I’ve been meaning to do this for years.

The blog went dark a while back. I got swallowed up by courses, touring, building the 128s Multisample Maker app, and the general chaos of being a full-time producer/educator/accidental app developer. Social media ate whatever writing energy I had left, and honestly? Trying to say something meaningful in an Instagram caption is like trying to mix a track in mono on laptop speakers. You can do it but why would you.

Meanwhile I’ve been sitting on a mountain of stuff I want to write about and nowhere good to put it.

Why now

I was deep in rewrites on the Mastering Composition & Arrangement course (the heaviest of the five Producer Dojo courses, and the one that sent me down the most rabbit holes) and I kept stumbling on these wild stories from music history that wouldn’t fit into a slide deck. Happy accidents, broken gear, jokes that turned into number one hits, the weird ways breakthroughs actually happen when you look at the details instead of the legend. I wanted to write about all of it at length and social media is just not the place for that.

And then it hit me, something kind of embarrassing: I’ve been teaching production for twenty years and have never had a proper place to just write. I’ve done courses, workshops, panels at SAE and Berklee and NYU and the Ableton Educator Summit. My 128s-style oscillators come stock with Serum2 now (I’m in the manual, which still trips me out). I made music for Star Wars. I have strong opinions about EQ and I will share them whether you ask me to or not. But I never set up a blog where I could just go off about whatever I’m obsessing over that week without worrying about character counts or algorithms. Kind of ridiculous when you think about it!

What's on there

I’ve already been posting and I’ve been having way too much fun with it.

Qbert talks about staying a student forever when you’re already a legend (the man practices turntablism until he’s dripping sweat, and he’s been at it for decades). There’s a piece on Sia writing “Diamonds” in fourteen minutes and what that tells you about trusting your gut before your inner critic shows up to murder it. Production technique deep dives. Pieces about building the 128s Multisample Maker and what I’m learning along the way.

Going forward: articles, production tips, artist interviews, sample pack breakdowns, Dojo community features, ill.Gates music news, deep cuts from music history, and whatever else I feel like writing about on a given Tuesday.

Come read

Production can be lonely as hell. You’re in a room by yourself with a screen and headphones and your own inner critic, which (let’s be honest) is meaner to you than any YouTube commenter could ever be. I wanted something that brings some lightness and actual fun to the conversation around making music. No character limits. No engagement bait. Just writing about stuff I care about for people who give a damn.

New semester live cohorts kick off May 11 if you’ve been thinking about jumping into a course. But the blog is free and it’s there.

Go read something. Start wherever looks interesting.