Transform Your Song Ideas Into Full Productions 

This program is for independent musicians who want to make better home recordings. You should possess . . .

• enough computer knowledge to open programs, put files in folders, and download and install programs.
• enough resources to occasionally buy something. The DAW we will use (Reaper) is $60. Reaper has a 60-day evaluation period, which is plenty enough to get through the program content, if you don't want to buy it. I will use mostly native plugins that come with Reaper, or free plugins from other sources, but I sometimes use paid plugins (but you don't have to buy them to complete the course). You'll need an audio interface, a mic and some speakers or headphones if you don't have them already, and whatever instruments you want to record.

This course won't teach you to set up mics to record a full drum kit. I use virtual drum software, and I also talk about how to work with remote drummers to get good quality tracks for a good price. If you have a drummer and you want to record them, I recommend going into a pro studio. They can send you the tracks and you can take it from there, at home, with this course.

You'll need to have, or be willing to get an audio interface, a copy of Reaper, and a microphone (if you sing , or want to record any instruments acoustically). You won't be able to complete this course with your computers soundcard -- you'll need a dedicated audio interface. Oh, and you'll need a computer. If you have a computer already, it will likely do just fine.

If you use this course and find it isn't a good fit for you, then fair enough -- a refund is in order. But if you're a serial refunder of internet purchases, stay away. Each refund costs me money (the banks keep their fees).  But if you buy it with the intention of refunding, you can f($#)*& all the way off. Serial refunders make things more expensive for everyone.

If you don't understand that compressing a vocal or EQing a kick drum work largely the same, no matter the genre, you should pass. I'll teach you the concepts of EQ and compression (and many more areas of recording) so you can use them in your genre, on your songs, in your way. It's not necessary to like the example song we use in order to get value from the course.  But some people can't separate that out. For example, I'll show you how to find the heft in a kick drum, and also the click to make it cut through better on small speakers. If your genre requires more 'heft' or less 'click' then by all means, set the EQ accordingly by pushing those frequencies up or down.

No, of course not. Look at being a recording engineer, producing records, arranging songs, and mixing. You could spend a lifetime learning any one of those areas of audio. I can't teach you 4 lifetimes of skills in one program. And nobody knows everything about even one of these disciplines. My goal is to help you to a point at which you're able to put your recordings up against professionally recorded songs.

I understand this question. You don't want to buy some course and have it be 5 minutes. The 3 courses, all together, are 147 videos, that are up to 22 minutes long each (some are just introductions, lasting about1 minute).

But let me tell you why I think that's not what you should be concerned about.

Really, what you want to know is what the course covers and how effectively it presents the information. How long the course is is just one factor in answering those questions. So, let me tell you how the course is organized to help you use your time efficiently.

• The courses are arranged in modules, and those modules divided into lessons. So, it's easy for you to locate just what you need to know in the moment you need to know it. Your time is valuable, right?
• The modules follow the process of me recording a song. It starts with me having the song idea, capturing it, figuring out the chords behind the melody I came up with. Then we move to the DAW and start mapping out the basic format of the song. And so on, all the way through mixdown. So you can follow chronologically from the beginning through the end, if you like.
• I don't capture every moment of recording or editing. If I record a background vocal, I might show doing a few takes. If I then decide to double track it, I tell you why, show you how I set it up and then skip to having completed it. You don't really need to see me recording the same vocal part again, do you? It's the same with editing. I show you what I do with drums fills, give 2 or 3 examples, and then say "And I did that to the rest of the drum track."
• In some cases in which I think some people might find a longer video useful, I provide it, and a shorter synopsis video for those who don't want the whole thing. For instance, some people might want to watch 15 minutes of me trying different vocal takes for a verse. Getting different perspectives on how to cut vocals can be useful. But maybe you already know you like to cut vocals in one pass, all the way through the song. So I sometimes provide an overview video that shows how I set something up, and a couple of quick passes, and then the result. And that video ends with "If you want more detail, watch the next video. If not, skip ahead." This is going to save you time. You don't have to go through something you're not interested in. Plus, this makes a quick review easy.
• There are many "Reaper Core Skills" tutorials you can jump to if you don't remember how to perform a specific function, and don't want to look through the whole course to find what you need.
• There's a lot of information on this page about what's in the course. Take a look!

The point is that the course is well-organized. Remember, I've written college-level audio courses before :-)

Reaper is the bomb. There's not really a quality difference in DAW outputs these days (although the quality of stock plugins can vary). As I write this, a Reaper license is $60, and that will carry you through two full versions. I first bought Reaper Wed, Aug 18, 2010, at 12:24 PM. I paid another $60 in 2015. It's now 2023. In 13 years, Reaper has cost me $120. By my calculations, that's less than $1/month for a fully functional multi-track recorder that does so much more than the old 24-track tape machines and consoles could do. By contrast, Protools starts at $199 annually, and goes up to $999. Annually!

Reaper is arguably the most flexible, configurable DAW out there and has a great developer and user community to get any questions answered. Reaper doesn't have virtual instruments built-in like GarageBand does, but I'll show you how to deal with that. Reaper has a bunch of really good developers creating high-quality free plugins. And because it's so flexible, there are a lot of options in Reaper. I'll show you how to set it up and teach you which options are important.

Reaper has a 60-day free trial. That's plenty long enough to get through the course part of the mentorship. So, you don't have to buy it for the course. And frankly, once the trial version expires, no capabilities are lost. You could keep using it forever. But it's better you support the developers. They're not asking for much.

If you use Studio One, or Cubase and are into it a few years, should you grab my mentorship program? While I think there would be value for you, I'd advise you to find a program that's specific to your DAW. If you have a mentor you can easily access and your mentor uses a different DAW, go with what they use.

If you're not deeply into a DAW, or don't have a DAW or know what one is, buckle up -- let's go!

Nope. You bring the songs. I'll teach you how to make them sound as good as possible.