One Day Music Tech Crash Course

The course is aimed at complete beginners (pre and post purchase of a music production setup) and those with a limited knowledge of music production already. It will provide an overview of how to setup up and use a simple music production environment, and explain the basics of the music production process from recording to producing a final CD master.

The course forms part 1 of Alchemea’s series of short music production modules. Parts 2 - 4 are intensive 2 day courses covering recording, mixing and mastering in greater depth.

STRUCTURE & CONTENT:

Session 1: 10.00am - 11.45am "Introduction and Setup"

· Introduction to music technology and production: Course objectives. Stages of production and what you can achieve: composition, performing, recording, editing, programming, mixing, mastering.
· Tools of the trade: What will you need need? Microphone, audio interface, computer, midi interface, midi input device, external sound modules/keyboards, music production software, monitoring, environment. Configuring a simple setup.
· Optimising your computer for music: mac vs pc, desktop vs laptop, CPU and RAM, USB and Firewire, DSP cards (PCI and PCIe), drivers, hard drives, partitions, archiving.
· Music Production Software: What are the options? Protools, Logic, Cubase, Reason, Ableton Live, Garageband.

Session 2: 12.00pm - 1.45pm "Theory of sound and basic recording, editing"

· Theory of sound: Basic concepts. What is sound? How we hear. Frequency and amplitude. Stereo.
· Digital Audio Explained: Bit depth and sample rate. AD DA converters.
· Microphones: Introduction to microphone types and their applications, connections, preamps, DIs and gain structure.
· Simple recording techniques: Monitoring - headphones and latency. Click track, count off, punching in and out, takes, cycle recording.
· Editing your recording: Cutting, pasting, moving, compiling, crossfades.

Session 3: 2.30pm – 4.15pm "MIDI, signal flow and mixing techniques"

· MIDI: What is MIDI? Connections, external sound modules and keyboards. MIDI in the virtual environment, software synths and virtual instruments.
· Mixing desks and signal flow: Basic concepts: Channel, insert, send, panner, fader, aux/bus, output. Virtual mixing environments vs hardware mixing environments (analogue and digital). Control surfaces.
· Mixing techniques 1: Audio processors - dynamics and equalisation.

Session 4: 4.30pm – 6.00pm "Mixing (cont.), mastering and creating a master CD"

· Mixing Techniques 2: Effects, reverb, delay, modulation effects and sound enhancers.
· Bouncing down: Making a stereo master.
· Mastering: Why is it necessary? How can you do it?
· Burning an audio CD and making MP3s.
· Backing up your work

PRICE:

£180 (course notes included)

COURSE DATES: (10am to 6pm) We restrict class size to 8 students.

Saturday 4 April 2009
Saturday 18 July 2009
Saturday 10 October 2009

TO ENROL

Please complete our short course application form and return to our Registrar with a deposit of £100. The balance of the fee is due 2 weeks before the course start date.

Testimonial - Keith Simmonds

This is just a quick email to say a huge thank you for the excellent Music Tech Crash Course that I attended on Sat. 11 Oct., led by the tutor named Jonathon. In my opinion, the course did exactly what it said on the tin (as they say!). The course has inspired me to take my sound recording further and in time take some more training. What was really refreshing too, was that diversity of students, from a wide variety of backgrounds, but all coming together to share a passion for furthering their knowledge of music and sound production. This created an informal but creative atmosphere for learning.