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Shoreline College anchors music tech programs with Solid State Logic Origin consoles

Shoreline College, ten miles north of downtown Seattle, Washington, opened its recently constructed Bracken Building, the new home of its Music and Music Technology programs, in April 2026. The new facility houses two recording studios with associated live tracking rooms, three small production/mixing rooms and two MIDI/computer labs that all feature equipment from Solid State Logic, including Origin 32-channel and Origin 16-channel inline analogue mixing consoles and dozens of SSL’s USB audio interfaces.

“We had two goals with this new space”, says Matt Jorgensen, Music Technology Faculty, Shoreline College. “Number one was to have two recording studios that were nearly identical, and the second was to almost take a step back from the digital world and have the consoles be purely analogue.”

The Origin consoles’ inline architecture and dedicated controls help students develop a practical understanding of recording, mixing, routing, and gain staging through hands-on operation. Studio A, a teaching studio with room for twenty students that has two adjacent iso booths and a large tracking room that doubles as a music ensemble rehearsal room, houses the Origin 32. Studio B, a smaller tracking studio with a single tracking room that doubles as a small ensemble rehearsal room, features the Origin 16. A retractable door between the large tracking room and a tiered seating area allows the space to be expanded for performances.

Jorgensen, a former Shoreline student who left for New York City to make a name for himself as a jazz drummer and music composer for TV and film before joining the faculty thirty years later, teaches some first-year recording classes but mainly second-year music composition and MIDI production. He notes that there are identical patch bays on the right of both Origins: “That way, students, who are here for two years, can seamlessly go between both studios and focus on the fundamentals of audio, signal flow and getting good mixes.”

With SSL interfaces across its teaching labs, production rooms and recording studios, Shoreline has created a consistent learning environment that allows students to move between different stages of production while remaining within a familiar workflow. Two 25-station MIDI/computer teaching classrooms feature an SSL 2+ MKII 2 in/4 out USB audio interface with MIDI I/O for each student. The instructor’s stations in each of the two rooms include an SSL 18 USB audio interface with MIDI I/O that supports up to 26 inputs and 28 outputs. Three small mixing rooms are also each outfitted with an SSL 2+ interface.

Again, Jorgensen comments, having uniformity across all the stations makes operation easy for students. “It’s something as simple as the +48 V phantom power buttons looking the same on each channel. Having that aesthetic for all of our students to adapt to it has been great”, he says. “So we went SSL all the way.” The SSL 2+ MKII interfaces also introduce students to SSL’s console heritage through the 4K Legacy analogue enhancement circuit, inspired by the character of SSL’s 4000 Series consoles. Together with the Origin consoles, they provide a connected production experience built around a common SSL design philosophy and sonic DNA.

“We teach classes on game audio, and live sound and we do a lot of post-production work”, eplains Jorgensen. “We teach a project where they strip out all the video and audio from films and they do all the ADR, sound design and composition. We’re trying to recreate the modern employment ecosystem within the confines of the college, so a lot of my music production students collaborate with the drama and the film departments.”

“That means you’re doing music production on your computer or in the MIDI lab, and you may do some overdubbing with the SSL interface”, he continues. “But then you might go and track something big and go into one of the Origin studios. Or you’re going to do drums in the studio, and then you bring it back to a production room, where you do overdubs.”

Lift AV in Renton, Washington, supplied the Origin 32 and Origin 16 consoles. Vintage King supplied most of the SSL USB audio interfaces. Kevin Bressler, who teaches multitrack recording on the program, designed the studio wiring and patch bays, for which the wiring was supplied by Sweetwater. The Music Technology faculty staff handled integration and installation.

(Photo: Solid State Logic)

www.solidstatelogic.com

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