AS Music Technology

AS Music Technology

"Its all about being creative"

Course Aims

The course will focus on highlighting the importance of nurturing creativity and
encouraging natural spontaneity by utilising and exploiting the endless
capabilities of technology within the realms of music making. By approaching
this through practical "hands-on" exercises, participants will appreciate and form an awareness of how technology has influenced the continued development of popular music throughout the past century.

Creativity through analysis forms a crucial part of this process as students will
replicate certain iconoclastical recordings of specific periods and genres. From
the wax roll through to the processor, each major period will be musically
"dissected" and recreated using the tools of the moment.

11.00 - 12.30 From the Disc to the Tape

• Brief history of the drumkit
• Analyse specific excerpts
• Introduction of early microphones, with examples
• Introduce the gramophone/cutter
• Mechanical or electric?
• Plan and execute/evaluate our recording
• Brief history of the guitar
• Analyse specific excerpts
• Welcome to the world of tape
• Introduce the studio tape recorder
• Plan our session.

12.30 - 1.30 Lunch

1.30 - 2.45 Mono to Multitrack

• Execute and evaluate our tape recording
• The LP and Single
• Brief history of keyboards/early synths
• The Talk Box/Vocoder
• Expanding our tracks
• Introduction to the multitrack recorder
• The studio engineer
• Microphone development
• Analyse specific excerpts
• Plan our session
• Execute and evaluate our recording.

2.45 - 3:00 Coffee and cakes

3.00 - 4.00 Computers on the Horizon!

• Multitracks get big!
• Early MIDI systems
• The first hardware based digital recording systems
• The birth of software systems
• Introduction to the first computer based recording DAW
• The development of processors and the rise in Mac/PC popularity
• Software gets serious!
• Analyse specific excerpts
• Plan our final session
• Execute and evaluate our recording.

4.00 - 4.30 Conclusion and Questions

• The influence of technology on the development of music, we've experienced the past, so what of the future?
• Where does technology go from here?
• Is music made or manufactured?