Full Week Schedule

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  Mon, Aug 24 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan ·
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  Mon, Aug 24 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Jam ·
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  Mon, Aug 24 Ear Training Test your ears and discuss - Music, Mixing and more! w/ Nathan ·
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  Tue, Aug 25 Theory Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a morning music theory workout w/ Nathan ·
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  Tue, Aug 25 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Scott Hampton ·
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  Tue, Aug 25 Production Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a production breakdown of your favorite songs w/ Jon Mattox ·
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  Wed, Aug 26 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan ·
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  Thu, Aug 27 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Jam ·
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  Thu, Aug 27 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Kallie ·
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  Mon, Aug 31 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan ·
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  Mon, Aug 31 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Cato Zane ·
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  Mon, Aug 31 Theory Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a morning music theory workout w/ Nathan ·

What We Covered Recently

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  WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE Reviewed chord progressions submitted by members this evening, working through the harmonic analysis of a C–Am–Bb–F progression and unpacking how stacked voicings (a power chord in one hand against a full chord in the other) create unexpected color. Also heard a new improv guitar piece from Marc and a rhythmic sketch from Jon working in shifting meters (3, compound 8, 10, and 11). Much of the session was informal, with instrument discussion and member catch-up alongside the music listening.
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  EAR-TRAINING-GYM We ran an interval and chord identification exercise using a Portal-based multiplayer bingo game, working through a series of chords and asking students to name the intervals present. Discussion covered close voicings, chord inversions, the relationship between intervals and their inversions, and how a minor 6 chord is constructed. We also worked through the use of melodic reference songs as a tool for interval recognition.
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  WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE We reviewed work in progress from participants, with extended focus on a microtonal beat built on a noble number scale — exploring how non-rational tuning systems interact with blues harmony and functional chord progressions. The session also included a hands-on look at Bitwig's Grid modular environment, examining how polyphonic patches are constructed from sine waves and how waveforms can be sculpted by manipulating partials. A significant portion of the conversation covered Nathan's ongoing development work on a harmonic synthesizer that uses weather data as a noise source, including the mathematics of scaling that data across frequency ranges and the potential use of Perlin noise as a smoothing carrier.
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  OFFICE HOURS mixing vocals, listening to a student song and giving feedback, editing mouth sounds and plosives, sidechaining and all the different ways you can use it
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  THEORY-GYM Covered chord extensions and color tones through the lens of polychords — stacking two independent triads or chords to produce richer four- and five-note harmonies. Demonstrated how upper extensions (9, 11, 13, flat 9, sharp 9, sharp 11) can be understood as embedded triads within a single chord, and worked through voicing, inversion, and omission strategies for making those combinations usable. Used "Strawberry Fields Forever" as an analysis example to show how melody-first writing can drive harmonic choices rather than the reverse.

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