I'm now an Ableton Certified Trainer.

Hey there! I'm so excited to share that I am now an Ableton Certified Trainer. Let me tell you a bit about it.

I was lucky enough to be invited by the lovely folks at Ableton to go through the certification process at the end of March. It was a really awesome experience where I got to share my own Ableton knowledge and get some feedback on how I teach but, most importantly, I got to learn from some awesome educators who are also working in the Ableton ecosystem.

Becoming a certified trainer has been a goal of mine for years now and it feels really good having accomplished it.

It's also been a really powerful reminder of how important it is to keep putting myself out there and that's perhaps the biggest takeaway I'd like to share with you today.

Certification events, like the one that I attended, happened pretty regularly prior to the pandemic. The process was the same: Ableton would publicly list that an event was upcoming, anybody interested would apply (I've been told that applicants could sometimes reach 2000!), and a small group would be selected to take part in the certification event.

Ableton is now resuming certification events (the first one is open for applications at the time of me writing this!) but I was very privileged to be offered to take part in an invite-only certification event, and I believe that it's entirely thanks to the fact that I have been consistently sharing my work and process each week on my YouTube channel.

My YouTube channel mainly focuses on music production through the lens of my own work in Ableton Live and that has led to working with Ableton directly on two sponsored videos and now an invitation to become a Certified Trainer.

I'm pretty transparent about how YouTube can sometimes feel like a slog, but this has been a good reminder that any single large accomplishment is the outcome of many small actions. This is uniquely true in music where this industry doesn't have a nice, neat clear path.

This reminds me of something I have often told my students, rather ineloquently, which is that to have a music career, there are only two true things you have to do. First, don't be a dick. Second, always show up. Everything else is a variable outside of your control. But you can always control how you treat others and how reliable you are.

For me, showing up each week on YouTube has directly led to me achieving a major teaching goal.

What goals are you working towards and how are you showing up for them?

Til next time,

ZW