• THEORY-GYM: We explored the jazz "real book" tradition — the corpus of standards, show tunes, and select pop songs that jazz musicians have historically drawn from — and examined why certain non-jazz songs earn a place in that lexicon. Using Michelle (Beatles), Yesterday (Beatles), and a Stevie Wonder song as case studies, we analyzed what harmonic features make a song attractive to jazz interpretation: four-note chord voicings, two-five-one progressions, stand-ins and substitutions for the five chord, and the absence of a dominant chorus structure. We also walked through how to read a lead sheet, including repeat signs, codas, and D.S. al Coda navigation.
• OFFICE HOURS: Worked through a live demo build of a custom synthesizer instrument, exploring string partial modeling, formant locking, and granular playback modes. Covered the acoustics of formants — how resonant peaks define vowel sounds and how locking formants enables pitch-independent vowel shaping. Also explored routing limitations when combining live audio input, sample playback, and the vocoder-style excitation path, identifying a specific bypass architecture needed to resolve the conflict.
• WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed submitted beats from multiple students, including pieces by Paul and John, and spent extended time on detailed feedback for Josephine's track. Also demonstrated formant shifting using a custom-built plugin called Harmonic, walking through how formant sculpting and spectral shifting work in practice.
• WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Covered bass-line thinking and how to approach bass as an instrument versus emulating it on keys, with a walkthrough of walking bass lines, landing chord tones on strong beats, and directional scale motion. Worked through the caterpillar exercise in depth — shell voicings, third-stacking, and chord substitution — as a framework for building keyboard facility in any key. Also addressed producer perspective: the risks of over-producing familiar material, the limits of metrics-based listening, and how perception shapes what we hear versus what is actually there.
• OFFICE HOURS: Covered a real-world case study in salvaging a poorly recorded garage demo: stem splitting for drum replacement/triggering, cymbal replacement using personal one-shots, re-amping guitars through virtual amps, high-passing for bleed reduction, and heavy vocal processing including noise removal, tuning, saturation, and slap-back delay. Also discussed audio delivery formats (bit depth, streaming platform requirements), Reaper workflow tips for cross-project plugin copying, mastering consistency across singles and albums, drum programming philosophy for producers, and drum fill construction for non-drummers.
• WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed several pieces submitted to the Beat Challenge folder, including works by Christian and Angela, with discussion of chord voicings and song structure. Also heard a work-in-progress song featuring vocals, live instrumentation, and MIDI horn tracks in development. Much of the session involved troubleshooting audio playback issues with uploaded files before pieces could be evaluated.
• PRODUCTION-GYM: Worked through a sim mastering session on one of Josephine's productions ("Endlessness"), covering the full workflow from initial gain staging to click removal, drum bus compression, and kick/bass frequency balancing. Also opened the session with reference track listening — analyzing production choices, arrangement credits, and recording technique on a contemporary track.
• THEORY-GYM: We used "Our House" by Madness as a lens for analyzing a single recurring chord progression — one chord, one minor five, one minor two, one minor four — and examined how the band built an entire multi-section song from it. We also listened to a second track as a comparison piece, tracing similar techniques: modal borrowing, distant modulations, and fragmentary quoting of familiar progressions broken before resolution.
• WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed a full original song submission from Josephine alongside additional pieces in the beat bucket. Feedback centered on restrained mixing philosophy — vocal leveling without heavy compression, minimal effects processing, and how to approach bringing in a live drummer without pre-loading their ear. Also demonstrated new Harmonic plugin functionality using piano sample scrubbing and inharmonicity modeling, and briefly covered sampler round-robin techniques for vocal sample variation.
• OFFICE HOURS: working with clients, mixing vs production

Show more… Learn more about Residency

• 
  Office Hours: Nathan
  Oct. 08,
• 
  Theory Gym: Nathan
  Oct. 11,
• 
  Ear Training: Jon Mattox
  Oct. 13,
• 
  Office Hours: Cato Zane
  Oct. 13,
• 
  Theory Gym: Jon Mattox
  Oct. 13,
• 
  Production Gym: Jam
  Oct. 14,

Learn more about Residency

• Apr 27, 2026 DAW Core Skills
• May 23, 2026 Logic Pro 1-Day Intensive
• Jun 8, 2026 Mixing: Effects, Synths & Tools
• Jun 10, 2026 Hardware & Recording Primer
• Jul 8, 2026 Hardware & Recording Primer
• Jul 12, 2026 DAW Core Skills
• Jul 12, 2026 Theory: Musician Basics
• Jul 15, 2026 FL Studio

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