Find Your Sound - Online Course

Building a course from the ground up to help people discover their musical identity.

Client

Gravitas Creates

My ROLE

  • Instructional Designer
  • User Research
  • Content Creator (Video and Audio)
  • LMS Implementation

Objective

Create an online course that inspires musicians to express themselves and feel they aren’t alone in the creative process.

Timeline

April 2018- February 2019

Project Overview

Musicians and teachers can get stuck learning software, geeking out on sound design, and lose sight of what is essential —self-expression. After 10 years of teaching music online, I wanted to make a course that would guide people through the creative process, helping people to know WHY they make music, and how to express themselves fully. 
 
I was approached by Gravitas Creates, a multinational music label based out of Texas, about creating an online course for their community. I created the “Find Your Sound” course, from conception to launch. 
 
The course was a success, with a big impact on hundreds of musicians, helping them find new inspiration and creativity. 

Trailer from the completed online course:

The Opportunity

Many new music producers feel alone in the creative process. They have no idea what finishing a song looks like, and they get stuck on YouTube, watching videos on techniques. 

The music industry pushes new software, gear, and plugins as though they are the “fix” to help you write music. However, it’s not about the equipment; it’s about knowing who you are and what you want to express. 

GOOD MUSIC ≠ MORE GEAR

Our society has lost touch with genuine creativity and instead prints out copy after copy of the same watered-down ideas. 
 
After hours of discussion, research, and interviews, we decided the best way to help new musicians move past their creative blocks was to build an online course.

Discovery

To start building an online course, we…

 

  • Identify who our students are, and create personas to represent their needs
  • Clearly define the learning objectives
  • Find any knowledge gaps
  • Create an end-to-end learning experience with video, community discussion, and interactive activities

Initial Research

Before making the course, I conducted user interviews and competitive analysis to see what resources were missing for our community.

Competitive analysis

Another big strategy was engaging the community we already had through Gravitas Create. While developing the course, we constantly involved the community members in discovering what they wanted to learn. 

I also analyzed the client’s most viral posts to understand what content was most impactful. This gave us a wide range of topics and helped us discover the most important information to include in the course. 

Define

Once I had an idea of the scope of the course, I wanted to understand the different personas/types of people that would take the course. This would help me build an engaging class and fill in any knowledge gaps.  

 

 

Knowing more about the learners helped me develop clear learning objectives for the course, and create the Instructional Analysis needed for the next steps.

 

We did initial user testing with a moderated study of 10 users/learners, to gather feedback. With all the information gathered, we knew we were on to something, and continued with the online course development. 

Image of the instructional analysis with goals and associated skills

Course Design

With the user research in hand, it was time to build out the online course. This included:

 

  • Organizing the informational architecture of the course
  • Creating learner objectives for every module and lesson
  • Creating scripts and scheduling interviews with guest artists
  • Writing articles
  • Creating visual assets (such as graphics and videos)
  • Recording, editing and finalizing the production of video and audio
  • Making interactive activities and training materials
 
The first step was developing a syllabus. This would include an outline of the lessons, learner objectives, outcomes, and activities. 

Creation of the course syllabus

After a round of comments with users, I started to develop the video assets and course materials. There was over 2 hours of video content I recorded, and edited. Below is one example of the videos in the course:

I also created activities that learners could follow along to practice the skills they learned about. Through my years as an online educator, I have found activities to be a cornerstone of an engaging course.

I helped implement the course materials using the LMS, Kajabi. It was the perfect platform for the online community, and the group activities we were going to host for the course.

Deliverables:

  • 24 Video Lessons (over 8 hours)
  • 10 In-Depth Activities
  • Six Online Live Interactive Group Discussions

Usability Testing

With the course created, I wanted to test the design by doing a usability test. I had a sample of 10 musicians that fit our primary user profile, and had them go through the course. At the end of each section, I had a call with them, and took notes. 

I curated all the data together into a usability study.

Looking through the data I was able to find places that needed improvement to better enrich the course. 

Launch

When launching the course, I used the ‘Launch Formula’ by Jeff Walker. With the marketing team at Gravitas, I helped craft the pre-launch content. This was my first time implementing a launch with PLC, and it worked wonders. 

Using marketing techniques, social triggers, and answering objectives helped propel the course. 

Results

The course was a big success. Our first launch had over 50 attendees and got amazing feedback. We also held a second run later in 2020. The idea was to have this as an ongoing offering, but Gravitas as a company ran into other issues and needed to refocus. 

We started to relaunch in 2021, but tragedy struck and we have yet to rerun the course. 

I feel really proud of this course and hope to work with Gravitas to continue to run it in the future. Even if we don’t, I know we have touched the musicians that went through the course and have greatly inspired their music. 

What I Would Do Differently

This project allowed me to work with a well-established marketing company, and gave me social resources that helped develop the course. I loved having the iterated feedback, but it also slowed down the process. 

The marketing team was focusing on too many projects, and could not dedicate enough time to see this course grow as big as it could have. In the future, I would like to see a clear marketing plan develop in parallel with the course. 

I would have also liked to build a better online community for the course itself. Later, Gravitas created a discord that has been working great for this, and I would have liked to implement it as a course feature.