Music production courses have been ubiquitous for quite some time now, but it’d be hard to find one as wholly accommodating as the program Kadenze is offering on Ableton. I spoke with Kadenze co-founder Jordan Hochenbaum about the course’s innate diversity: “There are a lot of people currently in school all over the world that want to take these courses. Kadenze opens that up, and with the technology we have, you can do tons of things that you can’t do in a classroom.”
Along with an extensive exploration of Ableton’s superfluity of features, the class delves into the historical context behind the major aspects of production. With instructional videos and stems available all over social media, Kadenze takes the time to give you an essential background. Hochenbaum explained:
If you go on YouTube, there are great tutorials for specific tasks and tools, and we put a lot of thought into communicating those kinds of lessons effectively. But one of the things you really get when you’re around a university or certain scene, is its context – whether that’s social or historical. That’s one of the issues which is really important to us. For example, in the sampling sessions, we spend a decent amount of time talking about the history and birth of sampling, even before hip hop. We go into detail about the early stages of experimental electronic music and some of the first hardware samplers, and what their limitations were.
This sort of unabridged lesson structure is what makes Kadenze so deserving of its high acclaim. Throw in the fact that you can earn college credit from the course, and you have yourself an irresistible deal. Aspiring producers end up spending thousands and thousands of dollars on classes and equipment, but now you can get credits transferred to your current university on top of this imperative experience.
I use the word imperative because the course actually has some impressive perks. Students are fortunate enough to absorb guest lectures from Ableton co-founder Robert Henke, and for the first time ever, receive a massive discount on the complete Ableton software. The class is being offered as part of the curriculum at California Institute of the Arts, so their students are lucky enough to simply include it in their regular enrollment. As for the rest of the us, the enrollment process can be started here. Act quickly though, as spots are on a first-come first-serve basis, with only the first 100 becoming eligible for college credit.
