Beat Kitchen School

Walking around clapping in a room is a great way to evaluate it — as long as your ear already knows what it’s listening for. If it doesn’t, you’re just walking around clapping. What actually matters is learning to hear the room separately from the direct signal, and almost nobody gets taught to do that. Once your ear can grab onto the difference, the clap finally tells you something. The trick in the video is a free way to start training it — no gear required.

Getting your ears to work like this is what we’re all about. We host live events throughout the week: music gym, production analysis, ear training, instrument practice, and office hours for when you need a little help or just want to hang out. Everything is face-to-face, on our discord. It’s art school for producers and production school for artists, and a full month of residency runs about the cost of one private lesson.
THIS WEEK AT BEAT KITCHEN

Thursday — Production Gym w/ Kallie Marie
Start your day at the ‘gym’ with a production breakdown of your favorite songs
5am (pacific) | 8am (eastern) | 1pm (UK)

Thursday — Office Hours w/ Jon Mattox / Creating Music And Sound
Ask questions, get help, and connect.
2pm (pacific) | 5pm (eastern) | 10pm (UK)

Thursday — Office Hours w/ Jam - Mixing and Mastering
5pm (pacific) | 8pm (eastern) | 1am (UK)

Sunday — Office Hours w/ Shane Mickelsen
1pm (pacific) | 4pm (eastern) | 9pm (UK)

Monday — Weekly Beat Challenge w/ Beat Kitchen ® - Music Production School
Gather and listen to anyone’s Beat Challenge song ideas — just for fun
7am (pacific) | 10am (eastern) | 3pm (UK)

Monday — Office Hours w/ Kallie Marie
9am (pacific) | 12pm (eastern) | 5pm (UK)

Monday — Instrument Gym w/ Beat Kitchen ® - Music Production School
Practice and workout on instruments!
9pm (pacific) | 12am (eastern) | 5am (UK)

Tuesday — Ear Training w/ Scott Hampton
Test your ears and discuss - Music, Mixing and more!
7am (pacific) | 10am (eastern) | 3pm (UK)

Tuesday — Office Hours w/ Ben Krueger
10am (pacific) | 1pm (eastern) | 6pm (UK)

Tuesday — Theory Gym w/ Jon Mattox / Creating Music And Sound
Start your day at the ‘gym’ with a morning music theory workout
5pm (pacific) | 8pm (eastern) | 1am (UK)

Distortion comes in a lot of flavors, but they all do the same thing: they add high-frequency content that wasn’t there before. Think of your gear as a bucket — it only holds so much. Push a sine wave past what it can hold and it comes back out looking like a square wave. Those new harmonics are the distortion.

There’s more to this than fits in a post, which is kind of the point of Beat Kitchen. It’s art school for producers and production school for artists: live, in small groups, and a month of it costs about what you’d pay for a single private lesson.

I’ve started putting some of this on your phone, too. The BKS Harmony Wheel is in the App Store now, and a harmonic synthesizer — for building sounds out of those same overtones — is on the way. More soon.

This isn’t really about a silly trick you could do with a cable tester. It’s about the stuff you miss when you don’t get to talk to anyone — the tacit knowledge that never gets passed down in pre-recorded videos. An old engineer taught me this one in a New York studio in the late ‘80s (which I suppose makes me the old timer now): you find the break in a cable by wrapping it around your finger, shoving it in your ear, and listening for the click where the broken wire ends rub together.

Apprenticeship isn’t dead. It’s just hidden behind the noise of scrolling videos and downloadable content and courses. I still teach live every day at Beat Kitchen, along with every instructor who works here — small groups, open discussions, real people who meet you where you’re at.

While I’m at it: I just put the BKS Harmony Wheel in the App Store. It listens to a song and figures out the chords and the key they’re living in. I only just released it so it’s still only a few bucks. I’m slowly raising the price every day so my community and early adopters can get in at the early-bird price as we get it polished.

Harmony wheel is $.99 while I gather some testers from the community. It’s going to go up sharply as we see downloads hit the App Store. If it works as well as I think it does, target price is going to be considerably higher. Grab it now! Link in bio or search it in the App Store under Beat Kitchen Harmony Wheel. I’m still actively tuning cord recognition and functional stuff. Direct feedback to me in the dedicated discord channel or via email if needed. This works with or without midi on your iOS device. Given a reasonable signal it can pull cords from songs out in the wild. This is all done on device. No data centers or privacy shenanigans. I need to get some eyes and ears on it. Hope you like it! If you don’t, hopefully you only bought it for a dollar :-) best, Nathan

The wheel identifies more than just the cord, it tries to put it in the context of a key. This is how we teach the 10 cord tool kit in our music theory class. I’m working on a help document, but in the meantime, I also loaded the entire Music theory guidebook as part of the app.

Beat making lies at the intersection of musicianship and audio engineering. That’s why we created this community. Sampling, sound design, mixing, music theory, DAW skills, synthesis, arranging are only as good as your own accountability and community.

Getting your head around compression is one of many tools you’ll need to start producing and mixing your own music. But combining that with some music theory, a place to be accountable for making something new every week, and a group of people to support you is what we’re all about. We host live events throughout the week: music gym, production analysis, ear training, instrument practice, and office hours for when you need a little help or just want to hang out. Everything is face-to-face, on our discord. It’s art school for producers and production school for artists, and a full month of residency runs about the cost of one private lesson.

Share this with someone who belongs in a Beat Kitchen class.

A compressor is not nearly as complicated as the front panel makes it look. It listens for anything louder than a level you choose, and it turns it down. That’s the whole job. Everything else up there — auto gain, makeup, attack, release, knee — is mostly distracting you from the two k***s that actually matter: threshold, which decides WHEN it turns down, and ratio, which decides HOW MUCH.

Set the threshold where you want it to kick in, push the ratio up, and watch the loud parts get pulled toward the line while everything underneath gets left alone. Once the peaks are under control you’ve actually got room to make the whole thing louder — but that part comes later.

THIS WEEK AT BEAT KITCHEN

WEDNESDAY 6/3
Instrument Gym w/
8am (pacific) | 11am (eastern) | 4pm (UK)
Weekly Beat Challenge w/
6pm (pacific) | 9pm (eastern) | 2am (UK)
Office Hours w/
8pm (pacific) | 11pm (eastern) | 4am (UK)

THURSDAY 6/4
Ear Training w/ .mickelsen
5am (pacific) | 8am (eastern) | 1pm (UK)
Office Hours w/
2pm (pacific) | 5pm (eastern) | 10pm (UK)
Office Hours w/
5pm (pacific) | 8pm (eastern) | 1am (UK)

SUNDAY 6/7
Office Hours w/
1pm (pacific) | 4pm (eastern) | 9pm (UK)

MONDAY 6/8
Weekly Beat Challenge w/
7am (pacific) | 10am (eastern) | 3pm (UK)
Office Hours w/
9am (pacific) | 12pm (eastern) | 5pm (UK)

We teach live in office hours almost every day. Music theory gym and production breakdowns are included with residency throughout the week. We offer additional classes (for purchase) which are only available to our members. A full month of residency is about the cost of one lesson. Learn more on our website. Watch for some new synthesizer and music/songwriting tools and plug-ins coming soon.

The pan law in your mixer is one of the less well understood, everyday things that impacts every mix you produce.

The spicy notes usually have a little friction. Check out our new harmony app. It identifies chords and shows their function. It’s available on our website and coming soon as an iOS app. Beat Kitchen residents enjoy weekly meetings to discuss music theory, get help with production, and learn important mixing and arrangement principles. Additional classes are available for purchase but only if you are already a member. join our discord for free or reach out to me to find out more about our community.