Music Production FdA

You will begin your journey into the studio environment by developing your understanding of the fundamentals of recording. You will learn about large format consoles, signal flow, connections, microphone types, and DAWs to record audio.

You'll be able to apply these skills whether you're in a traditional studio or have a small home set up: get this right now, and it will set you up for all of your future studio work.

In this module, you'll discover the magic of recording various artists using different styles of recording such as multitracking and overdubbing, in session and in your own time, to form a portfolio of studio work.

Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) are the digital canvases you will need to navigate to put down, cultivate, and develop musical ideas throughout your career. In this module, you will learn and apply different DAW techniques to create and arrange music through a series of set tasks, thereby developing a skills portfolio that you can apply throughout your course and career. You will build upon these skills to support your song writing module, generate ideas, and understand their role in a wide range of applications.

You will explore contexts of working in the international world of sound and music and how you might establish a career by exploring the flow of money through the industry and relevant current and emerging trends. You'll assess your current skill set and discover what you need to do to improve your chances of success on your employable journey.

You'll choose work like briefs lasting at least 80 hours to enable you to experience working opportunities in a field of interest, then reflect on your learning to set you up for the rest of your course in an employable mind set. Your future starts now!

Composing music is like painting on a blank canvas, and depending on the genre there are certain rules to be aware of. This module will provide you with the guidelines that will form the foundation for your music to be functional with these forms, as well as allowing you to build in your own creativity and originality.

This module will teach you the fundamentals of music theory such as harmony, melody, accompaniment and arranging, enabling you to communicate emotions and feelings through your compositions. You'll demonstrate your understanding though portfolio tasks and explore a genre of interest and compose a representative piece as well as research the genres context in a short negotiated practical research submission.

In this module, you will explore the creative potential of various music technologies. You will exercise your creativity through music production, and learn a variety of techniques and technologies, such as sampling, synthesis, improvisation and composition in the DAW, hardware controllers, sound design, and remixing.

You will also gain a deeper contextual understanding of electronic music, through a global and ethical lens.

You will explore digital, analogue, and hybrid studio technologies, developing recording and processing techniques to take on a variety of productions over the module: this could be using traditional studio environments (on-site or external) or your own DIY production set ups.

You will collaborate with performers, artists, and other students to work on a wide base of genres, selecting a range of your productions for a portfolio that should be approaching commercial standards.

In this module, you'll work to client supplied briefs as well as your own self sourced material, engaging in technical and creative post production and mixing processes to create a portfolio of work. You'll critically compare your mixes with industry outputs from around the world and learn approaches to help you meet commercial benchmarks.

You'll cover techniques with compression, effects and automation with additional production skills such as vocal editing and production, drum production and other genre specific approaches of additional production through a range of projects.

During this module you will source and execute appropriate self-directed projects, working individually and collaboratively on creative work, allowing you to directly apply the research, knowledge and skills learnt throughout the programme in the context of the workplace. This module aims to develop your overall professionalism and provide you with the knowledge and resources to begin a career in the creative industries. The nature of creative industries is increasingly defined by freelance and self-employed models of work.

Consequently, individuals seeking work in industry need to appreciate the pressures of working on multiple projects to strict deadlines and the subsequent demands this place on time and resources. Similarly, an understanding of professional practice and the legal and economic imperatives in industry is important, as is effective communication, self-efficacy and autonomy.

This module aims to develop these skills and knowledge by challenging you to develop a range of self-directed projects along with analysis of the processes involved along the way.

This module focuses on exploring the exciting world of composing for media. Building on your compositional and DAW skills from year one, you will utilise them in a variety of real-world scenarios to create music for media use. These may include jingles, genre-based library music, and music for film and other media. You will examine and research these areas, gaining insight into how best to apply your current DAW knowledge with other tools and techniques and expand on that skillset by successfully completing example scenarios. Composing for media is a substantial part of today's industry and an area in which you should be well prepared to engage.

The history of music technology has informed where we are and where we might go next. In this module, you will be exposed to decades of key recordings, technologies, events, artists and the movers and shakers involved in shaping modern popular music as we know it.

You will choose your own specific area of interest in music technology and production and explore how it's impacted creativity and the development of the wider world of music within an essay, accompanied by practical assets to illustrate your understanding.

This module focusses on the creative use of music technology hardware, in the production of original work and recreation of key historical techniques. You will learn the particulars of hardware production techniques, investigating modular, patchable instruments, hardware sequencing and sampling devices, and drum machines.

We take a creative, experimental approach to creating and manipulating sounds, using a range of vintage, vintage-inspired, and cutting edge contemporary technology. The module also builds on the contextual research undertaken in year 1, as we pick apart in detail and recreate a piece of musical history, researching as we do so the people and techniques concerned.