Tor Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen — better known as the Grammy Award-winning duo Stargate — are two of the most successful producers in modern music. Over the past two decades, they’ve written chart-topping hits for leading artists from Beyoncé to Coldplay and beyond. 

But before they made it big, Eriksen was rejected by a music school.

He found a way to succeed anyway. But that rejection left him and Hermansen wondering: How many other talented students lose their chance because they don’t make the traditional academic cut?

Too many, they realized. So, they built something different.

Mentorship, collaboration, and learning by doing

Hermansen and Eriksen know what it takes to make it at the highest level. It’s not about grades or listening to lectures, but about what artists can create. So, they started the Los Angeles Academy for Artists & Music Production (LAAMP), a school that prioritizes passion and talent for admission and flips the script on traditional learning. 

Here, students learn through mentorship and hands-on collaboration, building the skills they’ll actually use in the real world. Instead of requiring years of traditional education, learning is compressed into a nine-month program centered on actual music-making. 

It may sound simple, but this philosophy challenges traditional thinking about education in general, and it could change the future of work. While most traditional schools are costly, rigid, and disconnected from real-world experiences, LAAMP takes the opposite approach.

“My favorite TV show when I was a kid was ‘Fame,’” Hermansen said. “Debbie Allen said, ‘Right here is where you start paying in sweat.’ And that’s really what it takes to become good at something.” 

Eriksen agreed. “A lot of people are wired differently,” he said. “They can be amazing creatives or musicians or artists, but in some of those other programs, you have to be amazing academically in all subjects to even have a shot of getting in — which is not the way it should be.”

Rewriting the rules of education

When designing the academy’s curriculum, the duo asked a not-so-radical question: What if education reflected how work actually gets done? 

“We didn’t look at any other programs,” Hermansen said. “We just looked at what we wished we knew when we were starting out.” 

After hitting rewind on decades of success, they had their answer. 

“Make music every single day with people and learn from people who are actually doing it today,” Eriksen said. “Then 100% you are going to get better.” 

Each week, LAAMP students are split into teams of writers, producers, and artists, and given a singular task: to make the best song possible. On Monday of the following week, their Grammy-winning producers play it for the group and weigh in. 

“The real kicker is that they learn how to collaborate,” Hermansen said. “That’s the most valuable thing they learn that you can take into any field in life.”

Students produce at least one or two songs every week, leaving the program with 50–100 new songs. By comparison, students in a traditional performing arts program may submit just a few original works per semester.

“We wondered when we started LAAMP — like, is it going to be boring for them to spend 12 hours a day for nine months straight in a studio, writing songs?” Hermansen said. “And then we thought, ‘We’ve been doing this for 23 years, and we’re still not bored.’” 

A new model for educational pathways

In just nine months, LAAMP students are industry ready with a portfolio of studio-quality songs, a network of collaborators, and the confidence to thrive in a competitive industry. 

“One song can change your life,” Hermansen said. “So, if we can help someone get closer to that one song — maybe even help them create that one song — that’s a really powerful thing.”

Hermansen and Eriksen set out to help the next generation of artists, but their approach captures something far more universal — the need for more educational pathways that truly prepare people for meaningful work, no matter the field.

 “Learning by doing — that’s how you get better,” Eriksen said. “It’s doing it every single day.” 

Los Angeles Academy for Artists and Music Production (LAAMP) partners with Stand Together Music, which unites musicians and their teams with proven changemakers to co-create solutions to the biggest problems of our time.

Learn more about Stand Together’s efforts to transform the future of work and explore ways you can partner with us.