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Ear Training

Weekly. Test your ears and discuss — music, mixing, and more. Included with residency.

Test your ears and discuss — music, mixing, and more. Interactive listening exercises with fellow residents to sharpen your critical listening skills.

Upcoming Sessions

Oct 13 Jon Mattox
Oct 26 Nathan
Oct 28 Jam
Nov 03 Nathan
Nov 10 Jam
Nov 23 Nathan

Recent Sessions

Mon, Aug 24, 2026 Nathan 3 attended

We worked through "I Can't Go for That" by Hall & Oates, using it as a vehicle for ear training and harmonic analysis — identifying chord extensions, cadence types, bass-line behavior, and groove mechanics. Covered how to hear stacked thirds as extended chord structures, how to distinguish perfect from plagal cadences by ear, and how modal interchange and line clichés function in a soul/R&B context. Also spent time on the rhythm section: hi-hat patterns, syncopation in the bass line, kick placement, and the relationship between where the bass plays and where it stops.

All resident events are included with your Beat Kitchen Residency.

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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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Music Theory Learn fundamental musician skills including music theory, performance basics, and foundational concepts essential for … Mixing and Synthesis Tools Live course covering EQ, compression, reverb, delay, subtractive synthesis, gain staging, signal chain, and mastering — … Hardware & Recording Live recording course: microphones, audio interfaces, studio acoustics, stereo technique, and session workflow — …

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Electronic Music Kitchen Master electronic music production fundamentals. Learn trance, bass music, EDM composition techniques, MIDI programming, … Hip Hop Kitchen Learn to create unique hip hop beats with professional structure, sound design, and mixing techniques. Master looping, … Orchestral Kitchen Master orchestral production techniques including articulation, arrangement, and realistic programming for brass, … Session Player Kitchen Learn professional session player techniques and realistic instrument programming. Master drums, guitars, bass … Vocal Kitchen Learn professional vocal recording, production, and processing techniques. Master microphone placement, vocal chains, …

Beat Building Jam Workshop ideas into songs. Peer feedback. Instructor support. Prep for production Mix Incubator Your lab for carrying a track across the finish line — the forcing function that turns a produced or recorded song into … Production Incubator Your lab for turning a song into a finished production — the forcing function that leaves you with a track ready for the … Recording Incubator Your lab for capturing real performances of your song — the forcing function that leaves you with recordings ready for … Songwriting Incubator Your lab for getting a song started and out the door — the forcing function that leaves you with a draft ready for the …

Mixing & Mixcraft Advanced live mixing course: parallel compression, sidechain, vocal chains, drum mixing, stereo imaging, automation, and … Recording Studio Masterclass Hands-on recording studio masterclass with professional equipment. Learn large format consoles, studio etiquette, and … Songwriter Masterclass Master songwriting techniques with professional composers. Learn melody writing, chord progressions, song structure, … Synthesist Masterclass Advanced synthesis masterclass covering wavetable, granular, FM synthesis, and sound design. Learn professional …

Beat Kitchen At-A-Glance

Beat Ktichen Calendar

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Recent Resident Gyms
- OFFICE HOURS: Covered lead sheet and chart-writing fundamentals — including form notation, repeat signs, segno/coda navigation, and fitting a full arrangement onto a single page — using a Michelle (Beatles/jazz standard) chart as a worked example. Discussed drum kit curation workflows in Logic Pro, specifically how to audition and assemble multiple kits before committing sounds to Drum Machine Designer. Also ran a live vocal review session, listening for pitch offenses in two harmony parts drawn from a live dress rehearsal recording.
- WEEKLY-BEAT-CHALLENGE: Covered guitar reverb gating techniques, including sidechaining and region-based approaches for controlling reverb tails in performance and post-production contexts. Worked through Logic Pro flex pitch and audio quantization workflows, with a focus on how to isolate regions before applying flex to avoid unintended timing drift. Also examined the lead sheet for the Beatles' "Michelle" — its chord content, key ambiguity, and the form notation (D.S. al Coda, repeat signs, segno) required to navigate it on a single page.
- OFFICE HOURS: Worked through a song revision with Christian, focusing on song structure, melodic differentiation between sections, harmonic rhythm, and the "cotter pin" problem — the moment where a pre-chorus and chorus share nearly identical chord progressions and melodic contours, making the transition between them feel stagnant rather than like a lift. Also covered a Logic Pro SMPTE-lock technique for safely halving tempo without displacing regions, and addressed a mixer visibility bug.
- 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.
Learn more about Residency
Upcoming Resident Events
- 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,
- Weekly Beat Challenge: Nathan
  Oct. 14,
Learn more about Residency
Upcoming Courses
- 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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