Course Details
One outstanding aspect of this course is that the lecturing staff includes Grammy Award winning producer and arranger Pip Williams (Nightwish, Status Quo, Moody Blues), producer, remixer and 5.1 mixer Steve D'Agostino (Depeche Mode, Heaven 17, John Foxx), producer, composer and engineer Paul Borg (KLF, Urban Species, Mory Kante, Etran Finatawa), producer, singer, songwriter and remixer Katia Isakoff (ADD N To X, Barry Adamson, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Velasonic) and composer, producer and performer Larry Whelan (Natacha Atlas, Bollywood Brass Band, Transglobal Underground). Students work in studios of professional specification - digital and analogue consoles with access to 5.1 monitoring and ProTools HD systems in addition to other, non-linear, platforms and digital and analogue tape systems.
Students will study the roles and history of the record producer in the music industry, the changing business models of record production, the historical development and geographical spread of recording technology and its affect on the sound of recorded music. There will also be considerable focus on the musicology of record production: the psychology and psychoacoustics of recorded sound, the way that technology affects performance practice and vice versa, how the changing methods of training, business structure and communication impact on music making in the studio and how musical traditions and audience expectations create norms of sound.
On the practical side, students will engage in practice designed to illuminate the whole range of the production process whilst also understanding the need for an overview: to combine a creative vision of the whole project with the practical management of the technical and artistic process. This will involve pre-production, financial negotiation and management, arranging, performance direction, track laying, session planning, editing, mixing and post-production.
List of Modules:The Producer’s Role:
The history, the business of record production, project management, negotiating between the commercial and the creative aspirations of the participants, developing a creative ‘vision’.
Capturing Sounds:
The recording process, studio selection, microphone techniques, monitoring techniques, the ‘creative abuse’ of technology, the theory of staging, psychoacoustics and sound capture, re-recording – echo chambers, amplifiers etc.
Manipulating Sounds:
Editing and manipulating a performance, the psychoacoustics of sampling, groove and repetition, combining programmed and performed events, theory and practice of dynamic processing, EQ and filtering, time domain effects, pitch domain effects and timbral / spectral effects.
The Development of Audio Technology:
The history and ethnography of recording technology, the digital / analogue debate, the effect of training and practice, language and communication in the studio, ergonomics – how has the development of technology and software design influenced creative practice?
Capturing Performances:
Pre-production, arranging and rehearsing, the environment and coaxing a performance, constructing a recorded performance, the negotiation between performance practice and recording practice, critical evaluation of performance.
Combining Sounds:
Mixing – performance and automation, monitoring, listening and hearing, more on the theory of staging, the ‘sound’ of musical styles, traditions and audience expectations, perceived authenticity, post-production – mastering, edits, remixing etc.
Dissertation:
An extended essay dealing with a research project on a subject selected through discussion and negotiation with your superviser