Introduction to Music Technology

Course objectives
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 and 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? 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