Electronic Music Academy | San Francisco

Ableton Live is a phenomenal DAW that Garnish students get to grips with in their first module. They will discover all the key concepts that this creative behemoth has to offer via accessible hands-on instruction. This will include session and arrangement windows, scenes, warping and clips. All Garnish learners qualify for a 40% discount, worldwide.

We put great stock in our music composition section, as it can save the self-producing musician hours of plugging away and hoping! This part of the program shows the student which types of chord work well together, and then how to put them together so that they do work. This section also covers how to program bass lines that will groove and lead-lines that are ‘hooky’. Experience has shown us that even classically-trained musicians gain a great deal from exposure to our methods in this section of the program.

Audio engineering is the science bit of music production that often gets over-looked and under-valued by DJs and dance music producers – but not by us! It’s pointless having great ideas if you don’t know how to lay the foundations to set them upon. We’ll show you how it’s done!

Logic is hugely popular because of its ‘sound’- and particularly in the later stages of production. We cover its application at all stages and recognize its power, which is why it’s included in our 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

We approach this part of the program in two parts. Firstly, we cover acoustics, and the best ways to correctly establish a home studio environment. Secondly, we move on to the regular stuff: filling the frequency spectrum, in-depth analysis of EQ, how to mix vocals, dynamic controllers and how to create a huge sound with only a few elements.

There’s much more to electronic music production than subtractive synthesis, yet many producers find it hard to go beyond that. You’ll cover granular, wavetable, additive, frequency-modulated synthesis AND subtractive synthesis. This part of the program will also cover sampling, re-sampling, advanced techniques for beat-making and also glitch tips as you continue to develop your individual sound.

By getting to this point in the Garnish Electronic Music Academy program, you’ll find you’ve taken your sound design skills even further than many professional producers! We introduce you to granular, additive, Max4live devices and wavetable synthesis. That’s not all – we also cover advanced warping, advanced sampling and Racks and Chains. Skills aplenty – and then, at the conclusion of the module, we look at how to apply them to your music for film and TV.

This part of the program puts the emphasis on finishing your projects, and employing the bespoke advice and tips learned in concentrated mentoring sessions. Further, there’s an introduction to Ableton Live for performance. This will show you how to translate your tracks to the stage to be performed live – either for yourself or for other artists. You’ll also be learning how to adapt advanced MIDI techniques to meet the demands of the different live scenarios that today’s music business demands.

Learning to build an effective EPK (Electronic Press Kit), how to brand and market yourself and then go on to negotiate deals are the steps you’ll tackle to complete the program. You’ll also look at how to generate genuine followers on social media and get the very best out of digital distribution.

There will be the opportunity to get hands-on training on site, where you’ll learn the art of recording.  Students will also get access to a selection of vintage analog synths (and processors) in a pre-production studio – a great opportunity to source some amazing analog sounds for their projects.

Students who prove to be capable DJs and whose music can be incorporated into our club night will be invited to join our DJ graduates at said club night – they won’t even have to partake of our DJ program if they’re experienced enough.

Thanks to our exclusive licensing partnerships, we have assembled a range of specialized assets: synthesizers, effects, and samples for Garnish Electronic Music 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. Garnish students get a generous toolkit (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!