The Complete Musician by David Kowal - Audio & Music Skills

Name: The Complete Musician by David Kowal - Audio & Music Skills
Rating: 4.7 (11 reviews)

Practical, real-world tools for music creation and audio production.

Created byDave Kowal

Last updated 3/2026

English

What you'll learn

Learn how to write, record and master your music with practical, easy-to-understand concepts.
Included is a monthly Zoom session for all students. Send me your questions, and I'll broadcast the answers!
Learn practical music theory.
Learn how to listen with a recording engineer’s ear.
Learn from a pro: how to record drums piano guitar (electric and acoustic) bass, horns, woodwinds, strings, percussion, and vocals
Practice skills to improve your playing and enhance your music goals.
Practice skills to improve your mixes.
Learn how to protect your music with copyright fundamentals.

Course content

6 sections • 53 lectures • 6h 4m total length

Introduction1:21
An introduction to my course, The Complete Musician.
My email:
completemusician@davidkowal.com

What you will learn.2:12
This is an introduction to the first section, Music Tools.
Using Notation. An explanation of notes, time signatures, key signatures.13:52
In this lecture, I show you the basics of music notation, beginning with the building blocks: half-steps, scales, notation and more. At the completion of this lecture, you will learn the fundamentals of music notation.
Notation homework. Do you know the basics?
Check your knowledge.
Lecture 4 Intervals and Chords8:57
Lecture 4 Quiz
Basic Chord Progressions6:34
This lecture will help you understand several basic chord progressions!
Test your chord progressions knowledge.
Identify Chord Progressions
How to build and use Complex Chords. Practice Accompaniment12:10
Continuing with what you learned in the previous lecture, basic chord progressions, this lecture expands your knowledge to include chord inversions and how we use basic chord structure to create complex chords. This adds to your music palette, giving you more of the tools you need to make your music come alive!
What is a complex chord?
Practicing Your instrument10:30
This lecture introduces you to a daily practice routine, structured to ground you in a consistent approach to practicing your instrument.
Improvisation is Composing in Real Time11:06
Improvisation opens you to be open to inspiration. This lecture teaches you how to begin the process of creating music in real time: how to improvise.
Applying practical theory to your music.4:46
This lecture focuses on applying music skills to create and produce your music, using real-world examples of commercial songs.
Fundamentals. Tempo and key, style choice, instrumental choices5:24
Finding the right vibe for your music. This lecture teaches a practical approach to "how to produce your song".
Copyright, Publishing and Performing Rigthts Organizations5:44
This lecture teaches you the basic of copyright and publishing your music.
Copyright questions.
Music Tools - Recap and review. A quick review of music creation.1:16

Audio Tools and A Brief History of Audio Recording1:32
This lecture outlines what you will learn on the audio tools section, including a short history of audio recording and production.
Your recording space. Using your home or apartment to make music!6:12
How to turn your home into a recording studio.
Recording Musical Instruments38:14
An extended lecture on recording fundamentals, with real-world examples of microphone placement, microphone technique and choices, and includes recording acoustic guitar, electric guitar, acoustic piano, and violin.
Recording Your Vocals10:57
A detailed lecture on how to get a good vocal recording.
Anatomy of a song6:56
A breakdown of a recording session, including planning and budgeting.
Critical listening4:25
Best practices in the art of critical listening.
Dynamics - compression, limiting, gating11:42
This lecture teaches you about two of the most basic types of dynamics: compression and limiting.
Equalization - tone control of sound13:59
Bass and treble? There's a lot more to it than that! You will learn about how to shape your sounds using a variety of tone control options.
Spatial - reverb, echo, delay14:50
This lecture will teach you how to add space and dimension to your sounds.
Mixing Your Music0:54
Using the 24 raw audio tracks from a commercial release, this course will guide you though all of the professional techniques of mixing your music.
Lecture 22 - Lesson One - Audio Signal Flow6:38
Describe basic signal flow and the audio console anatomy, including mic and line inputs, phantom power, pre fader vs post fader, pan, solo, and aux sends for effects.
Lecture 22 - Lesson Two - How to Use a Gate on Kick Drum1:45
Lecture 22 - Lesson Three - How to a Gate on Snare2:05
Lecture 22 - Lesson Four - EQ on Kick and Snare, How to Use a Gate on Overheads9:05
Lecture 22 - Lesson Five - How to Group and Bus Tracks1:02
Set up a group by routing selected tracks to an auxiliary bus, label the bus, and use the bus to control levels across multiple tracks for precise mixing.
Lesture 22 - Lesson Six - Detailed Overhead Editing1:15
Lecture 22 - Lesson Seven - Editing Toms10:52
Learn to edit toms by removing unwanted noises without gates, using expanded loop zones, fades, compression, and subtle reverb to create natural, easy-to-mix tom performances.
Lecture 22 - Lesson Eight - How to Use a Gatted Sidechain to Trigger Soiunds4:25
Lecture 22 - Lesson Nine - How to Replace/Double a Drum Track3:14
Lecture 22 - Lesson Ten - EQ and Compression on Bass Guitar3:56
Lecture 22 - Lesson Eleven - Group Percussion Tracks, Add Reverb to Snare3:22
Lecture 22 - Lesson Twelve - Seeting up the Stereo Bus for Mixing1:06
Practice critical listening with metering level controls to assess natural dynamic range and frequency response, fix overly even low-mid range, and adjust symbol and horn levels in the stereo bus.
Lecture 22 - Lesson Thirteen - Begin to Fine Tune the Mix11:46
Begin to fine tune the mix by adjusting drums, bass, percussion and horns, then add other instruments to bring the entire song closer to the desired sound.
Lecture 22 - Lesson Fourteen - Mixing Assignment14:40
Learn to mix the 24-track city of angels project with headroom for mastering, plugin use, and low-frequency roll-off. Save multiple mixes, rest your ears, and listen as you edit.
Editing Lecture 2311:52
This lecture will teach you the basic of audio editing using analog tape, and digital audio workstations, (DAW).
Lecture 24 Mastering24:50
This lecture outlines the best practices for mastering your music.
Lecture 25 Audio Tools - Recap and Review1:13
A review of the audio tools section.

Major Scales Keys D A0:20
Major Scales Keys E B0:20
Master major scales in keys e and b, building a focused foundation for understanding tonal relationships in music.
Chromatic Scales0:20
Major Scales Keys C G0:20
CM Resources Major Scales F Bb0:20
Explore CM Resources for major scales in F and Bb to develop technique and musical fluency across key signatures.
CM Resources Major Scales Eb Ab0:20
Explore CM resources for major scales in Eb and Ab, strengthening technique, theory understanding, and practical musicianship for the complete musician.
CM Resources Major Scales Db Gb0:20
Learn the major scales in Db and Gb using CM resources to strengthen your music skills.
CM Diatonic Chords0:20
CM Resources Chord Inversions0:20
Explore chord inversions using CM resources to enhance practical understanding of harmony in the Complete Musician course, applying audio and music skills to analyze and voice chords effectively.
CM Resources Audio Files Practice Jam Sessions0:20

Requirements

A love of music with a desire to know more! Some prior audio experience is helpful, but not neccesary! Access to a computer with music and audio software.

Description

Welcome to my online course, The Complete Musician!

Step by step guidance from your first note to your final mix!

My name is Dave Kowal and I have a professional career in music, recording, producing, and composing music.

I'll share my 50 years of professional music and audio production methods, with tips gained from real-world experience. The 53 lectures contain 6 hours of video content, audio downloads and pdf's.

Students from all over the world agree, this is a 5 star course that will teach you everything from:

* basic music theory

* how to use your own space to get professional results

* copyright basics

* using all the audio tools at your fingertips, EQ,

* compression, spatial effects

* mixing and mastering!

In addition to 6 hours of lectures, the course content also contains downloadable .zip files, with over 70 videos, and 30 audio files, including videos for practice, files to mix, music to improvise with and more, all found in the Resources section!

All of the subjects are taught with real-world experience and include every phase of music-making. You will learn practical knowledge of music theory basics, composition, and live recording. I will teach you all I've learned about mixing, mastering, and distributing. When you finish the successful completion of this course, you will have learned the skills that make you a Complete Musician!

My email is completemusician@davidkowal.com

Who this course is for:

Musicians
Songwriters
Music Educators
Music Producers
Sound mixers

The Complete Musician by David Kowal - Audio & Music Skills

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Intro to the Complete Musician Prsctical Music and Audio Skills1 lecture • 1min

Music Tools - what you will learn in this section.11 lectures • 1hr 23min

Audio Tools - what you will learn in this section.27 lectures • 3hr 43min

Combining Music and Audio Tools - What you will learn2 lectures • 44min

Resources, downloads, audio files, images, links10 lectures • 3min

PDF downloads and movie downloads2 lectures • 1min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: