Songwriting & Production Academy

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.

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.

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!

By the end of this module, students will have a thorough command of Logic Pro X, familiarizing themselves with such 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. Many contemporary producers use Logic Pro X for its “sound”, and argue that it is easier to finish tracks in Logic than Ableton, so we offer both. As the only Apple Authorized Training Provider in Miami, we put students through official training and an examination to become an Apple Certified in Logic Pro X, so they walk away with another string to their bow at the end of their program.

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.

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!

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.

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.

There’s not far to travel for the recording a band session, as we have our very own commercial recording and mixing studio in Miami! 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.

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.

All Academy learners at Garnish will gain a free unlimited membership for our shorter production courses, worldwide. This means you can take as many 36-hour (and below) music production courses at Garnish locations and online, with only registration fee to pay, with no cap on volume or time! Our offer is valid as long as there is availability at your chosen participating school.

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!