Level 2 converts competence into a production system. Twelve sessions cover prompt architecture for structure over time, scoring to picture with video input, series consistency through audio reference, retiming musical change to land on your edit, energy arcs that sustain attention across several minutes, subtractive arrangement, stems in the DAW with honest expectations of the separation, the voiceover masking protocol, licensed foley and ambience through Maestro SFX, genre routing as professional strategy, cue library economics, and a complete pipeline run.
Session 8 takes apart the two standard fixes for music competing with a voice — pulling the bed down, and sidechain ducking — and teaches the correct approach: remove the instrument occupying 200 Hz to 2 kHz rather than attenuating everything. Because you can regenerate without it, you can solve the problem before it ever reaches the DAW. No library track allows that.
Session 2 covers video-to-music properly: upload after picture lock, treat the output as a first draft with correct timings, then correct the emotional interpretation in the editor. The model's read of pacing is reliable; its read of meaning is not. Knowing which is which turns an afternoon into twenty minutes.
Session 11 builds the naming convention, reuse register and minutes discipline that make perpetual non-exclusive licensing economically meaningful. In year one you buy cues. By year three you are mostly placing cues you already own — and your cost per placement has fallen accordingly.
The 12 sessions run in deliberate sequence: writing arc prompts with negative space, register, density and function; video-to-music scoring; audio reference for series consistency; retiming transitions to land slightly early on picture; the five-part energy shape; subtractive instrument work; stems in the DAW including where bass and drums bleed; the voiceover masking protocol; Maestro SFX at thirty-five seconds for ambience beds; genre routing as documented policy; the cue library, reuse register and minutes discipline; and a complete multi-cue pipeline run.
Every Session Challenge is structured so its output is deliverable work rather than a practice file. Students leave with a documented routing policy, a working cue library and register, a personal ambience library, and a complete multi-cue project delivered end to end.
Level 2 establishes repeatable production: picture-accurate scoring, professional voice-and-music balance, DAW integration, and a library whose cost per placement declines over time. You leave able to deliver multi-cue projects reliably against deadlines — which is the prerequisite for Level 3's licensing, pricing and client-positioning work.
This level assumes you completed Level 1 or can already deliver a licensed cue into finished content. It is deliberately hands-on and assumes you are working on real projects rather than exercises.
Level 2 follows the same Academy pricing standard used across all live ladders.
$299 one-time purchase with lifetime access.
Use the Pro Workshop Discount at checkout to reduce the price to $249.
Use the All Access Workshop Discount at checkout to reduce the price to $199.
Underscore is a subtractive craft. When a bed is not working, the right first move is almost always to take something out — thin the opening, drop the melodic lead, leave the space empty rather than filling it with something quieter. A trio under a narrator beats a full arrangement nearly every time, because you are not scoring a film, you are supporting a voice. Level 2 makes that a habit rather than a fact you have read.
