Oakland Digital (www.odalc.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit that educates and inspires low-income communities through technology, brought the Hammer down on Oakland, wrapping a successful year with educational classes and capping it off with its second annual Inspiration Awards, honoring MC Hammer, singer/artist Goapele and technology leader Alex Bernstein of North Social.

Want to learn how to make a rap/hip-hop beat? This workshop will introduce Reason, a music software program developed by Propellerhead Software. It emulates a rack of hardware synthesizers, samplers, signal processors, sequencers and mixers, all of which can be interconnected. Reason can be used either as a complete virtual music studio, or as a collection of virtual instruments to be played live or used with other sequencing software.