Beat Kitchen School

10/13/2026

ChorDLE! trains you on over 1M chord progressions. Occasionally I favorite one I think it would make a good song. I’m currently making this app FREE provided you practice a little every day. Train intervals, chord progressions, voice recognition. ChorDLE! starts you with simple music theory questions you can answer with almost no experience. It gets wickedly hard. In the upcoming release, you can even send a cord progression to a friend!

10/12/2026

This is from one of my favorite standards and it’s an example of fast moving changes. The chords in yellow aren’t structurally important in the broader melodic and harmonic movement but they are an important part of the way the song feels. You’ll find this progression in lots of songs. It’s an important harmonic chunk. This was from an hour long gym and I’m skimming over some details here but hopefully you’ll find something to keep you busy in this clip. Join us and sit in on the next session. You get about ten live sessions a week for the price of a typical lesson.

10/08/2026

One Recording; workflow hack I brought up in a recent office hours visit was to actually pull an old retired dash cam back into service as a session monitoring device. Also useful in songwriting meetings to loop record so you can always go back and capture stuff that might have gotten lost otherwise. Some of the most valuable stuff that comes out of our school happens in between classes. The advice doesn’t come from me. I learned as much here as I teach and I’m hopeful people will find it worthwhile to come join our community.

10/07/2026

I don’t think anything is actually made out of cat gut. Can you imagine the logistics? But the story is an interesting one and it’s not the first time the D’Addario string co found themselves in a PR pickle

10/07/2026

10/06/2026

I haven’t done a FREE WORKSHOP in a while. If you’re in Seattle, stop by this one. I’ll be explaining how it all started: Sound, harmony, acoustics, overtones… And it’s the driving force behind the design of BKS Harmonic which is my new harmonic synthesizer which operates on the principles of additive synthesis, but with a few important twists. I will discussing it’s design, synthesis in general, and I’ll be giving away a license or two and also selling some deeply discounted as well ($20 which is something like 75% off.). Special thanks to Seattle Composers Alliance and Seattle Drum School of Music for hosting this event! Doors open at seven. I look forward to sharing some information and answering questions. Hope to see you there!

10/03/2026

Free stuff alert! READ BELOW! You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune a cat… Or can you? Join me at 7pm on on Tuesday in cooperation with Seattle Composers Alliance for a free lecture on the overtone series and how it shaped the direction for our new Harmonic Synthesizer. I’ll be giving away a few copies at the event if you are in Seattle. I suggest you RSVP through through their website. For those of you who can’t make it, comment “harmonic“ below along with a couple words about how you might use this tool and I will be giving away a couple copies here as well. Make sure you are following us so you can receive a DM. This plug-in is available for AudioUnits and VST. ProTools coming soon. There is also a iOS AUv3 version that you can use inside your favorite host. The full version is $79 and the iOS version is $15 and it is available on our website as well as in the App Store

09/30/2026

A lifetime ago and back when my hands did what I asked them to do, I was fortunate enough to study a bit with the great Hal Galper who turned my head around in the first lesson, introducing me to his forward motion concept. I’m sure this is probably widely documented, but I’ve not seen it and so I thought I’d do a quick video and introduce the concept in under two minutes. If you would prefer real mentoring rather than scrolling videos, check out Beat Kitchen. For the price of a single lesson, you can come to live, face-to-face, music theory and production events on our Discord for an entire month. Residents attend them for free. We also provide add-on classes. I’ll be launching new classes this fall where we teach everything from music theory and songwriting to mixing and synthesis.

Also check out chorDLE!, the free new ear training app on our website and in the App Store. It’s free as long as you keep up with it. So do some ear training and keep it charged so you can keep coming back.

09/30/2026

Ear training for free as long as you show up. Get the chorDLE! app for iOS or play on our website. Android coming soon. Beat Kitchen residents play for free, everyone else play as long as they don’t fall off the wagon.

09/26/2026

Out here actively fighting against big paint-by-numbers music production industrial complex. Come learn from producers face-to-face who are ready to meet you where you’re at and help get you where you where want to go. Resident events open throughout the week for members, new classes starting soon.