Is Point Blank Music School Worth It?

In June 2021 I completed a 12-week mixing (audio, not DJ-ing) course with Point Blank, and it was a good experience. I initially decided to take the course because for months I felt like I had reached a plateau in my skills, and I wanted to improve. We should always be striving to improve our skills, and we don't know what we don't know. I felt like my mixing skills are where I needed the most improvement.

Overall, the course has helped me in a few ways:

• Taking a Point Blank course has boosted my confidence, because I received a lot of great feedback from my instructor; that feedback helped me to see that I was already doing a lot of things "right".

• I'm much more aware now of techniques that can be used to help mixes sound better, and I've started to look at the techniques I was already using in a new way.

• Taking a class gave me a structured environment for learning.

• I have a much better idea of concepts I'd like to study in more depth on my own. I have a plan to study a different mixing topic each month (compression, reverb, delay).

I'd say that the most valuable part of the course was the instructor feedback. It was really cool that I could have someone outside of my current sphere of influence —and whose full-time job is mixing— listen to my tracks and give me tips on what I could do to improve the mix.

Other Lessons Learned

• One thing I wasn't prepared for was the actual amount of time that I would need to spend to make the most out of the class. I had other commitments and deadlines that I had made prior to taking the course, so I wasn't able to devote the 10-12 hours per week that I should have. 12 weeks goes by really fast!

• Most of the people attending the course didn't seem too interested in networking, so if that's something important to you, I wouldn't necessarily expect to get that from every course. But the class member dynamic of each course might be different.

• The final project instructions were given at the beginning of the course, and I should have been working on my mix throughout the duration of the course rather than waiting on until the last minute to complete it.

Final thought: Point Blank is worth it if you have the budget. It helps provide a clear path for learning more deeply about music production compared with searching for random video topics.