November 2024's ca.mp3 participants
In February 2022, roughly 50 talented Nashville musicians packed into one house. Over one weekend, they managed to foster a brand-new collective space for creating local music — one with no gatekeeping, no hostility and just a little bit of friendly competition.
The house party, now known as ca.mp3 (pronounced “camp three”), is still going strong. The musical congregation was cultivated by local artist and producer Jack Vinoy. After the crowd outgrew his living room, the Belmont University alum moved the event to a recording studio.
“It’s just like this project that has kind of, in the best way possible, gotten out of hand,” Vinoy says.
After the dust of the COVID-19 pandemic began to settle, the notoriously fickle Nashville music industry emerged more complex than ever, and Vinoy wanted to help others navigate it confidently. He aimed to create an environment for local artists to break out of isolation and immerse themselves in a space that encourages asking questions and creating relationships.
“The music industry is really competitive and really cutthroat, and I’m trying to make a space where it doesn’t feel that way,” says Vinoy. “And when you leave that room, you feel better educated on how things work, and you feel like you’ve got people to lean on when you need help.”
Since 2023, ca.mp3 has taken place at Top Track Studios. Vinoy is continuing ca.mp3’s partnership with nonprofit The Nashville Food Project, encouraging every attendee to bring in nonperishables to the upcoming session for a community food drive. The schedule for each ca.mp3 event is different, but the next one, scheduled for April 4 through 6, will feature a publishing panel, hours of open studio time and, of course, the beat battle and playback session that has become a tradition.
Open studio time fills the majority of the weekend, and when you break down the ca.mp3 registration fee, the studio costs participants around $1 per hour. The creative synergy of artists is palpable throughout the building during this time, Vinoy says. Nearly every space in the studio fills up with groups of collaborators, many of whom didn’t know each other before the weekend began.
“People will walk in and hear an in-progress track and will go, ‘Oh, hey, I know we just met, but I have this idea — could I try it?’” he explains. “And everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ And that’s the really cool part. … There’s no bad ideas in that moment, and people are so open to collaborating.”
During the beat battle, participants are challenged to start with one provided sample and turn it into a beat within an hour. The camp also includes a song competition. Any project created during the three days of the event is eligible, and attendees listen to each submission during the playback session on Sunday night. Enticing prizes from the audio equipment companies that sponsor the camp are awarded to the winners of each contest, but impressing your fellow campers may be a bigger reward. During the previous ca.mp3 session in November, listeners broke out in dance as the winning piece played over the speakers.
“This kind of impromptu dance party broke out, where it felt like this little club scene of just everybody jumping and dancing and having a nice time,” Vinoy recalls. “Little moments like that … they’re things that I can never really plan for. But just feeling that much creativity and excitement and joy about music and art in the room — something always happens.”
The memorable moments aren’t confined to the studio. Also during the November session, a producer and close friend of Vinoy’s (whom he met at a previous camp) began beatboxing on the front porch of the studio. When a small group exited the building to take a break, someone started freestyling on the beat, and before long, a spontaneous cipher broke out.
“It felt to me like there was so much cool music being made that it was literally spilling out of the studio into the street,” Vinoy says.
To continue fostering these kinds of organic collaborations and cultivate a much-needed sense of community in the local music business, Vinoy plans to keep organizing ca.mp3 for years to come.
“It’s been a really cool process to see people find each other. There’s people in town that are really working hard to make it a different industry going forward. I really appreciate that, and I just want to be a part of that in any capacity that I can.”
