EDM Production 101 Course Description

Fractal University Spring 2024 Semester

TL;DR

Do you live in NYC and want to learn how to make electronic music on your laptop? Apply here to take my EDM Production 101 class, part of Fractal University’s Spring 2024 course offerings!

🗓 12 sessions, from February 3 - April 20

🕰️ 2-hour sessions, Saturdays 12 pm - 2 pm

🗺 Location: Merlin’s Place, 248 McKibbin St, Brooklyn

💰 Tuition: Sliding scale of $30-$300

✍️ Class size: 20 (max)

📋 Application (deadline January 17): https://airtable.com/appqj7FQhKgCdLnWM/pagMAXImfMEdhy289/form

Note: there’s a chance we’ll need to cancel one or two sessions due to traveling, in which case we can reschedule them to a later date. So, the class could run a week or two beyond April 20.

Background

Every human is the living expression of a unique myth, and sound is one of the main vectors for this expression. While our modern era tends to favor vision above the other senses due to its immediate comprehensibility, audio has managed to retain its mystical aura even in these legibility-obssessed times. By tapping into music’s Dionysian power, we can project facets of our consciousness and imagination along currents that resonate with listeners, vibrating them with frequencies that elude lexical explanation.

Thanks to advances in recording technology, we no longer need a dedicated studio full of expensive, specialized equipment to make a professional-sounding track. Instead, we can do it all from the comfort of our personal computers. Furthermore, due to the Internet and social media, major record labels and radio stations no longer have a stranglehold on the distribution of music, nor can they as easily influence which songs become popular. Now, anyone can publish a song to SoundCloud or TikTok where, algorithm willing, it has the potential to become a breakout hit.

EDM itself is only a few decades old, hardly older than computers themselves in the context of human history, and both are still making their impact felt on our culture and our species. No longer confined to illegal warehouse raves or nerdy basements, hardly any of today’s pop songs have managed to elude EDM’s synthesized influence, and major music festivals are obligated to showcase at least a few DJs (Coachella) when they’re not drawing their entire lineup from their ranks (Electric Daisy Carnival). Just what are producers putting in these seemingly simplistic songs?? As for computers, well… you’re reading this on one :)

So, allow me to invite you on a journey of mythical self-discovery, to frolic on the frontiers of audio artistry, in the approachable yet enigmatic universe of Electronic Dance Music!

Who is this class for?

• Are you interested in making music but never learned how to play an instrument?

• Do you know how to play but are unsure of how to navigate the myriad software packages available for home recording?

• Have you made some songs of your own but aren’t quite satisfied with their quality and want to take your process to the next level?

• Or, do you simply enjoy electronic music and want to deepen your experience with a peek behind the curtain?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then EDM Production 101 is for you!

What will you learn?

By the end of the course, you should have:

• A firm grasp on the fundamentals of EDM songwriting and production techniques along with the knowledge of what makes these songs “work”.

• At least 3 finished tracks, published online for the world to hear.

• The ability to perform your tracks live using basic DJ techniques.

• Enough orientation to enable your own further exploration within the computer music space.

• An increased awareness of and appreciation for the structure and details of all music.

What equipment do you need?

Just a basic laptop and some headphones. The main piece of software we’ll be using is Ableton Live which has a 30-day free trial and costs between $79-$99 depending on when you buy it. If this is prohibitively expensive, scholarships from Fractal are available.

Schedule and Syllabus

The (current, tentative) schedule of topics we’ll cover is as follows. Depending on the composition of the student body, we’ll move faster or slower as needed. Extra time will be used to work on our tunes in class, share feedback, and potentially cover additional topics such as AI. There will also be 1-3 hours of take-home exercises each week to help solidify the lessons.

• Session 1

  • What is EDM? What are genres?

  • Setup

    • DAWs: Install Ableton

    • VSTs: Install Vital

    • Samples: Download Cymatics samples

  • Drum Loops

    • Taxonomy

      • House, aka Boots and Cats

      • Hip-hop

      • Rock

    • Kicks

    • Claps and Snares

    • Tops: Hi-Hats and Rides

  • Reverb and Sends

  • Sharing Your Work

    • Exporting

    • Publishing to SoundCloud

• Session 2

  • The Drop

    • What is it?

    • Structure

  • Cymbals

  • Toms

  • Percussion

  • Fills and Reverses

• Session 3

  • Intro to Bass

    • Subs

    • 808s

    • Plucks

    • Wobbles

    • Lead Basses

  • Sidechaining basics

  • EQ, Saturation, Compression

• Session 4

  • Leads and Vocals

    • Delay

    • More Sidechaining

  • One-shots

  • Arps, Pads, and Ambience

    • Chorus, Flanger, Phaser

• Session 5

  • More Song Structure: Build Ups

    • Snare rolls

    • Risers

    • Reverse reverb

    • Teasing

  • Automation

  • The Pre-Drop Sample

• Session 6

  • Mixing basics

  • Mastering basics

    • Making your drop hit hard

  • Social Media Minimalism: Your First Track

• Session 7

  • Even More Song Structure

    • Verses

    • Breaks

  • Impacts

  • Reese Basses and Supersaws

• Session 8

  • The Second Drop

  • Fake-outs and genre-switching

  • Publishing your tracks at scale

• Session 9

  • Last bit of song structure: DJ intros/outros

  • Basics of DJing

    • Song selection

    • Harmonic mixing and the Circle of Fifths

    • Transitions

• Session 10

  • Music Theory

    • Ableton’s “Scale” effect

    • Pentatonic and Hexatonic scales

    • Chord progressions

    • Creating melodies

• Session 11

  • Collaborating with other producers

• Session 12

  • Extra topics/buffer

About the Facilitator

My name is David Shimel, a.k.a. FVN STVFF, and I’ve been making music with computers for over 25 years. I grew up studying classical piano before discovering the joys of progressive metal in high school. I played keyboards in a few bands, recording an original EP with one of them, after which I shipped off to NYC to study engineering. At the end of my freshman year at Columbia, I saw the Varsity Show for the first time and decided that I wanted a piece of the theatre scene, eventually joining the orchestra pit on keys for over a dozen musicals during my time there. After graduating, I started my career as a software engineer but never lost sight of music, composing the scores and arranging sound effects for several flash animations in my spare time, among other things.

My electronic music awakening happened when a friend brought me to the Dubstep room in the now-defunct Turntable.fm. A sound I’d been seeking my whole life without knowing how to describe it, and at last it had found me! As the bass washed over me, each song hitting me harder than the last, I became hooked, and after gathering a few key tools (and watching countless hours of YouTube tutorials), I was finally able to make my own tracks that sounded just as good. And the rest is, not just history, but the future as well :)

You can find my music on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music… pretty much any streaming service you like.