Back in the Room: Ableton Intensives in Barcelona and Mallorca

In short: an Ableton intensive is one or more full days of one to one teaching in your own studio, on your own gear. Here's what that looked like in Barcelona and in Mallorca, and how to book one.

Last month I spent five days in a garage studio in Mallorca with a Push 3, a pair of monitors and a student who'd flown me out to work with him. By Friday afternoon we'd made five tracks.

A year before that, I spent three days outside Barcelona wiring a mate's 909, 303 clone and the rest of his hardware into Ableton, so he could switch everything on and start jamming.

Two trips, two very different weeks, and the same conclusion: some things are better done in the room. So I'm now offering in-person Ableton intensives properly. I come to you, and we work in your studio, on your gear.

Why I went online in the first place

For years I taught from a studio, first in Manchester and then in Berlin. By 2023, about 95% of my students were online anyway, and I was spending hours crossing Berlin to reach a studio for the few who weren't. So I went fully online.

For weekly lessons, online works brilliantly. You share your screen, your audio comes straight from your computer so I hear exactly what you hear, and every session is recorded. Most of my students will never need anything else.

But some people want something a video call can't give them: full days, in their own studio, on their own equipment.

Barcelona, November 2025: getting the hardware talking

Dave is a mate from Manchester. We know each other from the techno scene there, going back to 2008, and he now lives just outside Barcelona. He's been learning production with me online since 2024, and over that time he's built up a lot of hardware: a 909, a 303 clone, a Push 2, MIDI controllers and a few other synths. For a techno head, a 909 and a 303 is about as classic a pairing as it gets.

The problem with a studio full of hardware is that it can turn into a room full of cables. Every time you want to make music, you spend the first hour working out what's plugged into what. You can talk someone through some of that over Zoom, but you can't trace a cable or move a channel on their desk through a screen.

So we spent three days on it:

• Every synth and drum machine into Ableton, through his mixing desk, so each one comes in on its own channel, ready to record.
• A techno template built around his setup. He turns everything on, opens one Ableton set, and he's jamming straight away. No routing, no setup, no lost hour.
• Macros and devices mapped to his MIDI controllers, so the things he wants to play with are under his hands, not behind the mouse.

And then the best bit: jamming. Once the setup disappears, the music starts.

Dave wrote this a year before Barcelona, about the online lessons that got him there:

"Jack is a great teacher and always flexible to my hectic working hours… This course has set me on a path to achieve my dreams and I cannot recommend it enough!"

Dave, December 2024

Mallorca, October 2026: five tracks in five days

Henxy started lessons with me online in July, and he's now halfway through my Masterclass. Over the summer we'd gone from the very basics (MIDI, Simpler, Drum Racks, groove and velocity) to him building loops from scratch while I watched and gave feedback.

Then he offered to fly me out to Mallorca for a week, and I said yes.

Because the groundwork was done online, there was no getting-to-know-you stage. I already knew his goals, how he likes to work and the music he loves, so we started on Monday morning at full speed. That's the part I'd underline for anyone thinking about an intensive: it works best on top of online lessons, not instead of them.

His studio is in his garage: a Push 3, an Akai MIDImix, his monitors, and Pioneer DJ gear.

The plan was his. Building on what we'd done online, we used the week to push through full tracks, start to finish, from beat making to mixdown. Monday to Friday, we started a new track each morning and had it done by 4pm: tech house on Monday, organic house on Tuesday, tech house again on Wednesday and Thursday, and house on Friday.

There wasn't one big breakthrough. There were loads of small ones, all week:

• Jamming on his own gear. Playing ideas into the Push instead of clicking them in with a mouse, until it felt like an instrument rather than a controller.
• Mixing down on his own monitors, in his own room, rather than guessing on headphones.
• Doing the full circuit again and again. Watching a track go from nothing in the morning to a full arrangement by mid-afternoon, then doing it again the next day, and the day after that. Five times in a row builds a kind of confidence that one lesson a week can't.

We also spent some time on the decks. If you DJ, how a track plays out in a mix is half the point of making it.

The listening test

Some of the tracks got the full listening test: first the car, then the big speakers in the living room. It's the oldest trick there is. Studio monitors and headphones only tell you part of the story. The car tells you whether the bass holds up, and a big system tells you whether the low end is under control.

What I could only hear in the room

Henxy's garage is a big space, and big rooms do strange things to bass. Sitting in his listening position, I could hear what the room was doing to the low end, and no amount of screen sharing would have shown me that. We'd talked about room treatment in an online lesson back in September, but standing in the actual room is a different conversation. He's come away with a plan: treat the room first, and possibly add a sub, because of the size of the space.

"He has taken me from being a complete beginner to actually producing my own tracks in a surprisingly short amount of time. We've worked together both online and in person, and both have been fantastic experiences. He's also been incredibly helpful with my studio setup, hardware, Push 3, and various MIDI controllers."

Henxy, October 2026

Next we're back online. The first lessons will recap the week, then we'll go deeper into each part of production, starting with synthesis.

Here's the whole week in 43 seconds:

You can hear more of Henxy's music on SoundCloud.

So, what is an Ableton intensive?

It's one or more full days of one-to-one teaching, in your studio, on your equipment. I come to you. Every intensive is built around you: what you make, what gear you've got and where you're stuck. There's no fixed syllabus. Barcelona was mostly about setup and jamming, and Mallorca was mostly about finishing tracks. Yours will look like neither, and that's the point.

Some of the things we can work on:

• Your hardware, properly: synths, drum machines, a mixing desk, MIDI controllers, or the Ableton Push, all set up around the way you work.
• Your studio: speaker placement, your listening position and routing, so it's ready when an idea hits.
• Your room: what it's doing to your bass, and where treatment should go before you spend money on it.
• Your music: finishing tracks, mixing down on your own monitors, or pulling the best ideas out of that folder of unfinished loops.

You don't have to be a current student. But if you are, or you take a few online lessons first, we can skip the getting-to-know-you stage and use every hour of the day.

Where and when

I'm based in Lisbon, so a single day here works with no travel costs. Elsewhere in Portugal and in the UK it's a minimum of two days, and three days anywhere else, with travel and accommodation quoted as one all-in figure. The Ableton Live Intensive page has the full details and example prices.

I've got another Barcelona trip in the works, and my next free dates for new intensives are in the new year. If you'd like one of your own, book a free call and we'll work out whether an intensive, or regular online Ableton lessons, suit you better.

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