8 days private DAW lessons at 343LABS in New York City.

A GOOD UPGRADE ON MY ABLETON SKILLS
DATE: 17-07-2023 UNTILL 27-07-2023

I travelled to New York City for a holiday and decided to commit half of the time on upgrading my DAW skills.

I googled and did find an institute that was willing to provide 8 private lessons of 4 hours a day.

The institute: 343 LABS in Manhatten.

343 Labs

New York City NY United States

343 Labs is NYC’s fastest growing music production and performance community with free weekly masterclasses, networking events, performance opportunities, and a broad offering of music production courses. With some of NYC’s most accomplished producers on its teaching roster, of which four are Ableton Certified Trainers, students can expect an exceptional educational experience, both in NYC, Berlin, and online.

343 Labs has locations in both New York City and Berlin, as well as a diverse online course offering. Besides its cutting-edge music production classes and curriculum taught by world-class instructors, 343 Labs emphasizes its ever-growing, inclusive community of producers, artists and educators. The 343 Labs community is non-discriminatory and comprises people of diverse cultures, genders, races and experience levels. Spanning an equally diverse range of musical genres, it offers free daily educational events via its Discord server and YouTube channel, such as masterclasses, feedback sessions, performance opportunities and contests.

343 Labs also gives students lifetime access to their network of education and industry partners – even after graduating – including label releases of their own tracks, performances in NYC nightclubs, and ongoing mentorship from instructors and alums. We hope that you will be able to join us on your journey in becoming the best musician you can, and look forward to having you join the 343 Labs family. See what our students say about our classes here.

The teacher: Brian Jackson.

Brian M. Jackson is a music producer, electronic musician, audio engineer, educator, consultant, and author of The Music Producer’s Survival Guide: Chaos, Creativity, and Career in Independent and Electronic Music (Sound on Sound Presents…). Brian is an expert instructor with more than 20 years of teaching experience, and is as comfortable lecturing to large groups as he is providing intimate one-on-one training.

His students range from true beginners to Grammy winners. Brian is one of the first five Ableton Certified Trainers on the planet – from the inaugural event in May of 2008 in NYC. He was co-owner and director of education at Devotion Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which also served as his Ableton Certified Training Center.

Subject of the lessons:

Ableton Live:

Using the arrangement view.

I did not realise but it makes sense to start working more in the arrangement view. You have than clear blocks of the material you want to used can record it to your liking to the session view. You do not change the material and can re-use it and re-record it to the session view to your liking. It works much more efficient and structured. It is good to set the warp time to one bar so you have sufficient time to click but secure a synchronised start. It will also prepare you to live performance when ever needed.

Automation in Kontakt Player or other plugins.

When you use plugins, you can automate all possible adjustments you can have in the plug-in Dashboard. So in stead of automating track volume in the mixer, you can automate dynamic, expression, vibrato etcetera in the plug-in.

Using a controller with faders to steer automation.

It is not easy to have a smooth automation when you work with your mouse on the automation line. When you use a midi controller like the launch-control XL from novation I have you can use the fader, or assign the turning knobs to every aspect you can automate. This makes automating more easy, precise and fluent.

Using good Samples and Cinematic sounds for Movies and Trailer

Ableton has some pretty good sounds / instruments to put on a midi track. But there are numerous very good sample packs in the market. One of the better ones is Nucleus from Audio Imperia. 20.4 Gigabytes of Samples divided in: