Songwriting & Production Academy

Songwriting & Production Academy | Hong Kong

Get ready to fulfill your potential as you learn top commercial production and writing skills – on our Songwriting & Production Academy Program, that’s fully supported by such platforms as Ableton, Apple and Native Instruments. Our students learn the knowledge and skills to be able to stand out from the crowd in their chosen genre, all the while getting the very best tuition from our superior roster of music production instructors.

Our courses allow you to work in-studio and also on projects outside of the classroom. Our strategically-timed mentoring sessions ensure that students will be able write, produce, mix, master, engineer and promote and release their very own EP. Further, they’ll be able to book our professional, acoustically-treated mixing and mastering facility.

Garnish was the first music production school in the world to offer the Music Grades System for music production, and all Academy learners, worldwide take a Grade 6, 7, or 8 examination. More on music production grades on our London website here. If UK music production qualifications do not obviously pertain to our students’ goals, they (and perhaps more so their parents) can be rest assured that our music production program meets a national standard of accreditation.

Ableton Live

Many top-level songwriters use Ableton for its responsiveness and flexibility, which can make writing melodies fun, creative, and flexible, where other DAWs can be limiting. This is why we choose Ableton for songwriters for getting ideas together. Garnish is an Ableton Certified Training Center, and all students qualify for a 40% discount.

Music Foundation & Composition

Our instructors will convey a wealth of contemporary record production tips, techniques, and knowledge in teaching students to compose original tracks. Students will assemble their own commercial backing track (within the pop, rock, urban, singer/songwriter, or commercial dance genres) fit for A&R meetings and production music houses. This section of the program will emphasize programming bass-lines and strings, synthesis, sculpting organic sounds, arrangement, choosing production-appropriate sounds, and bringing these elements together into a cohesive whole to take the production to the mixing stage.

Hit Top-Line Songwriting

Have you ever wondered why the songs that you write are good but don’t quite sound like the real deal? Have you read all the songwriting books on Amazon and watched all the tutorials on Youtube without achieving real improvement? Garnish’s top-level songwriting module teaches what other sources either don’t know or don’t want to give away. The concepts shared here are designed to finally bring out the hit songwriter in you!

Logic Pro X

By the end of this module, students will have a thorough command of Logic Pro X, familiarizing themselves with advanced features and techniques as Flexpitch, MIDI FX, slicing loops for use with EXS24 and learning all about the fabulous built-in sounds and FX now included with this comprehensive digital audio workstation.

Synthesis & Sound Design

Learners dip their toe into the wonderful world of subtractive synthesis and sound design, built in to your DAW, and on hardware in our generously equipped lab, covering oscillators, ADSR, filters and FX. Students craft the sounds they hear in their head for use in their productions, and learn how sample packs are made.

Sound Engineering & Producing Vocals

Over the course of our Sound Engineering module, students will master the art of recording typical instruments, including guitar, bass, piano, and synths (yes, there is an art to recording synths). We teach vocal production with songwriters and producers in mind rather than singers; even if we, as producers, don’t sing ourselves, we still need to be able to encourage, coach, and produce artists and session vocalists, and 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 to just listen and produce!

Mixing & Mastering

We begin with content students would learn as professional engineers, by covering acoustics, and how to treat their home studio. Then it’s on to the essentials: in-depth EQ, filling the frequency spectrum, dynamic controllers, mixing vocals, generating a huge sound from a few elements, and making all of a production’s parts sound as one, exploring all the amazing plugins used by our expert mix engineer/instructor.

Music Producer

This module explores the music producer role and brings together the component skills and ideas from the previous sections, from pre-production to completion and delivery of the final master. We focus on such concepts as creating emotion through sound and performance, visualizing and defining the direction of the recording, and achieving production goals. By conceptualizing the essentials of music production – the arrangement of both musical material and the “sonic field” – students learn how to make a band or solo artist (this could be you!) both unique and compelling to convey their material and performance in the best possible light.

Field Trips

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.

Artist Development

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.

Free Unlimited Short Course Membership

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.

More Free Stuff

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!

See some feedback on our Academy from our US HQ below

360+ hours | HK$109,999 | Online Remote: HK$49,999

Six Months (Two Ten-Week Terms) | Monday, Wednesday and Friday | 11a – 6p

Term 1 – January 27 | Term 2: April 20

Academic Year | Three 10-week terms | Tuesdays & Thursdays | 11a – 6p

Term 1: 3rd Tues. of September; Term 2: 2nd Tues. of January; Term 3: Last Tues. of April

Two Year Weekend | Six 10-week terms | Sundays | 11a – 6p

Term 1 & 4: 4th Sun. of September; Term 2 & 5: 3rd Sun. of January; Term 3 & 6: Last Sun. of April

Two Year Evenings | Six 10-week terms | Tuesdays & Thursdays | 7p – 10p

Term 1 & 4: 3rd Tues. of September; Term 2 & 5: 2nd Tues. of January; Term 3 & 6: Last Tues. of April (x2)

Bespoke private tuition is also available for the whole program. Contact us for more information.

Free this year: optional Sound Design & Synthesis classes from our Electronic Music Academy

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    Testimonials

    This kind of material and skill needs to be well TAUGHT. The instructors were excellent teachers and mentors. They are very passionate about the craft - and are extremely knowledgeable as well as experienced. But they also are very good at articulating the lessons and passing along that wisdom so we can learn... The course was an excellent mix of discussion as well as hands-on training. The instructors also set an exceptional tone for our classroom and created an environment that was motivating and optimal for learning. Great job!

    Eugene KirillovAlan Guno

    It was the perfect combination of knowledge and experience. The course was very well planned out, and never did it feel like we were going too slow or too fast.

    Kristina Korban

    It’s a great school and have great teachers. Some schools care only about fancy gear in the classroom and forget about the essential: the teachers!

    João Gama

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