Full Week Schedule

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  Tue, Aug 4 Production Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a production breakdown of your favorite songs w/ Jam ·
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  Tue, Aug 4 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Kallie ·
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  Tue, Aug 4 Instrument Gym Practice and workout on instruments! w/ Nathan ·
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  Wed, Aug 5 Ear Training Test your ears and discuss - Music, Mixing and more! w/ Nathan ·
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  Wed, Aug 5 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan ·
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  Thu, Aug 6 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Cato Zane ·
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  Thu, Aug 6 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Ben Krueger ·
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  Sun, Aug 9 Theory Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a morning music theory workout w/ Nathan ·
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  Mon, Aug 10 Weekly Beat Challenge Gather and listen to anyone's Beat Challenge song ideas -- just for fun w/ Nathan ·
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  Mon, Aug 10 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Jam ·
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  Mon, Aug 10 Production Gym Start your day at the 'gym' with a production breakdown of your favorite songs w/ Nathan ·
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  Tue, Aug 11 Instrument Gym Practice and workout on instruments! w/ Kallie ·
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  Tue, Aug 11 Office Hours Ask questions, get help, and connect. w/ Scott Hampton ·
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  Tue, Aug 11 Ear Training Test your ears and discuss - Music, Mixing and more! w/ Nathan ·

What We Covered Recently

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  OFFICE HOURS Covered an overview of the upcoming songwriting class format — six weeks of generative writing exercises, peer feedback, and working toward a completed piece. Walked through the Chordal ear training app in a live demo, including the interval identification game, chord density exercises, and a new harmony wheel mode in development. Discussed interval ambiguity, specifically why major and minor sixths are consistently the most misidentified intervals, with reference to tournament data collected from recent playtesting.
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  THEORY-GYM Worked through interval ear training using the Beat Kitchen chord quiz tool, focusing on how to hear and identify intervals within a chord context. Covered the characteristic sounds of major and minor thirds, fourths, fifths, tritones, major and minor sixths, and major sevenths. Introduced the concept of interval inversion and how it affects perceived quality.
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  OFFICE HOURS Covered a range of topics including video editing workflows in Logic Pro, stereo microphone technique for acoustic guitar, microphone selection philosophy (bright vs. dark mics, large vs. small diaphragm), and a live walkthrough of the Cordal app's multiplayer chord-identification game. Also worked through chord voicing options for a student's song project, including a Montuno-style bass line demonstration.
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  OFFICE HOURS Covered the songwriting process from multiple angles, including working from musical ideas versus lyrics-first approaches, and how to treat early lyric fragments as rhythmic and melodic raw material rather than finished writing. Demonstrated a harmonic resynthesizer plugin — showing its partial manipulation, re-synthesis from audio input, and LFO-driven freeze/playback mechanics. Also reviewed a student's original recording and discussed vocal doubling in the style of Elliott Smith.
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  WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE We worked through songwriting process and philosophy — specifically how to handle self-editing, generate raw material, and push past the "where do I go from here?" problem. We also spent time on harmonic ear training app updates and a deep dive into a custom additive/harmonic synthesis engine with granular-style looping, inharmonicity controls, and envelope-as-LFO modulation.

beatkitchen.io