Full Week Schedule

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  Sun, Apr 26 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Cinnamontal · 1pm (PT) | 4pm (ET) | 9pm (UK)
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  Mon, Apr 27 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan · 7am (PT) | 10am (ET) | 3pm (UK)
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  Mon, Apr 27 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Cato Zane · 9am (PT) | 12pm (ET) | 5pm (UK)
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  Mon, Apr 27 Instrument Gym Practice and workout on instruments! w/ Jon Mattox · 9pm (PT) | 12am (ET) | 5am (UK)
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  Tue, Apr 28 Production Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a production breakdown of your favorite songs w/ Kallie Marie · 7am (PT) | 10am (ET) | 3pm (UK)
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  Tue, Apr 28 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Jam Phelps · 10am (PT) | 1pm (ET) | 6pm (UK)
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  Tue, Apr 28 Theory Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a morning music theory workout w/ Nathan · 5pm (PT) | 8pm (ET) | 1am (UK)
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  Wed, Apr 29 Instrument Gym Practice and workout on instruments! w/ Kallie Marie · 8am (PT) | 11am (ET) | 4pm (UK)
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  Wed, Apr 29 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan · 6pm (PT) | 9pm (ET) | 2am (UK)
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  Wed, Apr 29 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Ben Krueger · 8pm (PT) | 11pm (ET) | 4am (UK)
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  Thu, Apr 30 Theory Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a morning music theory workout w/ Nathan · 5am (PT) | 8am (ET) | 1pm (UK)
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  Thu, Apr 30 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Jam Phelps · 2pm (PT) | 5pm (ET) | 10pm (UK)
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  Thu, Apr 30 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Nathan · 5pm (PT) | 8pm (ET) | 1am (UK)

What We Covered Recently

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  EAR-TRAINING-GYM We explored ear training through deep listening to a single contemporary R&B track, using it as a lens for examining background vocals as independent instruments, arrangement and layering strategy, mix placement and reverb use, vocal delivery and articulation, and song form. The session was open dialogue throughout — students brought their own observations and we used them to go deeper into production craft, melody writing over static harmony, and how a song's emotional arc can be built through stacking and restraint rather than harmonic movement.
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  OFFICE HOURS So many audio questions today. alot about recording and mixing with busses
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  OFFICE HOURS We welcomed a new resident, Hind, who shared a compelling a cappella vocal work-in-progress featuring layered harmonies and an unconventional phrase structure (alternating bars of three, four, and five). The session became a wide-ranging conversation about developing a production ear — listening deeply to music you love, building shared vocabulary with collaborators, and honoring the raw energy of first ideas. We also touched on the unique perspective drummers bring to production, and how to communicate effectively with musicians when your vocabulary is still developing.
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  OFFICE HOURS We spent this afternoon's office hours digging into shoegaze guitar production — specifically how to build dense, washy reverb textures without washing out the mix — alongside a chord progression puzzle a student is working through. Covered the Abbey Road reverb bussing technique, compressor attack as a front-to-back placement tool, layering multiple reverb buses with different characters, and the Temperance reverb plugin's pitch-aware reverb capabilities. Also touched on AI vocal/instrument generation tools (Ace Studio, Cantai) and notation workflow in the context of large-scale music publishing.
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  OFFICE HOURS Worked through a range of student questions during open office hours, covering song transcription and chord analysis (using "Let" by Pine Grove as a live example), arrangement strategy for building and sustaining interest over time, the physics of consonance and dissonance, the harmonic series, equal temperament vs. just intonation, and the phenomenon of inharmonicity in piano strings. Also explored found sound and percussion identification, the relationship between rhythm and harmony across the frequency spectrum, and a demonstration of barometric data sonified as audio.

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