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Hip Hop Kitchen

Hip Hop Served Up Here

In this course learn how to create unique beats for your tracks. Instructors will cover basic structure, sound design, and mixing techniques for producing artist-ready beats. Having a collection of personally crafted beats gives any artist a powerful toolbox useful in a variety of situations

Key Topics

Hip Hop served up here.

Kitchens are where beat-makers get their hands dirty. It’s where creatives go to play with their food.

In this course learn how to create unique beats for your tracks. Instructors will cover basic structure, sound design, and mixing techniques for producing artist-ready beats. Having a collection of personally crafted beats gives any artist a powerful toolbox useful in a variety of situations.

Key Topics:

Looping
Sequencing
Mixing Electronic Instruments
Hooks
Designing Drums
Vocal FX
Sample Organization and Maintenance
Hardware Samplers
Pre-Mixing Beats For Studio Sessions

Prerequisites: DAW Core Skills or equivalent proficiency in your platform.

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What students say

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Took a class recently with Nathan and he’s a fantastic instructor. His kindness, openness to questions, and knowledge of music is truly phenomenal. I highly recommend this school for anyone who wants to be a great music producer!

—J, Brooklyn, NY

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Great class! Lots of comparisons and smilies that relate well to the concepts being explained. Getting to see the concepts in-action at the piano was fun!

—Rose, New York, NY

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Just finished a Workshop about music theory with Nathan, and all I can say is he really opened my eyes and mind about it and makes me want to know more. I will definitely be looking into some of the classes to further my education in this

—Mercedes, Denver, CO

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Nathan is one of the great few teachers that care. As a graduate of a prestigious music school, I was whisked through a massive amount of knowledge, with many teachers. None of them stood up to parr as Nathan does, simply due to the quality and dedication he takes into account when explaining even the simplest of concepts. Amazing.

—Maxwell, Reno, NV

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Nathan was extremely helpful in helping better understand the basics of harmony and music theory. The instruction style is small group and having the ability to communicate and not just listen to a lecture makes the learning process more

—Ira, Los Angeles, CA

Explore Classes

Office Hours Weekly. Ask questions, get help, and connect. Included with residency. Production Gym Weekly. Production breakdown of your favorite songs. Included with residency. Theory Gym Weekly. Morning music theory workout. Included with residency. Ear Training Weekly. Test your ears and discuss — music, mixing, and more. Included with residency. Instrument Gym Weekly. Practice and workout on instruments. Included with residency. Weekly Beat Review Weekly. Listen to Beat Challenge song ideas together. Included with residency.

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Beat Building Jam Workshop ideas into songs. Peer feedback. Instructor support. Prep for production Mix Incubator Workshop your mixes. Peer feedback, instructor support, and problem-solving for tracks in progress. Production Incubator Workshop your productions. Peer feedback, instructor support, and problem-solving for tracks in progress. Recording Incubator Songwriting Incubator Workshop ideas into songs. Peer feedback. Instructor support. Prep for production

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Beat Kitchen At-A-Glance

Beat Ktichen Calendar

See the full calendar
Recent Resident Gyms
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed beat challenge submissions from multiple students, with feedback centered on percussion choices, rhythmic feel, and the relationship between drum programming and a piece's overall character. Discussed how early placement of a drum loop or plugin shapes compositional decisions in ways that are difficult to reverse, and explored the value of working with unconventional or handmade percussion sources. Also touched on the Beat Kitchen Harmony Wheel app — current store status, scale/mode counting, chord recognition accuracy, and upcoming fixes.
- OFFICE HOURS: We talked about giving yourself grace when learning mixing and production, we hunted down a few reference tracks for Jon, We also talked about saturation and how to achieve a specific sound Jon was going for.
- PRODUCTION-GYM: We explored the songwriting and production craft of Tori Amos through three songs — "Silent All These Years" (1992), the new single "Shush," and "Cornflake Girl" — analyzing lyric writing, arrangement choices, frequency management in piano-driven production, and the relationship between a producer's frequency awareness and the mix engineer's workload.
- OFFICE HOURS: Checked in with students during open office hours, touched on the Beat Challenge leaderboard standings and encouraged continued participation. Discussed the Harmony Wheel app's new Android release and noted that testing on personal devices has been limited. Briefly explored the philosophy of choosing cover songs and the value of crowd-sourced input for that decision.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Reviewed two submitted beats — one a polymetric rap piece built on a 9/8 sample with vocal phrasing that moves between 6 and 9, and one a piano-driven instrumental developed from the inchworm exercise, featuring arpeggiated chord progressions. Co-prime sequences came up as a theoretical framework for understanding the metric layering in both pieces, and the session extended into a broader discussion of generative songwriting practice, limitations-based writing, and the value of reps over output targets.
- THEORY-GYM: Covered the limitations of traditional music theory when applied to contemporary rock and songwriting, using chord quality recognition and ear training as a practical entry point. Discussed how borrowing chords outside a key's diatonic set is common and useful, and why chasing what sounds good often matters more than fitting strict theoretical rules. Offered guidance on learning songs by ear, alternate guitar tunings, guitar setup and maintenance, and using a DAW to capture and develop ideas.
- INSTRUMENT-GYM: We worked through the Hanon exercise as a harmonic training tool, running it in tenths across all keys via the circle of fourths and fifths. The focus was on using the melodic structure of the exercise to train the ear to catch wrong notes rather than watching the fingers navigate key changes. We also explored adapting the exercise to natural minor and attempted harmonic minor, which revealed the augmented second in that scale and introduced the Phrygian dominant scale as a related concept.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: We reviewed beats submitted by Christian and worked through feedback on mixing for multiple playback environments, arrangement choices under harmonic constraints, and the challenge of writing instrumental music in vocal-centered genres. We also touched on diminished chord symmetry as it relates to key rotation, and discussed the studio versus performance relationship as a broader creative framework.
- OFFICE HOURS: Covered approaches to managing sibilance on vocals recorded through cassette tape, including de-essing, multiband compression, frequency balancing, and saturation-based tape emulation techniques. Discussed snare replacement and sample triggering workflows in the context of a current mix project, including how to preserve a drummer's intentional dynamics. Reviewed two tracks brought by a student and gave detailed feedback on mix translation, and spatial decisions.
- THEORY-GYM: We explored secondary dominants using a real-world example: the chord progression from "Hush" by The Marias (A minor 9 – D7 – G major 7 – G7). The central question was how to identify and label non-diatonic dominant seventh chords in a progression whose key center is itself ambiguous. Discussion moved through multiple analytical lenses — five-of-five, five-of-four, modal interchange, and 2-5-1 in a relative major — without settling on a single definitive answer, which itself became part of the lesson.
Learn more about Residency
Upcoming Resident Events
- Weekly Beat Challenge: Nathan
  Jun. 29, 6pm (PT) | 9pm (ET) | 2am (UK)
- Office Hours: Cato Zane
  Jun. 29, 2pm (PT) | 5pm (ET) | 10pm (UK)
- Ear Training: Nathan
  Jun. 29, 7am (PT) | 10am (ET) | 3pm (UK)
- Theory Gym: Nathan
  Jun. 30, 5pm (PT) | 8pm (ET) | 1am (UK)
- Office Hours: Jam
  Jun. 30, 2pm (PT) | 5pm (ET) | 10pm (UK)
- Production Gym: Jam
  Jun. 30, 5am (PT) | 8am (ET) | 1pm (UK)
Learn more about Residency
Upcoming Courses
- Apr 19, 2026 Theory: Musician Basics
- Apr 22, 2026 Mixing: Effects, Synths & Tools
- Apr 27, 2026 DAW Core Skills
- Apr 27, 2026 FL Studio
- May 23, 2026 Logic Pro 1-Day Intensive
- Jun 10, 2026 Hardware & Recording Primer
- Jul 8, 2026 Hardware & Recording Primer
- Jul 12, 2026 DAW Core Skills
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