Before Masterclass 1, students will choose one song to produce. After the first masterclass, all students will have three days to prepare a recorded project utilizing the topics in the session, improving upon their own simple, preselected demo. These production projects may be as simple as a smartphone recording all the way to a complete, full-fledged in-studio production. The main scope of this experience is not to produce a commercially-competitive professional production but to demonstrate substantial improvements to your original demo using the concepts covered throughout this experience:

• Use the “Tools of the Producer” (songwriting, arrangement and aesthetic tools)
• Emotional objective of the song: (macro) and sections (micro)
• Defining tempo, key and structure
• Repetitions (familiar vs new)
• Rhythmic “feel” and subdivisions
• Telling the emotional “story” through the symbiotic relationship of sounds: 
  • Frequency footprint (bright vs muffled / note range)
  • Dynamic footprint (loud vs quiet)
  • Spatial footprint (narrow vs wide / far vs close)
• Defining artistic & production references and intended audience 
• Striving to be unique & “worthwhile”
• Envisioning the finished record

Students will be coached and mentored by CAC’s production program faculty and some of the industry’s TOP producers during 3 online sessions where they can fine tune their projects.  Eventually, the five most outstanding projects will be chosen for review during the second masterclass