Music Production Mentoring

Worked through mixing challenges on a live tracking session recorded in Ecuador — a 16-song project with guitars, bass, and drums. Covered fader-setting fundamentals before compression and EQ, sidechain compression between kick and bass, region gain as an alternative to volume automation, and parallel distortion as an approach to recovering sub-bass content from an extended-range bass instrument. Also discussed multing as an organizational strategy for handling tonal variation across a bass performance.

Listened to 3 chord progressions blocked and arpeggiated. Students to identify which chords contained 7ths. Followed by aural breakdown of each chord—strategies for hearing 7ths in chords vertically AND horizontally through chord progressions. Interesting notes, triads and open 5ths sounds clearer than 7th chords which tend to add bits of heaviness. Explored different colors achieved through various voicings.

Listened to David's new tracks. He is experimenting with Ableton. Went over some new stuff in his studio, and talked about distribution. I recommended one of the songs as something that caught my ear to develop more. Standish came in with 15-20 minutes left. We talked about his new studio setup, and listened to David's tracks. He suggested another song idea to develop that caught his ear. We talked about distribution a little more, and goals for releasing music. We recommended Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Distrokid as three places to look based on his goals.

Reviewed two student beats this session — one built around a stereo-widened percussive element, one centered on a sliced vocal and Serum leads. Covered stereo widening and its behavior in mono playback environments, and worked through harmony options for a track in E minor, including the IV chord, relative minor relationships, Dorian mode, and vertical vs. horizontal approaches to songwriting. Also introduced the chord wheel as a tool for finding diatonic chord options within a key.

We discussed what the tonic is, some local jam sessions, songs/work in progress. Standish shared a demo, and we shared some feed back in return. We also briefly discussed mobile recording and songwriting inspiration on the go.

Today's class focused on drum ear training using a deceptively simple premise: five songs from the '80s — Rebel Yell (Billy Idol), Kids in America (Kim Wilde), Never Say Never (Romeo Void), Turbo Lover (Judas Priest), and Maniac (Michael Sembello) — all built around the same basic drum beat at similar tempos. By holding the pattern and tempo constant, students could focus entirely on how the drums sounded rather than what they were playing — specifically drum tuning and mix balance within the kit. The real ear-opener came when we muted the Romeo Void drums and swapped in the drum tracks from each of the other four songs. Hearing a different kit and mix drop into the same song made it immediately obvious how much the drum sound shapes the feel and identity of a track — sometimes the swap sounded jarring and wrong, other times surprisingly natural. The takeaway: even when drummers are playing identical patterns, the sound of the kit is a creative decision with enormous impact on the finished record.