Enroll in an upcoming Live Instruction course to unlock Membership+ benefits instantly! Keep these benefits throughout your course. Offer ends October 1.

Music Theory
Fall '26

Learn music theory for producers, from rhythm and harmony to songwriting you can hear in your own tracks.
Classes meet in Minneapolis weekly on Wednesdays @ 7pm CST for 12 weeks, starting October 21, 2026.
FORMAT

In-Person
Course

START DATE

Wednesday
10.21.26

DURATION

12 WEEKS
3 HRS / WEEK*

END DATE

Wednesday
01.20.27

PRICE

$499 / MONTH

START TIME

7PM CST

*Class lengths may be reduced to 2 hours for very small class sizes.

learn THE science BEHIND THE emotion.

By enrolling, you will master the wide-ranging and in-depth topic of music theory.  We'll be discussing rhythm, from foundational drum patterns to complex polyrhythms and time signatures. We'll teach you about scales and chords, and how we can use them to influence our harmonies and melodies to make catchy and infectious leads and powerful and moving chord progressions.  We'll even learn about songwriting, and how to implement all of this into our projects to write music that "makes sense" - i.e. we'll be writing good music that both understands the rules of music theory - and breaks it!
Create powerful pieces of music by understanding the rules of music, including:

  • Rhythm, tempo, time signature, polyrhythms, metering
  • Scales, chords, harmonies, melodies, chord progression, and performance techniques
  • Songwriting, song structure, hooks, verses, choruses

Meet your instructor.

MikeRat,

Michael Pendergast

Ableton Live | Sound Design | Mixing and Mastering

MikeRat has been with Slam Academy since 2013, and is now the lead in-person instructor; teaching classes from our flagship Ableton program all the way to Sound Design and Mixing and Mastering.  He's also a pillar of the local bass music scene, having played at The Armory, First Ave, and is a resident performer at Infrasound Music Festival.  He's an expert in weird, glitched-out, wompy bass, and has been heard on labels like Wormhole and Street Ritual.  Mike's approach to both music production and teaching is to lead with his heart, and he places an emphasis on community and camaraderie in the classroom and on the dancefloor.  You can catch him running the Ableton Live User group every month, as well as hosting workshops on community wellness within the music scene.  He's also a seasoned drummer, turntablist, and loves chatting with students about music theory.

get the lesson plan.