journey of matching music to narrative—from the initial spotting session to final mix.

Discover how professional composers utilise themes, tempo and emotion to enhance a scene. Learn the essential technical skills and software required to become a composer and deliver broadcast-ready music for today’s film and television industry.