Private 1:1 course
Private Ableton Live Beginners Course
Learn Ableton Live one to one, in person in Melbourne or online
- The full Beginners Course
- Just you and John
- Times that suit you
Learn Ableton Live from the ground up through eight personalised sessions totalling 17 hours of one-to-one tuition. You’ll learn how to bring the tools and techniques together into a step-by-step process for creating your own music.
- 8 sessions, 17 hours. Weeks 1-6 are 2 hours, weeks 7-8 are 2.5 hours.
- In person at The Snedlab, Coburg North, at a time that suits you.
- $1,495, in person or online.
Following your booking, I will be in touch within 24 hours to confirm suitable times for our weekly sessions. See prices for two or three people below.
What you’ll learn
Practical tools, powerful musical concepts and working habits for producing music in Ableton Live.
A central focus of this course is workflow: piecing the techniques, musical ideas, shortcuts and tools together into a process that makes sense to you. You’ll learn a step-by-step approach you can return to in your own projects, from the first spark of an idea through to an arrangement, a mix and an exported track.
Along with operating the software, we’re learning how to think about music, use our musical intuition and make creative decisions with the tools at hand.
After every session you get a follow-up email with self-study material, including animated explainers of the session topics. All the course materials and visualisers are kept in the student portal, and you get lifetime access to it.
This course covers the practical tools, musical ideas and working habits involved in producing music in Ableton Live:
- Finding your way around Ableton Live: understand the software and how its tools fit into the music-making process.
- Beat making: techniques for creating beats and developing rhythmic ideas.
- Song structure: how to arrange your ideas into sections.
- Finishing and exporting: develop the habit of exporting finished tracks, rather than leaving everything as an unfinished project.
- Recording, audio editing and sampling: record and edit audio, work with samples and use them creatively in your productions.
- Musical awareness and ear training: develop your listening skills and understanding of what makes your music sound good.
- Practical music theory: straightforward ideas that beginning musicians can understand, plus shortcuts for putting them to use in music production.
- Songwriting and composition: techniques, shortcuts and tricks for developing your musical ideas.
- Mixing: work with equalisation, compression and audio effects to shape your sound and bring the parts of a track together.
- Automation: add movement and artistic expression to your music.
- MIDI instruments and controllers: understand MIDI instruments, MIDI mapping and how to use controllers creatively.
- Performance techniques: explore practical performance tricks in Ableton Live.
- Workflow: produce more reliably with a systematic approach, and learn techniques that make the process faster and easier.
Comprehensive follow-up emails and self-study materials are provided after each session so you can revisit what we’ve covered and keep practicing at home.
Eight sessions
Start with the tools, make musical ideas with audio and MIDI, develop an arrangement, then apply introductory mixing techniques.
Session 1: 2 hours
Find your way around Ableton
Explore Session and Arrangement View, work with clips and loops, record an idea into an arrangement, and export a first sketch.
Session 2: 2 hours
Record, edit and build with audio
Record and edit audio, make beats with samples and one-shots, and develop rhythms with variation.
Session 3: 2 hours
Create drums and musical parts with MIDI
Program drums and instruments, explore velocity and musical scales, and build simple bass, chord and pad parts.
Session 4: 2 hours
Organise a project and shape its sound
Keep project files together, work with sample libraries and audio effects, and explore sends, returns and introductory automation.
Session 5: 2 hours
Make Ableton feel playable
Use MIDI mapping and controllers to perform ideas and record automation, adding movement with filters and effects.
Session 6: 2 hours
Turn an idea into an arrangement
Explore song structure, phrases, sections, tension and release, and transitions that help a track develop. This session is focused on the psychology of music, and features a deep dive into John's research on 'Music As a Biological function in humans'.
Session 7: 2.5 hours
Give the mix clarity
Explore frequency roles, EQ, low-end balance, compression and sidechain compression. Our final 2 weeks are focused entirely on mixing basics.
Session 8: 2.5 hours
Mix down and finish
Balance levels, create space, check headroom, and prepare an exported mix. In our final session we work together on a multitrack mixing template - simulating a real mixdown session.
The whole course, one to one
This is the full Ableton Live Beginners Course, taught one to one. It’s a structured approach that teaches you music production through the topics in a logical sequence of steps.
Along the way you learn a workflow you can reuse, so you can keep creating your own tracks after the course.
Is this course right for you?
The course is designed for beginners, but it isn’t limited to people opening Ableton for the first time. If you’ve already spent time producing and want a clearer process, there is plenty of practical learning and hands-on experience to take away.
This is an IN DEPTH beginners course - and will give you an understanding of what generally takes most people 2-3 years to come across in self-directed learning.
We cover a substantial range of material, presented in a sequence that lets you build on what you’ve learned.
The aim is to give you a useful foundation across production, composition, sound design and mixing, with a workflow you can continue developing after the course.
Very often people who have been producing in Ableton Live for 4-5+ years come through this course and express they gained far more insight than they were expecting to.
Practice between sessions
Each session includes homework to help you put the new skills into practice and prepare for the following session.
You don’t need to understand everything immediately. The follow-up materials are there to help you revisit the details and keep working with them in your own time.
Materials you can keep coming back to
After each session, you’ll receive a comprehensive follow-up email with written summaries of session content, detailed annotated images to help you study the interface, and video tutorials relevant to the topics we’ve covered.
The follow-ups also include animated explainers of the session topics: short animations that show the ideas step by step, which you can replay as often as you like. They’re kept in the student portal week by week, with the rest of the course materials.
These give you a resource for recapping the session, practising at home and returning to particular techniques after the course has finished.
We’ll also cover useful online resources, including sample libraries. Students receive a hand-picked sample pack made for this course, containing 2GB of high-quality, royalty-free samples.
Animated explainers from the course
Weeks 1 and 2
What previous students say
From being overwhelmed at the thought of Ableton and music production, to feeling confident in my abilities and excited for what the future of this creative path has to offer.
Thank you John for sharing you passion for music and years of experience in an easy to digest, engaging, fun and hilarious 8 week beginner course. As someone who has always struggled in the classroom and was quite overwhelmed by the thought of music production, you delivered the course in a way that kept me engaged and gave me the confidence to carve my own path navigating the beast that is Ableton.
I have just completed the 8 week beginner course with John and highly recommend his classes.
I really appreciate the follow up emails that gets sent out after each class with a recap + additional YouTube videos to watch (he picks really entertaining yet educational creators). John has a very engaging persona in class and keeps the vibe very upbeat with his jokes and mannerisms!
John’s classes are engaging, practical, relaxed and fun.
The concepts and techniques he teaches gives you a basic understanding of the entire process involved in producing a track and he really draws out the inner creator in all of his students regardless of music making experience. The way that John structured this course made learning Ableton super simple, tangible and FUN from the get go. Getting to create songs from the very first week and to continue working on music we had created each week, made it really fun and balanced out the learning new stuff component with a lot of creativity.
Requirements
You must bring the following to each session:
Your own laptop, with Ableton Live installed.
Version 10 or later is required. Ableton Standard or Suite versions are recommended, however this course is built to also accommodate users of Intro. Ableton offers a free trial. Please get in touch if you need help with setup.
A quality pair of wired headphones.
Bluetooth headphones are not suitable. A wired pair is required.
A computer mouse.
When sessions run
Weekly, at a time that suits you
8 sessions, 17 hours in total
- Week 12 hrs
- Week 22 hrs
- Week 32 hrs
- Week 42 hrs
- Week 52 hrs
- Week 62 hrs
- Week 72.5 hrs
- Week 82.5 hrs
Weeks 1-6 are 2 hours, weeks 7-8 are 2.5 hours.
Following your booking, I will be in touch within 24 hours to confirm suitable times for our weekly sessions.
In person at The Snedlab, Coburg North, or online.
Course price
$1,495 for 8 sessions, 17 hours in total, in person or online.
One to one
$1,495 total, in person at The Snedlab or online, 6 × 2 hours and 2 × 2.5 hours.
Learning with a friend?
Two people save 25% each, three save 30% each.
Prices are for the whole course. Times are set together after booking.
- Two people: $2,240 ($1,120 each)
- Three people: $3,135 ($1,045 each)
Payment plans
Payment plans are available at checkout via PayPal Pay-in-4, Afterpay and Klarna.
Please get in touch if these options aren’t suitable for you, and we can discuss additional private payment plan options.
Location
The Snedlab
In-person sessions are held at The Snedlab, 4/36 Norfolk Court, Coburg North VIC 3058.
Online sessions are also available.
Support during and after the course
Follow-up material and animated explainers
After every session you get a follow-up email with self-study material, including animated explainers of the session topics.
They give you a way to recap the session, practise at home and go back over particular techniques.
Student portal
All the course materials and visualisers are kept in the student portal, and you get lifetime access to it.
Come back and recap any of it whenever you need, long after the course has finished.
More animated explainers
Week 3 and mixing
Free Open Production Sessions
After taking part in the Beginners Course, prior students get priority seats in Open Production Sessions: regularly occurring free open studio days for producers.
Stay connected with fellow students, watch music being made in real time, ask questions and learn from the decisions made during a working music production session.
Private tuition discounts
Beginners Course participants get a 10% discount on all private 1:1 sessions going forward, on top of bulk-booking discounts.
Private sessions can help you work through particular topics and continue developing your own music with individual support.
Questions before booking?
Contact me at info@snedmusic.com or call 0449 705 424 if you’d like to discuss the course.
I also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you’d like an in-person chat about whether Ableton Live is the right path for you and your music. Get in touch to arrange a time.
Terms of Service
Please read the Terms of Service before booking.
Book your private course
Private Ableton Live Beginners Course, one to one
Eight sessions, 17 hours, one to one.
$1,495, in person at The Snedlab, Coburg North, or online.
Prefer a group?
The Ableton Live Beginners Course also runs as a group course at The Snedlab.
