Music Production & Engineering Core Curriculum

This course explores the skills and concepts fundamental to live sound reinforcement and audio recording. Students will be introduced to gain levels, I/O (inputs and outputs), cabling and monitoring, PA systems, basic microphone designs and application, sound reflection and room treatments, digital audio interfaces, DAWs, audio plugins, mixing, mastering, and various audio file formats.

This course is a lecture class, a music programming class, a historical survey and a critical listening lab. Throughout the year, students will discuss various genres of popular music, production concepts and technical skills central to the field of Music Production and Engineering. 

When mixing a song, mix engineers must take a lot of different elements into consideration. They must think of the entire process in terms of balance, organization, creativity and excitement. In this class, students learn different steps of the mixing process, including mix preparation and editing, setting levels, panning, adding effects such as reverb, delay, eq, compression, using automation, and master fader processing. Students also learn the basics of mastering.

What is MIDI? Who developed it, and why? How is it useful for production? Music Programming and Track Creation gives the student an historical as well as a functional background in MIDI protocol. In this course, students learn how to program and record MIDI information into their DAWs to create arrangements with synthesizers and virtual instruments. They also learn loop-based production as well as sample choice and placement. In addition, students learn the rudiments of subtractive, wavetable and FM synthesis.

In this class, students learn about the relationship between creativity and recording tools. They gain knowledge of microphone characteristics and learn to make informed decisions on microphone choice, usage and placement. They learn about signal flow through a recording console, characteristics of various microphone preamplifiers, the use of compressors, limiters, EQ and other processors. Students gain the knowledge they need to create tracks that fit their creative aesthetic, and to make recordings that enable them to communicate their musical ideas.

Production Lab is a weekly 1-hour private lesson. The curriculum is tailored to each individual student, and lessons move as fast or as slow as the student's progress allows.

At the end of the first year of Production Lab, the student will know how to import audio into a session, set up and operate the mobile recording rigs, set up for a studio recording session, explain how busses work, use a patch bay to make basic connections in the recording studio, edit audio for tightness, mix in Pro Tools, create a headphone matrix, use plugins to add reverb, delay and other effects to the mix, and mix preparation.
 

At the center of most contemporary commercial recorded music is a vocal performance. This course will explore the questions: How does a producer help an artist achieve a compelling and believable vocal performance? What production tools can a producer or engineer use to amplify the emotional impact of a vocal performance?

In this course, students will learn ensemble audio recording. They will learn the tonal characteristics of various microphones and mic preamps. They will also learn how to create usable headphone mixes, as well as how to setup and tear down various types of recording sessions. Through hands-on assignments, they will learn how to record ensembles of various sizes and instrumentation, from full bands to choirs to string and horn sections, in a variety of music genres. 

The Pro Tools Fundamentals Certification course introduces fundamental Pro Tools concepts and principles, covering everything an individual needs to know to complete a basic Pro Tools project, from initial setup to final mixdown.

Students also learn to build sessions that include multi-track recordings of live audio, MIDI sequences and virtual instruments. Hands-on exercises and projects introduce essential techniques for creating sessions, recording and importing audio and MIDI, editing session media, navigating sessions and arranging media on tracks, and using basic processing and mixing techniques to finalize a production. Included with the course material is a download of media files and Pro Tools sessions to accompany the exercises and projects in the text.
 

In this course, students will be responsible for the production, recording, overdubbing and mixing of two separate 3-4 song EPs for two different artists, completing one per semester, over the course of the school year. They will choose the artists, and each semester they will create a coherent, professional and emotionally impactful collection of recordings. This course is only open to multi-year MPE Majors.

Over the course of the year, students will create a 7-8 song LP recording. Students are responsible for finding an artist, helping them to create a compelling and unique artistic aesthetic, organizing the production schedule, contracting instrumentalists and vocalists, recording, overdubbing, mixing, mastering and uploading the finished product to a streaming service. At the end of the LP, students are in charge of organizing an LP release party. Students also finish Dante Level 1 Certification, and learn basic soldering skills.