At the start of the year, I stumbled across a few motivational books and started to dig into them. The most poignant line from the reading was “Be a student for life. Keep learning”. 2020 was a year surrendered to an endless scroll of social media. It was time to suppress the technological battle and get back on the proverbial learning wagon.

I’ve always had a strong desire to dive deeper into music production, however, had a meh experience at a large international audio school. Things might be different now, but the course back then was out of date and uninspiring.

I’d heard a lot about Liveschool. It’s a small online accessible music production school based in Sydney that specialises in teaching Ableton (For those playing at home, Ableton is a digital audio workstation software that most music producers use).

After completing their eight-week Remix & Create course, I’ve learnt all about sound design (making my own sounds), remixing (techniques to recreate and edit songs), music theory (keys and chords), mixing (how to make all the sounds fit into a song), rhythm and groove (making drum patterns and tricks of the trade), automation (the movement of an effect across the timeline of a song) and how to do it in a quick manner on Ableton. The way the information is taught to you over the weeks is great. It’s like a cumulative effect, where you will learn one thing and be able to apply it to the next thing you learn.

Here’s the thing, you won’t get a ‘Certificate IV’ or a ‘Bachelor’s Degree’ or something that will tick a box for the government or mum and dad to approve. But what it doesn’t serve in certificates, it makes up for in useful, straight to the point skills, taught by artists and teachers who care.

So if you’ve been thinking about learning music production, I’m about to make your life a lot easier… suss out Liveschool and consider saving yourself a HECs debt.

(This isn’t an advertorial)