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Orchestral Kitchen

6 sessions · Tuesdays, Thursdays · 2hr each

Cheesy strings ends here

Great orchestral libraries won’t save poor programming. The best sample libraries in the world sound terrible when played like a keyboard — because orchestral instruments don’t behave like keyboards. This course teaches you how the orchestra actually works, and how to translate that knowledge into realistic, expressive productions.

12 chapters of ground covered

The orchestral template — setting up a session that mirrors how an orchestra is organized
Reading the orchestra — understanding the score, the sections, and how they interact
Writing for strings — voice leading, articulations, divisi, and the techniques that make string parts sound performed rather than programmed
Programming strings — translating written parts into MIDI that sounds real. Velocity, expression, legato transitions
Writing for woodwinds and brass — range, doubling, section writing, and the characteristics that define each instrument family
Programming woodwinds and brass — articulation keyswitches, dynamics, and expression mapping. The MIDI side of making wind and brass patches respond like instruments
Percussion and the full score — orchestral percussion writing, and assembling a full orchestral arrangement
Orchestral mixing — reverb, spatial positioning, balancing sections, and making sample-based orchestral productions sound like they were recorded in a real space

Prerequisites: DAW Core Skills or equivalent. Music Theory is helpful but not required.

This class has a full set of companion notes you can browse for free in our guides section.

Building This Class

May 4, 2027 – May 20, 2027

Tuesdays, Thursdays, 4 PM Pacific | 7 PM Eastern | 12 AM UK

6 × 2hr classes

$335.00 includes 1 mo. residency

I'm a current resident $250.00

What's a residency?

Residency is your Beat Kitchen membership —$85/mo or $700/yr. It includes office hours, gyms, beat challenges, and a community of producers on Discord.

Non-residents can take any class — residency months are bundled into the price. If you're already a resident, check the box above and you'll see the lower class-only price.

Learn more about residency →

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What students say

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Nathan is Very knowledgeable and passionate about music. he has a ton of experience as an engineer and producer he plays piano and understands all the notes logic pro that is what i will be doing next. .looking forward to the classes

—Don, Vancouver, BC

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Online session very informative and Nathan is a kind and gifted teacher

—Gaston, New York, NY

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I’ve been a student at Nathan’s audio engineering school - Beat Kitchen, for seven months, and the experience has been invaluable. Coming back to music after years focused on family and business, I wanted a learning environment that was

—Lotus, Bali

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Took a lesson over music theory and learned a lot in a short amount of time! Amazing teacher and lots of great information!

—J4de

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Nathan has a great understanding of sound and music theory. He got me thinking and excited to dive deeper.

—Michael, Seattle, WA

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 Kitchen At-A-Glance

Beat Ktichen Calendar

See the full calendar
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
See All Courses
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