POINT BLANK STUDENT DIARY (WEEK 2)

Last week we enrolled on Point Blank's online Deep House Ableton Live course in an attempt to brush up on our production skills.

This is week two of our four week student diary. You can read last week's entry HERE.

While week one was all about drums, this week's lesson plan centred around adding musical elements to the arrangement - with a focus on sound design and getting away from those all-too-tempting presets.

One of the things that puts many people off producing is their lack of classical musical training. So it was great to learn about some of the tools within Ableton that allow you to get ideas down without the need for this formal training. 

Tutor Johnny Miller took us through the Chord tool on Ableton, which plays chords for you when you press a single note. He also provided a download link for nine custom preset files for the common deep house chord spacings - for use within the application.

We then look at techniques for writing basslines, touch on some basic sound design and get a run through of some different techniques for getting that deep house sound.

At the end of the week we submitted the bones (beats and musical elements) of our tracks. Johnny Miller then recorded a 15 minute video review - giving great pointers on places we can improve. In 15 minutes he made some great suggestions which helped bring our tracks up to scratch.

One of the cool things about this video review system is that it is all public - so you can see everyone else’s reviews and even access their project files so you can learn from all of their tutorials too.

Next week we move on to the effects and basic structure. Until then - back to the studio!

You can take a free sample of this course HERE.