this is sparta.

[komanderkin]

pay £325 and become a pro.
http://www.pointblankonline.net/dubstep ... n-live.php

i mean if someone wants to pay such money for a 'crash course' in dubstep, so be it. but i believe it's much more fun to do it the hard, free, and less lame way.

[yellowhighlighter]

i don't think something is less lame just because it is more difficult. that sort of mindset is backwards.

the only reason this course is fucked up is because it costs so much and wtf are they going to teach you? how to make wobble and basic drum patterns. hooray.

[jaydot]

I agree with OP, much more fun doing it the hard way, although who knows the benefits could be great?

[phrex]

shit mentality behind itm same as the template thingy somewhere else.

DIY!!!

[Point Blank]

Just thought I'd throw in my two cents...

I hear your points that you might want to do it "the hard way", but I would say that we are not really looking to simply give students the easy route to producing professional standard tracks. What we aim to offer is expert guidance from professional producer tutors on how you can efficiently use your DAW to its full potential and learn the techniques and skills of producing electronic music in the correct and most beneficial way. From experience, we have seen many students using the free resources available through the net etc come to us having learned to use their DAWs inefficiently and perhaps learning techniques in a way which could be much improved, so as to increase productivity, workflow and attain a better, more professional sound.

We work extremely hard in the development stage of our courses and most defintely do not take shortcuts so as to teach "how to make wobble and basic drum patterns". Everyone who works at Point Blank makes music and is a big lover of music, the last thing we want to do is to stifle creativity, if anything we aim to inspire creativity and to ensure that all our students create original, unique tracks that reflect their own sound. We absolutely do not want to take anything away from music, but we see ourselvesd and helping, guiding and nurturing the producers of tomorrow.

The Dubstep Course in particular aims to cover the broad spectrum of the genre in as much detail as possible, a few of the guys here are big dubstep fans (myself included) as is the course developer (Jonny Miller/Joshua Black), of course, so when enrolling you "will examine a broad range of production techniques from bass heavy dubs through to more techno influenced flavours" (taken from the course press release).

When taking the Dubstep Course, what your effectively paying for is alot more than the usual video tutorials and course notes. What we offer is one-to-one personal feedback from a pro producer (Jonny Miller) on your tracks, each week you get a personalised video of your tutor going through your projects and advising both creatively and technically on what might be improved and how you can do so. We are the only course provider to offer this kind of service and the feedback we have had from students has been extremely positive:

http://www.pointblankonline.net/about-p ... onials.php

Anyway, sorry to rant on defensively! It's still good to get all your feedback and we strive to take all your comments on board and improve on what we do wherever we can. So keep your comments coming and if anyone has any questions about the DUbstep course post 'em on here and i'll get right back to you.

Cheers!

Luke (Point Blank)

[JFK]

Any chance of a link to some of Johnny Millers tracks?

Just curious to hear what he's got.........

[marshy]

THIS IS SPARTAAAA

[decsterity]

THIS IS SPARTAAAA

haha

[Pedro Sánchez]

sorry couldn't help it

The problem I have with some of these things is, ok fair enough teaching production techniques is fine and I encourage that and hate seeing people holding back knowledge for some selfish gain but certain things have to be lived to be understood, I see 'dubstep' as more than just a music genre, it's a mentality (or was) just like early hiphop, just like jungle etc and thats how scenes start and grow and you bring your personality and spin on them things into based on your experiences but these kind of courses try to kind of take the average and package it in a formulated structure that says 'it's done like this not like this' and it ends up a diluted musical output.
I think these courses need teach more about the history and the cultures that surrounds the scenes. I have seen some of the pointblank tutorials and it is top notch production skills in an easy to understand format though.

Did I just read too much into it.

[komanderkin]

well i don't like making negative comments, and i felt somewhat bad after making this thread. i mean if you guys were up with a scam website or something similar, it would have been terrible. but it seems to me that the course is genuine stuff and...

uhhh. i mean, i don't like the idea of paying such money (any money) to learn production on some kind of course while all the brilliant and free resources are scattered all around on the web. then again, maybe other people don't have a problem with purchasing this kind of knowledge and that is perfectly ok. if you want to learn to do it, the way in which you learn is not that important, as long as you can reach your goal. still, people like macc on these forums, offering abnormal quantities of pure knowledge for free, are the true heroes for me.

on the other hand, learning from forums and other online resoursces can be time consuming and a bit chaotic. it does feel great when you dig up some great info, when you figure out yourself something you've been knocking you head about on for ages, but it also means sitting loooooads of time in front of a computer browsing around, reading and - not making music.

so in the end i guess... time = money. a course like this will make you speed things up alot if you don't mind spending some serious money. but i'm a geek anyway so i don't mind choosing the free way.

either way, i'm changing the title of this topic. it's not madness, it's just capitalism i guess. or maybe those two are the same thing.

[deadly_habit]

i'd have shelled out the money to get some straight up daw training vs all the experimenting and coursework books i've read over the years not saying genre specific

[narcissus]

ableton courses? fucking retarded if you ask me. but then i feel the same way about studying music in school.

i started out w/ ableton when i was probably 12 or 13, that's when the music bug was biting me hard. i learned so much by just fuckin around that i couldn't possibly write it down or tell you. when people ask me "woh! how'd you get that sound??" i usually don't even remember. and even if i can, the answer is always "i was fuckin around and the synth started doing that."

i shouldn't hate. i guess taking courses would bring me up to speed if i had just started making music (i'm 21).. but that just wouldn't make sense... honestly if you didn't get bit when you were hitting puberty, the bug's probably not ever going to bite you too hard.. and if you don't have this stupidly intense desire to make music -- and it is stupid.. this shit's kept me from getting jobs for far too long -- then the music you make isn't going to ever sound better than amateur. sorry if that hurts. fact is, great music can't be taught.

[deadly_habit]

i wish i still remembered what i learned in my music electives from school
took them as time wasters instead of study hall as i didn't need credits, but taught me to play keys and read sheet music which i've forgotten. got bad grades since my demo pieces teacher hated like the doors or something contemporary but it didn't matter. i look at these course subjectively in the same way, same as those computer music and future music mastercalsses etc. good pointers but better when more general and not specific like your snare must hit 250hz like ours or you suck.