Electronic Music Academy

Students will get to grips with this revolutionary DAW within weeks of starting class. Through our hands-on instruction, students will discover the key concepts that Ableton Live offers, and discover why it is the DAW of choice for getting ideas together for electronic music producers. All GMP learners qualify for a 40% discount on Ableton.

Overlooked by many, but so useful in the long run, our electronic music composition section will save students hours of hitting and hoping! We will provide you with tools that show which chords go well together for your style and show you how to program chords that work, bass lines that groove, and lead lines that are catchy.

The EMP course teaches students the science of audio engineering and recording. The course is full of recording techniques, tips, and tricks, with special emphasis placed on recording and producing vocals. Even if we don’t sing ourselves, we still need to be able to encourage, coach, and produce artists and session vocalists. The more we know about singing, vocal production, and recording vocals, the better the main part of our song – the lead vocal – is going to sound! Of course, even though we cover vocal technique, actual singing in class is not mandatory – it is OK just to listen!

Many electronic music producers use Logic Pro X in the later stages of their production process because of the sound quality and its suitability for finishing (arranging and mixing) tracks.

“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

We start by students how to acoustically treat and set up their home studio, then it’s on to in-depth EQ, filling the frequency spectrum, dynamic controllers, mixing vocals, generating a huge sound from few elements, and making all their parts sound as one, exploring all the amazing plugins used by world-class mix engineers.

Many professional electronic music producers never move beyond subtractive synthesis in their entire careers, but in our program, we will cover subtractive, wavetable, granular, additive, and frequency modulated synthesis. We will also cover sampling, resampling, glitch, and more advanced beat-making techniques in this section, as students develop their sound.

By this point in the program, students will have gone deeper than many professional producers with their sound design skills. We take it even further by introducing students to additive, wavetable, and Max4Live devices. We will also cover advanced sampling, advanced warping, and Racks & Chains. At the end of the module, students will learn how to apply their skills to music for media (film and TV).

In the Live Performance section of this course, instruction will focus on finishing students’ projects, offering bespoke advice in a concentrated blast of mentoring sessions, and on introducing Ableton Live for performance using Push 2. If students are capable DJs, who play music we can incorporate into our club night, we will invite them to join our DJ roster to play at our club night, without having to take our DJ program if they’re experienced enough.

There’s not far to travel for the recording a band session, as we have our very own commercial recording and mixing studio! We also make use of a pre-production studio, where students can experiment and program in a room full of vintage analog synths and processors to find some real analog sounds for their tracks.

To finish off the program, students will learn all about EPKs, branding, digital distribution, and social media for artists. Please be mindful that our programs are designed for personal enrichment – to explore the limits of students’ creativity, create their own path to fulfillment and gain new skills by learning the aspects of music production. As we are not a US-accredited trade school, we do not provide instruction in career planning, interviewing techniques, resume preparation or completing job applications.

All Academy learners at Garnish will gain a free unlimited membership for our shorter production courses, worldwide. This means you can take as many 36-hour (and below) music production courses at Garnish locations and online for just the registration fee, 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!