Songwriting & Production Academy

In DAW terms, Ableton Live is a game-changer – and is often overlooked by songwriters, as it has more of a reputation as a tool for dance music producers.  Its session view allows top-line songwriters to audition their music on-the-fly, making melody construction a fun task that’s creative and constructive rather than a slog.  We’re an official Ableton-certified training center – so we’re able to offer all Garnish learners a 40% discount!

This part of the program has enough knowledge, tips and techniques to keep you fired up! All of it is waiting to be applied to your own productions and backing tracks – whatever your chosen genre. Learn to arrange vocals and sounds, to program bass-lines, to program strings and to sculpt organic sounds. Learn how to get the right sounds, and how to bring all of these elements together with basic synthesis to be ready for the master mix!

This is a supremely important part of the program that brings out the hit songwriter in you! It unveils the techniques and tips that YouTube and songwriting books either don’t know or aren’t prepared to give up! The power and importance of the top-line can and should never be under-estimated – learn why your songs might not be sounding like hits yet…

This module deals with how to master the art of capturing sound for recordings, including piano, bass, synths and guitars. The ‘producing vocals’ section of this module is primarily aimed at songwriters and producers, but will be helpful for vocalists to know, too. It covers how to coax, coach and encourage the best performances from artists and session singers. The more you know about vocal production and how to capture vocal performance, the better the lead vocal will sound, and the better, therefore, the song will sound – the vocal being absolutely integral to the song’s perception and success. Don’t worry, though, this doesn’t mean course participants will be forced to sing (unless they want to!) – it’s ok to simply listen and observe.

The Logic Pro part of the program is going to take the avid student on a comprehensive tour of this comprehensive DAW, so that they get to grips with features like MIDI FX, Flexpitch and manipulating and chopping up loops, to make signature sounds of their own. Students also learn all about the fantastic in-built sounds and FX that this awesome DAW has to offer. Contemporary producers will often have a favorite digital audio workstation, and many plump for Logic for its ‘sound’- so we cover both this and Ableton to extract the very best of both!

No academy course is complete without learning how to construct the home studio environment to achieve its optimum potential – and that’s why, in this module, students are shown what professional engineers learn about acoustics and setting up a home studio space. That’s quickly followed up by an in-depth analysis of EQ, dynamic controllers, how to fill the frequency spectrum, mixing vocals and, critically, making all parts come together as one amazing whole. As the student continues to build their knowledge of mixing techniques, they are shown exactly how to employ it within the realms of electronic music.

This module takes the student way beyond subtractive synthesis to explore granular, additive, frequency-modulated synthesis and wavetable, as well as subtractive synthesis! This module also covers more advanced beat-making techniques as the student’s sound continues to develop – this will include sampling, resampling and glitch techniques.

Ah yes, the music business! That maze of possibility… this part of the program looks at the what was, what is and what may be – in an analysis of what makes this industry tick. We cover the roles of rights and societies, record companies, publishers, managers and lawyers. We look at synchronization (syncs) and licensing, how to sell your music, how to get it noticed and the pros and cons of door-stepping and other DIY tools you can employ to navigate the music business.

The role of the music producer, and all of the component parts that go into that role, are explored in this module. From pre-production to completion through to the delivery of the final version. This module looks at each stage of the journey, analyzing the skills and concepts that lead to a successful conclusion. In particular, we look at how to create emotion through both sound and performance and how to focus on achieving your production goals by defining its direction. Through understanding of these concepts and the arrangement of the ‘sonic field’ and the musical notes within it, our students get the best chance to make their project/s compelling and unique enough to extract the very best from them.

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 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.

We conclude with a module that focuses on creating an effective Electronic Press Kit (EPK), how to brand and market a project, how to go about recruiting genuine social media followers and how to best exploit digital distribution opportunities.

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. 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!