Studio Lessons

Online Instruction by MasterClass & Fader- Pro Offer Decidedly Different, Yet Effective Approaches to Music Production

Editor’s Note: In our previous issue, Jennifer Harmon reported on Musicians Institute Online’s “Intro to DJing,” a 10-lesson internet class for upstart jocks. In this issue, Mike Gwertzman examines online classes from MasterClass.com and FaderPro.com, both of which concentrate on music production.

I’m only five minutes into Armin van Buuren’s first lesson in his MasterClass on dance-music production, and the Dutch trance megastar has already tossed a bucket of cold water onto most aspiring artists’ aspirations.

MasterClass: Armin van Buuren manages expectations.

Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn

“I know there’s a lot of people out there who may dream about private jets and Vegas residencies and playing mainstages on all the big festivals around the world,” he says directly to the camera. “And yes, you can do it. But there’s a bigger chance that you won’t.”

It was somewhat of a surprise to hear this piece of raw honesty so early into his class, which spans 33 separate video topics. But this bit of Dutch directness is a great lead- in to understanding one of the fundamental truths about making music: There’s many people doing it, there’s a lot to learn, and if you don’t love the process of making music itself, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

That said, producing electronic music has never been more accessible than it is right now. Gone are the days when bulky mixing boards and real-deal recording studios were necessary to make tracks. Nowadays, you don’t even need expensive synthesizers or obscure pieces of discontinued gear. Today, anyone with a laptop and a simple piece of software can come up with a club-ready track.

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But with that accessibility has come ubiquity – digital labels have proliferated, thousands of tracks are released every month, and platforms abound where would-be artists can post their work. Sites like Splice give producers access to unlimited amounts of samples and loops via the Internet. Labels are deluged with demos. So, what can an artist do to perfect their sound, and stand out from the pack?

The natural answer is to seek help from those who have succeeded. And there’s an increasing number of avenues where artists can learn from top-name stars via online instruction. MasterClass.com – the online education platform that offers classes covering everything from playing basketball (taught by Steph Curry) to fashion design (with Marc Jacobs) – offers two separate classes on dance-music production. FaderPro.com offers up dozens of classes on electronic-music production, with prominent partnerships with Toolroom, Armada and Hospital Records, taught by well-known artists like Mark Knight, Umek, Harry Romero and more.

These paid platforms represent a step-up from free sites like YouTube, where you can spend hours sifting through the hundreds of user-uploaded freebie tutorials. And at the same time, they don’t require the same dedication as enrolling in an online-production class like you might at Point Blank Studio. In exchange for your cash, you’re getting access to the knowledge, tips and tricks from successful and experienced artists. These platforms have done the curating for you. But are they your best resource for learning how to produce electronic music online? What do they offer that’s any different from all the other production content that’s out on the Internet?

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Getting Ready to Learn

Before digging in, it’s best to prepare yourself on how to optimize your learning experience. These courses offer video content, with the instructor dropping knowledge and tips while working in their DAW and studio. It’s helpful to prepare yourself and know what you’ll be seeing – if you’re an Ableton Live user for example, you’ll get more out of the class if the teacher is also working with the same software.

If you’re a complete novice when it comes to production, you’d probably want to familiarize yourself with navigating the software and understanding the basics first. The artists running these courses are not here to teach introductory lessons. If you don’t have that fundamental knowledge as a foundation, you might find yourself struggling to keep up with all the information coming your way.

I’d suggest keeping a notepad open and accessible, either digitally or with old-fashioned pen and paper. As you watch, you’ll want to jot down some of the concepts, suggestions or tools that the artist recommends. And with so much content to watch, all these tips can quickly pile up. Writing down the ones that resonate most with you – if you’re struggling with arrangement, or how can’t seem to structure chord progressions for example – will help you make the most of these classes.

Give yourself time. These courses can run several hours, and even if some of the tips don’t make sense for you, the ones that do can likely result in big improvements in your production technique and results. That means you’ll want to watch each video in its entirety – and be prepared to then practice what you’ve seen in your own projects.

Sometimes you’ll want to re-watch some particularly insightful lessons. Don’t rush and try to absorb everything you see, because you never know when something you’ve seen will be relevant to your own work.

MasterClass: Armin van Buuren & deadmau5

If you’ve used YouTube to search for production tutorials, you’ve probably seen a commercial for MasterClass’ electronic music lessons. The ads are slick, exciting and star-driven: “Meet your new instructor.” And who wouldn’t get excited about learning how to make music directly from superstars like deadmau5 and Armin van Buuren?

No Team Player: deadmau5 doesn’t like collaborations.

Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn

MasterClass separates itself from other learning platforms by focusing on celebrities and stars as its hook. Can you learn more about making music from someone other than a proven hit-maker and top-tier artist? Perhaps. But MasterClass is betting that you’re more inclined to spend $90 per class (or $180 for an annual unlimited pass – giving you access to every class on MasterClass) to hear what the luminaries have to say.

David Rogier, the co-founder and CEO of Masterclass, explains the site’s approach. “There are lots of places to learn how to use the tools,” he says. “But what we wanted to do was figure out how masters approach their craft and make it so everyone could get in their heads [e.g., how they approach arranging, payoffs, vocals, sets, synths, crowds and building a career].” Rogier also told me that he believes electronic music is an “underappreciated art form,” and promised there will be more classes coming down the line.

If the word “class” conjures up memories of high-school misery or stressful deadlines in college, fear not: The MasterClass format is fairly casual and a lot of fun. Instead of being given curriculum, or assignments, you’re presented with a series of lessons. Each lesson is a video – with both of the classes discussed here shot in the artists’ respective studios. Each lesson comes with an accompanying workbook, summarizing the ideas conveyed in the lesson, and offering tips for the student so they can put these concepts into practice. There’s also a comment board attached to each lesson so viewers can exchange their thoughts with their peers.

A good way to describe the MasterClass experience is intimate. Shot from multiple camera angles, with top-shelf production (Hollywood-style lighting, snappy editing), the MasterClass videos primarily feature the instructor talking to the viewer directly. Both begin with a bit of insight into the artists’ history and personal philosophies about music. The MasterClass courses are as much an extended interview, or stream-of-consciousness discussion about production, as they are straightforward classes and lessons.

For a genre of music that can often times feel formulaic, it’s interesting to see the vastly different approaches and production philosophies that these artists bring to the studio. Armin van Buuren begins his MasterClass by personally playing the beginning of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie No. 1” on the piano. On the other hand, deadmau5 builds a chord progression by drawing in individual notes on Ableton Live and dragging them around until he comes upon a few chords that sound good; he acknowledges he simply cannot play a keyboard.

Similarly, van Buuren suggests creating a nice environment in which creativity can flourish – he offers candles as an option – and notes he likes to work in the morning. Meanwhile, deadmau5 says some of his best moments of musical inspiration happen as a result of sleep deprivation, preferring to be in the studio from 9 p.m. until the early a.m. hours.

One of the biggest differences between the two courses is that van Buuren works closely with his studio partner Benno de Goeij throughout his course, often standing up and trading chairs and taking turns at the computer, constantly bouncing musical ideas back and forth. For his part, deadmau5 is rather dismissive on collaborations – he bluntly says, “I’m not a team player.” Watching the interplay between Benno and Armin is a nice way to highlight that even some of the biggest names in the business need help with production sometimes.

Each class is very much a personal reflection of the artist who is teaching it. The courses are not so much step-by-step lessons on how to create a track, operate a specific DAW, or dig into some of the nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts of production. Rather, you get the opportunity to observe the artists at work and pick up whatever concepts and ideas they introduce along the way. The things that are important to the individuals shine, through – deadmau5, for example, devotes an entire lesson to modular synthesizers. Obviously, those are a key part of his studio, but not something most MasterClass viewers are likely to have access to.

The further you go into the courses, the more focused the content becomes. Armin van Buuren’s class especially follows a fairly linear path as the trance icon develops his initial idea into a full-blown arrangement and production. Once you get up to Lesson 17, van Buuren leads the viewer through a step-by-step breakdown of the arrangement of his club remix of “Sunny Days,” detailing how different studio techniques combine to deliver the euphoric trance “payoff” that is the trademark of his sets.

Past the production classes, both artists delve into tangential topics. For example, deadmau5 discusses marketing, puts onhis label-head hat and talks about what he looks for in signing artists, and spends an entire lesson navigating through the pitfalls of working with major labels, not a surprise since he has publicly slammed some of his past labels.

Any producer would say that next to practice and first-hand experience, the most valuable resource on the path towards improving your music is learning from someone with more experience. And that’s really what MasterClass is best at. You’re getting hours of exclusive video with two top artists, where the focus is almost entirely on music production. While you can’t ask questions, or choose what topics the instructor is focusing on, you’re going to get a much better understanding of what goes into producing a track, and you’ll certainly pick up some tips that will be useful in your own creations. At the end of both courses, I felt like I had gotten a much better sense of both artists’ personalities, and how those traits are represented in their music.

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FaderPro

MasterClass teaches you music production alongside lessons on cooking and screenwriting. But FaderPro has one focus: producing electronic dance music, with an emphasis on the underground style of tech-house, as well as drum-n-bass and progressive.

The site has been around for several years and has an impressive pedigree. One of the site’s founders is veteran DJ and producer Steven Lee (the co-producer of the Lee-Cabrera classic “Shake It”), and their partners include label heavyweights like Toolroom, Armada and Hospital Records.

FaderPro: Harry Romero offers time-saving DAW tricks.

Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn

Like MasterClass, FaderPro is celebrity-driven… only in this case, the celebrities are probably best known to other DJs and seasoned clubbers. Veteran artists like Roger Sanchez, Harry Romero, Mark Knight and Sander Kleinenberg are featured alongside up-and-comers Eelke Kleijn,

Ilyus & Barrientos, Josh Butler and more.

FaderPro pricing varies depends on which course you choose. A-la-carte prices range from $19.99 to $59.99. With most classes, you’re getting from 10 to 20 “chapters,” and with many of the projects you get extras –including audio files to download, sample libraries, and DAW project files.

After spending a lot of time with the two MasterClass courses, Fader- Pro felt quite different at first. There’s no uniform production style here. Gone are the splashy animated bumpers and stylish studio lighting. But essentially, you’re getting the same sort of content: an extended studio session with a dance-music producer at work, explaining the what and why they are doing things as they go along.

I checked out a few of the courses available on FaderPro and I was very satisfied with the experience. Once again, the course flow is very much dependent on the instructor’s personality and personal habits – there’s no set curriculum or structure in place here. And it reinforces once again, that there’s no single way of skinning the cat when it comes to approaching dance music production.

FaderPro is recommended if you want to stay focused on production. The classes I viewed were entirely based on studio work – there’s no ex- tra discussion about DJing technique or music industry advice. This to-thepoint approach is ideal if you don’t have a lot of time to spend watching extraneous material.

Instead of going for the one-sizefits-all approach that MasterClass uses, FaderPro offers up a wider range of dance genres. While it’s true that techno producers could glean valuable advice from an Armin van Buuren class, it may be hard to sit through an entire course if you personally have no affection for the music style. Plus, different genres focus on different techniques: trance favors bombastic chord progressions and epic breakdowns, while the underground sounds are more about subtle changes and hypnotic grooves.

One of the most important things producers can learn are some of the time-saving DAW tricks that veterans have accumulated. While you’re watching these lessons, you’ll come across a number of these. Harry Romero’s FaderPro “Finish My Record” lesson was particularly useful. In Logic Pro X, I learned how to loop an element of his track from the start of an arrangement to the end, and then convert those loops into separate regions. This lets you map out an entire arrangement quickly – then you can adjust and subtract the sections you want to keep or remove. Getting tracks finished and moving a project along is one of the best practices for new producers.

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Conclusions

With the limitless combination of tools producers have at their disposal these days, it’s true that there’s no singular approach to making music. That can be a bit disorienting at first. But the advantage of watching multiple artist videos is that you’ll discover there is some consensus on certain production techniques. Almost every artist video I watched featured the producer layering multiple kick drums, and EQing and compressing them together in order to shape their final kick.

Also, using Ableton Live’s envelope tool as a way to chop up drum loops was a technique both deadmau5 and Funkagenda used in their videos. Similarly, both Harry Romero and Funkagenda used Ableton Live’s Simpler plug-in to audition multiple drum samples and shape the sound while building their tracks. And the LFO Tool by XFer Records was used in almost all of the courses I saw. And finally, everyone stressed the importance of using EQ to roll off low-end frequencies, so your kick drums can shine through in the mix.

For dance-music producers, especially those who are just getting started, there’s a tendency to feel like you’re always needing “something else” to get you where you want to be. There’s always another synth, another plug-in, that newest drum machine – the idea being that once you’ve got that, you’re finally on the road to production perfection. Or you might find yourself thinking that experts have access to a totally different set of tools than you do. But what was really refreshing from watching these courses is realizing how much I had in common with the pros. All the teachers spent a lot of time on their videos scrolling through sample loops, or auditioning presets, or searching through libraries of kicks and hats to find sounds they liked. So much of production is trial-and-error, no matter who is in control.

What I realized is that accessing these platforms can be a convenient way to download a lot of useful information. In the end, the best way to learn how to produce music is to do it yourself and spend the time in the studio to master your tools you have. Being a successful artist comes down to creativity and individuality in the end, attributes that cannot necessarily be taught or imparted to you. But learning from established producers is an efficient way to make the most of the time you do have to spend in the studio.

Top-notch artists don’t have a lot of spare time to spend with fans discussing studio stuff. And access that they give to their knowledge, thought process and vault of tricks and techniques is something you can only get from those artists directly. Technology has enabled sites like MasterClass.com and FaderPro.com to provide up-and-coming artists with that access – what you do with it is still very much up to the producers themselves.

By MIKE GWERTZMAN