Learn About Music Production With Twitch Music Streams

The popular video casting service Twitch TV and its earlier incarnation Justin TV has allowed gamers to show off their skills to audiences for many years. Recently Twitch has been expanding the streaming content to include creative streams. Under the Creative category, casters have been live streaming painting, cooking, and even metal work. One of the other emerging types of creative streams has been music production.

There are a number of music artists, composers, and arrangers who have decided to use their Twitch channel to give their fans a behind-the-scenes look at how the music that they love is made. A lot can be learned by observing how a music producer writes, mixes, and arranges music, so streams like these can be valuable tools for other music creators or for fans who want to see the creative process. Today I’ll be highlighting some of the Twitch streams that you can tune into on a regular basis.

FamilyJules

Game music cover artist Jules “FamilyJules” Conroy is known on YouTube for his metal guitar covers. His more recent projects have been Top 10 lists of tunes voted for by the audience. Conroy gives his fans a behind-the-scenes stream of the upcoming game music covers that he’s working on. This usually ends up being the tracking work that he’s doing for the next Top 10 game music arrangement. While he doesn’t stream the entire production process, it’s a good glimpse at the process of recording the guitar and bass tracks for the covers. The streaming schedule is tentative at the moment, but you can follow and watch the Twitch stream here.

Ben Prunty

Ben Prunty is the composer for games including FTL, Gravity Ghost, and Star Crawlers. He’s also produced some solo albums like Fragments and the horror album Dark Window. In addition to gaming sessions on his channel on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Prunty streams a music production session every Saturday at 2pm PST. During the sessions, he frequently answers questions on music production and music theory. It’s a great stream to watch if you want to learn about using music tools and gain some insight on the creative process. If you want to watch his previous music making sessions, Prunty has uploaded them to YouTube for you to check out. You can follow the Twitch channel here.

Zircon

If you’re familiar with the game music remix scene, then chances are you’ve heard of Zircon, aka Andrew Aversa. In addition to his work at Overclocked ReMix and Impact Soundworks, Aversa hosts a Twitch channel where he creates remixes and EDM tracks at 4pm EST every Saturday. This is a great stream to watch, especially is you want to learn about using FL Studio, the primary audio workstation that Aversa uses for creating music. You can follow at watch Zircon’s streams on his main Twitch page. You can also view previous broadcasts on Zircon’s YouTube channel.

Jake Kaufman

Last, but certainly not least is Jake “Virt” Kaufman’s channel for Mint Potion. Mint Potion’s Twitch channel is far more than Jake’s streaming of creative sessions. Multiple hosts contribute a set of programs spread throughout the week, which serve to educate and entertain viewers. The casting schedule includes Rockstar Academy with Sam Lustig, who teaches music theory and writing techniques; ADD Drumming with Brian Burwell, who offers tips and lessons on percussion; and the Wednesday Power Block where you can watch members of the Mint Potion team work on creative projects (usually revolving around music). The Mint Potion channel offers a large variety of content, for anyone interested in getting more involved in creating music. You can check out the Mint Potion schedule on their main website and you can follow the Twitch stream here.

This is by no means a complete list of the music production streams out there. These are the main ones that I found within the game music community and I hope this trend of behind-the-scenes music production casts continues to grow. If you have any favorite music creation streams that you’d like to share, let us know in the comments below.