Music Production

Reviewed submitted beats this evening, including a tetrachord-based improvisation piece and additional work from Mark. Used the Harmony Wheel app's tetrachord feature to demonstrate how scales can be constructed and identified by mixing and matching tetrachords, and explored modal naming and cross-referencing. Discussion also covered vocal production strategy — specifically selecting and color-coding takes by emotional truth rather than technical execution — and the broader principle of subtractive production: identifying what to remove rather than what to add.

Covered compression ear training by working through a live project in Reaper — demonstrating how threshold, ratio, and makeup gain interact, and how over-compression affects dynamics, vocal performance, and high-frequency transients. Used the remastered versus original versions of "Stairway to Heaven" as a real-world listening example to illustrate what over-compression sounds like in context. Discussed multi-compressor vocal chains, cymbal treatment philosophy, and the principle of taking settings to the extreme as a learning tool.