Music-Production

I think it’s time we talked about your fader.

Here’s a cool little trick you can do that’ll help you with your ear and with your DAW skills at the same time.

If you max out your signal and pan it to one side, you’re probably gonna clip your output.

Tricking yourself is just not a good long-term strategy.

When was the last time you used something like this?

When everything is stereo, nothing is stereo.

Stop doing this to your microphone.

It’s only a matter of time before you’re humbled by someone with far less resources than you creating at a very high level.

All right, you want a tip find two quick ways to find stuff in logic.

You can try, but you can’t really separate frequency from level.

Stop singing. There’s nothing in your vocal chain that will substitute for a good performance. I can fix your pitch, I can fix your timing, but if the vocal doesn’t…

A440. Here’s what we’re talking about. What it means is when I play this note, this string vibrates at 440 times a second. An octave up, 880. An octave down,…

Here’s a follow-up to the phase inversion trick I shared with you the other day to get you untethered from your headphones It works on a similar principle, but it’s a little different in this scenario.

If you go to school to be an audio engineer, one of the things they’re going to talk to you about is mid-side.

Do you think there’s a difference between a hook and a chorus?

If you’ve already trained your ear to identify the sonic footprint of a room, a sharp clap can be a great way to do a quick evaluation.

Before we begin to discuss delay, echo, and reverb, let’s take a second to talk about the Haas effect.

It’s producer malpractice if you don’t do a quick gut check on the key of your song before you record that awesome vocal.

I would argue that sampling has changed our modern conception of harmony and here’s why.

When you’re working in the box, you enjoy a luxury, which is that all of your plugins and settings snap to attention as soon as you open your session.

There will come a point in your career where you will need to deliver stems.

The EQ in your DAW may have an edge over even some of the most coveted recording discs, but only if you know how to take advantage of it.

I’m a guy who loves to get my hands dirty.

Some people don’t like getting syrup on their bacon.

We can’t teach you how to mix, nobody can.

I think it would be useful to start a thread about things that made you a better mixing engineer.

The goal of the upcoming musician basics elective is to get you to recognize that you can stack a bunch of notes together and create a chord.

Producer, professional, beatmaker.

Learning music theory isn’t like learning a new language.

I think it’s important to set benchmarks for yourself.

If you’re using Ableton Live’s hidden options.txt file to access extended features, functions, workflows, hacks, which experimental feature is your favorite?

Logic Pro’s recent update adds support for 32-bit floating audio files.

Let me simplify chords for you a little bit by telling you that on the piano there are only four augmented chords.

When dialing in an equalizer, it’s helpful to think of the workflow is happening in two stages a targeting step and an adjustment step.

If this is a fifth, what’s so perfect about it anyway?

You may already know you can fashion a windscreen by wrapping a hose around a coat hanger.

Here are two really fast workflow features that’ll help you with labeling things and making markers in Logic Pro.

Does a compressor operate on level or frequency?

We see both experienced and beginner producers at Bee Kitchen.

As you iterate through versions of a work in progress, bounce each version as a file so you can compare mixes without reopening sessions.

What makes music tick?

This shape... It’s really handy. You’ve heard it in countless songs. It’s a 6 to a 2 to a 5 to a 1. Look at it in C. It’s an…

A compressor reduces the level of a track, but one of the places people get confused is in understanding where it reduces that level.

Okay, fair question. Beat building jams are an opportunity for a variety of instructors to identify inefficiencies in your workflow. They’re one-hour morning gym workouts in which each week a…

Let’s look at some expensive sounding chords.

The practical application of a multiband compressor comes into focus when you consider not just how it differs from a regular compressor, but how it differs from a traditional equalizer.

Music always comes first, but music theory exists whether you believe in it or not.

How do you actually know what key something’s in?

Do you ever get confused about major or minor chords?

If your workflow is inefficient, nothing you learn in your DAW has much impact.

If you’re thinking about joining a Beat Kitchen class, or actually if you’re thinking about getting into music production at all, here are three things I don’t care about, and you shouldn’t do there.

You might be surprised to learn that the big studio sound you like isn’t just a byproduct of a big studio.

Time and time again, I see students run into trouble because of assumptions they make around the word "stereo." I’m not trying to take you down a notch by making you feel like you don’t understand something that you thought you did, but signal flow legitimately trips a lot of people up, so I want to challenge you by thinking about this example.

Here are three unexpected ways to end a song in a minor key.

If you’ve ever tried to explain a compressor to someone who’s new to music production, there comes a moment where they look at you with a really puzzled expression, and it’s probably because they’ve heard the word used in two ways.

Were you considering following us on our other social media accounts?

If you find yourself running off lots of mp3 files and wishing you had a better way to do it in macOS, here’s my workflow and maybe you’ll like it.

A music production environment is a complex one.

For me, the most impactful part of the move from tape to digital wasn’t the sound quality.

The topics in this 10-minute video include the harmonic series and the physical nature of sound.

This old relic, this is your grandma’s motorized fader.

Logic doesn’t have a straightforward way to apply an LFO across a bunch of parameters.

Those of you who subscribe to this myth that somehow learning music theory is going to ruin you as an intuitive musician are buying into a false narrative.

So I get this weird message from my friend.

So basically the way our classes work, we try and get you in and out of a DAW class as soon as humanly possible because we want to get to the fun stuff, the interesting stuff.

This little unsung hero is part of my workflow in Logic and it’s called Create Track.

Hey everybody, you may be aware of our songwriting incubator, but we’ve got some new classes coming up in a new format and I wanted to tell you about it.

This clock is accurate twice a day.

Achieve professional studio sound through recording diversity, not expensive gear. Learn why varying microphones, instruments, and recording positions creates better productions than relying on one setup.

In the beginning, you didn’t know what a DAW was.

How many chords do you know?

Today I got diagnosed with something called "dupertrans disease".

Transform Logic Pro X from beginner to power user: comprehensive guide to advanced settings, custom templates, workflow optimization, and professional interface customization.

Essential beginner's guide to music production equipment: from headphones and MIDI controllers to audio interfaces and microphones. Start making music without breaking the bank.

Yesterday, during lab hours, one of our members shared a story about a challenging situation that came up in the industry because they’re a woman.

There is a myth that’s pervasive around here, which is that people can teach you how to mix.

The first time I heard Imogen Heaps hide and seek, I was driving and I literally had to pull the car over.

Every DAW crashes. Every computer crashes. In fact, if you were using tape, your Capistan motor would run out at some point. When you sign on to do music production,…

After teaching countless people how to use programs like Logic and Ableton, I’ve decided to give up.

Music theory starts with your ear and learning the names for stuff doesn’t really matter if you’re not hearing with specificity I can help you learn the names for things and I would love to but you can train your ear for free by yourself I’ve been giving you about three chordals a week for like a year But you don’t actually need me you can do it in front of your own instrument.

So you’ve seen a few Beat Kitchen videos and you want to learn more about the whole program thing.

In the most basic sense, a chord inversion is a way of reorganizing the notes of a chord.

This cat has never stepped foot outside.

There are some lessons that come up over and over again and they’re so meaningful you realize you can apply them in almost every discipline.

If my recent videos on things like compression have helped you crystallize those concepts, you should consider joining our class.

Learning music theory isn’t like learning a new language.

Some lessons are more important than others.

Even if you have no interest in electronic music, if you want to get into music production, the language of synthesis is the language of sound.

I’m Nathan and I’m the founder of Beat Kitchen and I really hope you’ve enjoyed this little piece on music theory.

Creative vocal recording techniques for Jill Cunniff's 'Eye Candy': blending vintage and modern mics, piano cavity recording, and unique processing for otherworldly vocal textures.

Case study: How using live drummer John Bollinger created an authentic Latin rhythm library for Pajama Sam's soundtrack, saving time and budget while delivering superior quality.