360° Electronic Music Academy

Within weeks into class, you will be working your way around this extraordinary DAW, as it serves you long-term as one of your most essential creative tools. Through a practical hands-on class style, you will explore Ableton Live’s key concepts, such as arranging windows, scenes, clips, and warping. Discover MIDI clips and note editor to program and create beats, bass-lines, and melodies.

You will learn the fundamentals of electronic music composition, making you a more efficient producer. Learn and program chords which work well together, discover catchy lead lines, and bass lines that groove. Classically trained students who have taken this course repeatedly tell us how this part of the program has given them new tools and techniques.

Become grounded in audio engineering and recording with essential techniques and tricks of the trade. This part of the course emphasizes correct recording practices, and vocal production. Even though music producers are not expected to be singers too, the more we understand about vocal production and recording, the better the final product! This includes knowing how to motivate, coach, and produce our artists. Singing is not mandatory during these sessions – we understand! Feel free to just listen.

Discover your DAW options with Logic Pro X, a preferred program for many electronic producers, especially for the later stages of production. Even if you decide to stick with Ableton, it is important to familiarize yourself with this comprehensive software. Students choose when they take this class from our production course schedule, and can take it during, or after they are finished with their Academy program.

“I switched to Ableton from Logic many years ago, but recently I’ve been missing Logic, so I decided to brush up to get the best of both worlds. I called Garnish, of course and the guys were great and got me back up to speed in no time” Jamie Jones

Know your space; learn the fundamentals behind acoustics and how to correctly stage your studio for cleaner and better sound. Then get your hands dirty with dynamic controllers, in-depth EQ, making the most of the frequency spectrum, mixing vocals, expanding song elements, creating cohesive sound, and awesome professional plugins, including our software partners, FabFilter.

While even many pro electronic producers stick with only subtractive synthesis during their career, you will go beyond by exploring subtractive, granular, additive, wavetable, and frequency modulated synthesis. This section also covers sampling, glitch, resampling, and additional beat-making techniques to broaden your sound.

Your sound design skills will surpass many those of many professional electronic music producers by this point in the program. But we’re not stopping there. You will also be introduced to Reaktor Ensembles and Max4live devices. Then we cover advanced sampling with the world-leading Kontakt, a powerful force when joined with Ableton Live Suite. You will be able to apply your music to media (film and TV) by the end of this module.

You will also learn advanced MIDI techniques applicable for any live scenario you may encounter, and discover how to use Ableton Live to set up to perform your EP. You will need to know, because over 21s will be invited to perform their masterpieces at our club night at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn.

Take advantage of our small class sizes and hand-tailored advice from your instructors during this module, focused on finishing and refining your projects and what to do next!

All Academy learners at Garnish will gain a free unlimited membership for our shorter courses, worldwide. This means you can take as many 36-hour courses at any of our participating locations (London, Miami, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco) free of charge, with no cap on volume or time! Our offer is valid as long as there is availability at your chosen participating school.

Thanks to our exclusive licensing partnerships, we have assembled a range of specialized assets: synthesizers, effects, and samples for Garnish Academy students. These instruments and sounds allow us to teach producers, side by side, using the same sets of expanded resources. Our constantly evolving license-partners and content producers add thousands of dollars to the value of our Producer and Academy courses. Many of these products are yours to keep. Others are free to use while you learn and are then eligible for exclusive upgrades at a fraction of their regular price.

We have our very own boutique sample label Lazerdisk Sound. Garnish students get all of our packs (mostly written and produced by Garnish instructors) for free, and an exclusive pack just for Garnish students not sold on the site! It’s recorded individual keys from Mark Ronson’s Mellotron M4000D, which our label chief Zack Johnson meticulously recorded in Mark’s studio in Hollywood. Thank you Zack and Mark!