5 DAY RETREAT

5 day intensive music production learning experience with 11 time nominated and 3 time Grammy winning music producer, Christian Castagno.

Sonidoselva offers a personalized learning experience that will broaden and deepen your understanding of music both practically and spiritually.

We provide a very broad musical experience dense with a diversity of musical knowledge emanating from a variety of musical traditions from around the world. By combining deep technical understandings with a hands-on approach to traditional and esoteric music, we will provide a magical and unforgettable experience you will be able to draw inspiration from regardless of your musical perspective.

For non-musicians or people who want a truly interesting introduction, we make sure the experience is tailored to your goals and abilities with each individual recieving direct instruction in the best format for them.

 Explore a deeper understanding of music in the heart of the world, La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Enjoy the incredible vibration of the world's only tropical, coastal snow-capped peak as you learn all about the subtle nature of sound with Christian Castagno in this amazing natural environment.

Musicians and non-musicians alike can experience an entirely different musical perspective that will greatly expand your understanding of the spiritual possibilities of music. Besides music, our retreats are holistic expressions oriented toward your overall well-being.

The retreat is designed so that you have enough time  to practice and improve your  skills both individually and as a group as to insure that the concepts being learned are retained as to become second nature. All the participants are given generous amounts of time on our fantastic Adam S5H main monitors. This is invaluable in order to understand their recording processes from the perspective of an extremely well-tuned high resolution control room.

 Christian Castagno is an eleven time nominated and three time Grammy winning music producer. Growing up in a Gurdjieff School surrounded by esoteric music and sacred dances, early on Christian showed a natural affinity for “the invisible sound that moves all hearts” and at fourteen took up playing various acoustic instruments until he received a Casio CZ-101 synth on his sixteenth birthday and that was that. By the time he turned 20 he had returned to New York City to pursue music and production full time and it was there he was fortunate to get a job at the legendary Manny’s music on 48th street in Manhattan. 

In this same moment he met Walter Sear who became his mentor and later very generously traded him a 16 track Ampex for a mic preamp so that he could start his own studio because, in the words of Mr. Sear, “how else could I get him to stop pestering me”? From 1997 to 2008 he and fellow producer Danny Blume operated GoodandEvil studio in Brooklyn where they did a wide variety of records ranging from Pop, Jazz, Latin, Hiphop and Electronic music. 

In 2003 Chris won his first Grammy for engineering with the return of seminal Louisiana favorite Eddie “the Chief” Clearwater. In 2007 Chris and Danny were nominated for best Jazz album with Sex Mob’s “Sexotica- a tribute to Martin Denny” as well as winning a Grammy for “best world music album” with the Klezmatics. In 2008 Chris was again nominated twice for his work on Miguel Bosé’s Papito producing and playing on five of the tracks most notably Morena Mia with Julieta Vanegas, 2007’s most downloaded Latin song on iTunes. 

In 2010 Chris and his wife Tatiana chose adventure and moved with their son Apolo to the coast of Colombia to a little town hidden away in the jungle called Minca where he is building his studio and event space Sonido Selva. Most recently he was nominated for both North American and Latin Grammys for his work on Bomba Estereo’s “Hayo” as well as nominations for best global roots album by the Canadian Folk Music Awards for his production and mixing on The Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra’s 2020 album “Velkombak”. In addition to his album production activities Chris has fostered a substantial music and arts community in Minca with concert events as well as expanding his unique approach to teaching technical audio production and a broad range of related topics such as the math and physics of harmonic series, pitch and perception, acoustics and musicology. 

As veteran of over two hundred records his credits include work with artists such as Iggy Pop, Bomba Stereo, Arcade Fire, Kombilesa Mi, Los Gaiteros de Ovejas, Miguel Bose, Systema Solar, Ru Paul, Naty Botero, Felix da Housecat and many others, Christian is now looking forward to passing on his experience in order to cultivate the next generation of young minds  powerfully creative ambient of La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

 This program is oriented toward self-development while gaining real insight into the deeper nature of music. It is a spiritual approach meant to develop an understanding of the inner world of music in the participant independent from genre or style.

We foster contact and experience, this retreat is very much hands on and our studio facilities have a wide range of very high quality musical instruments which we use for recordings as well as to demonstrate concepts.

Sonidoselva offers a personalized and spiritual learning experience that will enhance not just your workflow but give you a  very clear and advanced technical understanding of sound as it relates to physical phenomena such as harmonic series as well as  how it is perceived in our minds.

Day 1: Orientation & integration

Day 2: Getting familiar with the principles of esoteric and sacred music

Day 3: Meeting Folkloric and Indigenous music- the wisdom of the people

Day 4: Making the music- a day in the studio recording your music

Day 5: Review and closing ceremony dinner and Folkloric music concert around the fire

You need to have a basic knowledge of Universal Audio Apollo interfaces and Avid Pro tools or UA Luna software. Ableton/MAXMSP and Maschine are welcome too as we use them all the time however for the workshops we will be using Pro Tools as the main platform as it is the definitive standard for mixing and finishing music.

The whole retreat is done in English. Basic communication in Spanish is no problem however the technical aspects will be in English.

This program is oriented toward self development while gaining real and deep insight into the practical processes of producing music. It is a spiritual approach meant to develop understanding of the core of these processes in the participant separate from genre or style.

You should have an unfinished song that you want to work on during the 10 days so that the things being learned can be incorporated and applied to your process right away.

Sonidoselva by its nature is a collaborative space with all participants working to help each other with in an open creative space.

 We encourage musicians to bring their instruments and if you have a personal recording setup with an audio interface, to bring that too as there is a world class recording studio on the premises which is used in the workshops as well as to help participants gain insight and perspective on how they can make their recordings better.