About four weeks ago I enrolled in Point Blank Music School’s Muiscal Compostion course. The London based institution is an award winning electronic music school which has been voted ‘world’s ‘Best Music Production & DJ School’ by the readers of DJ Mag for six years running. They teach the creative process of making music at the highest level and have sit in classes in London and Los Angeles as well as online courses. Point Blank offers everything from ‘Intro to Music Production’ to a ‘BA in Music Production and Sound Engineering’ and even courses in DJing and music business. Whether you’re a beginner with little to no knowledge of music production or a an experienced producer with tracks already signed to labels, Point Blank something to offer you.

Being a self-taught, University of YouTube, producer I found this opportunity quite intriguing. I would consider myself a fairly experienced producer so I wondered what I could possibly learn from this course. I’m now in week seven of ‘Complete Electronic Music Composition’ which I have been taking through Point Blank’s online program. I am blown away by the course material and how well laid out and self explanatory the resources are that we are provided each week.

Theory is one of the parts of music production that I’ve always struggled with but after just one week I found myself feeling much more comfortable identifying the key of a song, playing the notes in a particular scale, and creating chords out of those notes. One thing that is stressed in this first week was is to practice with the keyboard every day or as often as possible. This helps reinforce the concepts learned and also build muscle memory in your hands which will enable you to become a more fluent keyboardist.

Week two’s lesson consisted of chord progressions, bass lines, and rhythm. So after building a basic foundation of music theory it was time to start creating some of our own chord progressions. Week three expanded on the concepts learned in the previous two weeks and also offered ideas of different ways to start a track which for many is the hardest part of writing music.  The lesson is called ‘Riffs, Melodies, & Approaches to Writing’ and was my favorite thus far. Sometimes I do find myself sitting in front of my DAW with no creative spark just flipping through samples hoping to hear a sound I like or something to get me going but nothing seems to click. This lesson offers methods to get that spark such as finding a particular section of a song you like and sampling just a small loop and building upon that. We analyzed hits from the likes of Public Enemy and J-Dilla

Each week in the course I find myself fascinated with the material. Even as someone who has been producing for years, I continuously am learning new techniques to accomplish starting and finishing songs in creative and unique ways that I would have never imagined before.

I will be providing an update in the next few weeks as we approach the finishing stretch of the course with a full in depth report of my entire experience of the online Electronic Music Composition Module 1 at Point Blank. If you are interested at all in beginning a journey into music of any sort, Point Blank hands down will guide you in the direction you want.

Check out more here: https://www.pointblankmusicschool.com/courses/online/