i said a few months ago i would post up my honest and full feedback on my experience with Point Blank online music school to help give a unbiased report unlike the hundreds that the extremly well ran publicity machine at Point Blank does.Firstly i signed up to do a 3 course programme, ableton live production, edm course & mixing dance music (yet to start).
Now i maybe joined and didint have too and knew more than i thought but the hidden secrets and so called professional producer backings got me decided much against my real thoughts, i know sometimes things are all window dressings without and real stock, sadly that is what i would describe Point Blank.
So, i do the Ableton Live course, my assigned tutor was a really nice guy dont get me wrong and tried to answer most things that users put to him though towards the middle of the course it become more and more distant as other courses where starting the emphasis was put on that group and so on. The actual DVR on the Ableton course was reasonable at times and other times utterly short and pointless with one user mentioning that he had left the course with more questions than answers! and a couple of others giving up and losing patience with the programme altogether and some no doubt having similar feelings but darent speak out.
So the course notes, this is a joke, infact its a fucking disgrace!, a few i dunno 15 on screen pages taking up with massive pointless pictures in them to make up for the lack of content in the course, the actual videos where soo short and on average lasted 2 mins to 4 mins, and was just a replay of the manual, except the manual actually goes into more detail then the course without the big pictures too!. On one part of the course they sell this course with exclusive course materails etc, you dont get NOTHING! dont be fooled you will get not a dicky bird from these people, instead you get a link sending you to time/space where you get exclusive demo content of various loop packs which turns out anyone can do anyway! lol. Then we have the deadmau5 exclusive set, err maybe im missing something but drawing empty clips on ableton for where the instruments played is not exclusive and a little footnote saying if you wanna hear the track buy it, yeah thats really exclusive! i bet loads of people suddenly become better producers after that!. Then we have the mixing your track part, mixing been a obv deep subject its amazing PB managed to sum it up in a couple of pages with in all 10 sentences and again some pretty pictures with a massive picture of some 70s guy sitting in a studio the size of the isle of man, with taking a break, yeah! thanks again for that! if nothing esle you get access to some lovely pictures. Finally on the ableton course, the DVR feedback, if your lucky enough to have my tutor you will have a little bit of extra time on yr videos but still a very small amount, they sell it has well you have everyone esles videos to learn from too! yeah if you cant remember what you did 5 mins before that might be true, but if you have a attenion span that can go for longer than this, you will find the same advice repeated over and over. My impression of that course, maybe i knew more than i thought i did and it didint help and that i wasint as naive as others who have no experience, but the course is not worth the screen it shows on and for the money is actually nothing short of a legalized scam backed by failing musicians with failing record sales making there living out of aspiring musicians, thats what the industry has come too! imo.
Second course the trance course, exactly same as above! with exception the course materail is even less than the ableton course and you get exclusive access to lots of pretty pictures of ferry corsten and sander van doorn and oh a nightclub scene from cream which i recognised from google. The lecturer for this course who i wont name again for reasons, was about as exciting as a dose of the clap!, he couldnt sound less interested if he had tried! and more than that with 2 dvrs comig to a combination of 15 mins altogether, the chances of you coming away with anything other than a hole in your pockets is pretty much zero!. In one DVR the self professed record label owner and superstar producer took my tracks apart and eqied them all, this sounds better he says!, only problem was i had already eqied the sounds and he couldnt be assed to open the racks up to see this and didint wanna take the time too, because heaven forbid that would make it look like he actually was interested in this crap. Then came the masterclass chat sessions! lol, dont make me laugh, this is the chance for you to discuss topics surronding the current weeks course content, yeah right that would be nice if there was firstly any real course content and secondly if it didint take 5 mins for him to answer, by time the nice hellos and goodbyes are done and the little delays in answering its off you go and you then wonder where the last hour of your life went lol.
Now im sure some people will slate me for this and wouldnt surprise me if it gets taking off depending on how much influence PB has on net, which is considerable looking at it!, but this is a real review, im not been paid anything from these and im certainly not going to kiss some over hyped producers ass because they are in the click and released music on beatport, and i have one thing to say to the so called professional musicians who endorse this rubbish, shame on you, i lost respect for alot of people i thought where good producers.
So this is my review of courses i have done there and its up to you whether to believe me or not or make your own mind up, i dont care if you wanna lose over a grand like i did, thats up to you, my point is to offer a unbiased and personal experience of my time at PB online.
Thanks guys!
thanks for letting me know fellas 