Record Label and Electronic Music Academy
In-person workshop · Portugal · two days
Six hours, from the first sound to an audio file you built yourself, with kick, drums, bass, chords, arrangement, mix and master. Read this first: scheduled editions are taught in Portuguese, and an English edition runs in Lisbon as soon as eight people have put their names down.
Program
Every concept lands first in one of the academy's browser tools, where you hear a single parameter change in seconds, and only then moves to Ableton Live. Scroll through the program: the panel shows where the room is at each hour and what is already in your session.
By the end of the day you have eight bars playing, in the genre you picked in the first half hour.
Three excerpts, three genres, and the question that runs through the whole weekend: what changed between this one and the last one. You leave this block with the genre you will work in for two days.
Live open, pack downloaded, sound coming out of everyone's headphones. Half a dozen technical problems solved now, rather than halfway through Sunday.
Oscillators, filter and envelope in the Synth and the ADSR Envelope, then the same four parameters in Live's Wavetable. You leave with a lead and a pad.
Tools: Synth · ADSR Envelope
Ten minutes to rest your ears.
You program the beat in the Drum Machine, design your own kick in the Kick Designer, and carry both into a drum rack in Live, with the kick on its own track.
Tools: Drum Machine · Kick Designer
You choose a progression in Chord Progressions and write the bass line in the Melodic Sequencer, which exports straight into Live.
Tools: Chord Progressions · Melodic Sequencer
You assemble the parts, save the session, and we play three loops out loud. Questions until 6:30 pm for anyone who wants to stay.
By the end of the day the track is exported and in your headphones on the way home.
Open yesterday's session and listen to it with a day of distance, which is half a lesson on its own.
The problem beginners have is not making a loop, it is getting out of one. You draw the map of the track in the Structure Map and move it into the arrangement view: intro, build-up, drop, breakdown, outro.
Tools: Structure Map
Why does this sound like mud? You watch the kick and the bass fight over the same range in the Spectrum Analyzer, and fix it with EQ. The one rule worth memorizing all weekend lives here.
Tools: Spectrum Analyzer
Ten minutes to rest your ears.
Threshold, ratio, attack and release seen working in the Compressor Visualizer before you touch a plugin, then sidechain opening space for the kick.
Tools: Compressor Visualizer · Sidechain
Panning, a short reverb, a delay in time, and the master with a limiter and LUFS. This block moves fast on purpose: nobody learns mastering in 25 minutes, and saying so is better than pretending otherwise.
Tools: Limiter
Everyone exports their own track and listens to it. This is the moment of the weekend: the file exists.
We play two or three tracks in the room. Questions until 6:30 pm.
Six hours are enough to walk the whole path once, quickly, with the big decisions made by the instructors. That is deliberate. By Sunday evening you know you can finish a track, and that is the point at which learning to make those decisions yourself is worth your time.
What you leave with
After the workshop. The full course, Electronic Music Production for Beginners, is in English and available today: ten chapters, the same tools inside the lessons, quizzes, assignments with feedback, a certificate and lifetime access. It is the same path as the workshop, taken slowly, with the decisions in your hands.
Try it before you come
The academy runs 20 free interactive tools, each built to teach one concept at a time. You use eleven of them hands-on during the workshop and watch another nine at work, and they all stay open afterwards, with no sign-up, at ohxalarecords.com/tools. This is the Drum Machine: click the grid and press play.
Who it is for
It is not for you if
What to bring
No laptop?
No laptop, or unable to install Live? Write to us before you sign up. Half of every block runs in browser tools that work on any computer, and there is always a way to get you working. We just need to know in advance, not at the door.
Who teaches
Luís Marques and Isabel Ferreira, both members of Ohxala and both certified trainers under the Portuguese CCP scheme. Two instructors for ten people, which is what you notice on Sunday: nobody spends twenty minutes waiting for help on the day it matters most. Both teach the workshop in English.
OHXALA RECORDS is a record label and an electronic music production academy. Alongside the label's catalog, the academy runs the course Electronic Music Production for Beginners, 20 free interactive tools and more than 25 technical articles.
The principle
That is why every block starts in a tool where you hear one parameter change, and only then moves to Ableton Live. It works the same way in the workshop, the course and the blog.
In English · Lisbon
Same two days, same program, same deliverable, taught in English in Lisbon by the same two instructors. There is no date yet, and there will not be one until there are enough people to fill a room. Eight names is the number that makes it happen, and we announce the date to this list before anywhere else.
Putting your name down costs nothing and commits you to nothing. It is how we find out whether this should exist.
Viseu, in Portuguese
If you understand spoken Portuguese well enough to follow, you are welcome at the Viseu edition on November 7 and 8, and the tools and the course exist in English so nothing is lost afterwards. Write to us and we will talk it through before you pay.
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Questions
No. You do not need to read notation or play an instrument. Scales and progressions come ready in the tools, and the theory that matters shows up when it is needed, not before.
No. The 30-day trial is free, includes everything, and lets you save and export. We send installation instructions by email five days before, and it is worth not installing it weeks in advance so you do not burn the 30 days before the workshop.
It depends entirely on the list. Eight people in the Lisbon area is the point at which a date gets set. We would rather tell you that than invent a date and cancel it.
Sunday continues Saturday, so the two days count as one thing. If you already know you cannot do both, wait for the next edition.
You leave with an exported track, two to three minutes long, with a basic mix and master. It is not a track ready to send to a label, and no six-hour workshop can promise that. It is a whole track made by you, which is what almost everyone starting out is missing.
Headphones and a small MIDI keyboard, yes. Larger controllers and studio equipment are better left at home: there is neither the space nor the time to set them up.
The online course is in English and open today: ten chapters, the same tools inside the lessons, assignments with feedback and lifetime access for €97. The workshop is the shortcut with a room and a person in it.