Music Production Mentoring

Covered tritone substitution — what it is, when to use it, and how to hear it in a ii-V-I-IV context. Also worked through a question about half-step intervals and when they're problematic versus idiomatic depending on chord function. Spent extended time reviewing a student's original singer-songwriter piece, with feedback focused on piano pedaling technique, rhythmic intentionality, and harmonic ambiguity around an A-flat chord center.

We shared a production breakdown of The Doors "People Are Strange'. We talked about instrumentation, arrangement, structure, and production techniques- panning- close miking- even the choice of musicians and how that can change a recording. We also spent some time contrasting the Echo and The Bunnymen cover of the same song, to see how 1967 sounded agains 1988! We noted production and structural changes, as well as changes to the arrangement and parts.

we talked about re-creating songs as a production exercise, some mixing ideas and mixing tips, and communicating with others in the music business.

We explored ear training through deep listening to a single contemporary R&B track, using it as a lens for examining background vocals as independent instruments, arrangement and layering strategy, mix placement and reverb use, vocal delivery and articulation, and song form. The session was open dialogue throughout — students brought their own observations and we used them to go deeper into production craft, melody writing over static harmony, and how a song's emotional arc can be built through stacking and restraint rather than harmonic movement.

We welcomed a new resident, Hind, who shared a compelling a cappella vocal work-in-progress featuring layered harmonies and an unconventional phrase structure (alternating bars of three, four, and five). The session became a wide-ranging conversation about developing a production ear — listening deeply to music you love, building shared vocabulary with collaborators, and honoring the raw energy of first ideas. We also touched on the unique perspective drummers bring to production, and how to communicate effectively with musicians when your vocabulary is still developing.

We worked through a full ear training gym this morning covering timbre identification, effects recognition, classic drum machine sounds, and melodic interval training. Students listened to and identified three flavors of electric guitar (dry, amped, and amped with effects), steel-string vs. nylon-string acoustic guitar, reverb vs. delay, and four iconic drum machines — the TR-808, TR-909, LinnDrum, and Prince's LD variant. We closed with a pitch warm-up and interval identification exercise, then applied everything to a brief listening analysis of Herbie Hancock's *Headhunters*.