ADVANCED Program

ADVANCED students work with our most select bands. The sessions run longer than in the CORE Program, and teams see song projects through from start to finish. The teaching style is different too. Our instructors sometimes refrain from talking in technical terms, and instead approach the sessions like a non-engineering producer. This emulates the real-world scenario where engineers have to interpret the desires of a non-technical creative partner. For some session work, students take the lead on all production decisions, with the instructor stepping in only if there’s a major problem.

After tracks are recorded, but before final mixing, there are crucial production steps that can make a huge difference. Some are simply a “clean-up” of the tracks that make the downstream workflow easier to manage and pass along. Other pre-mixing production processes can be far more radical - taking those recorded tracks and twisting them into alternate versions that can give a song its defining signature.

Having raised the bar during recording and applying any subsequent production processing, the tracks are tighter and more polished for mixing. For some of these mixing sessions, our instructors steer the process in the role of heavily involved producer. And for other mixes, instructors pull back to give students all the responsibility for outcome.

Building on top of the experience in the CORE Program, ADVANCED students deepen their skill in preparing mixed material for delivery to various distribution paths. iZotope’s Ozone software is the primary tool used for these studio activities.

Students create a music bed to compliment and enhance the emotional impact of a promo trailer for a video game in this extensive, multi-part project. It features a deep emphasis on using virtual instruments and MIDI performance loops. Students also gain skills in moving tracks between the DAW environments of Logic Pro X and Pro Tools.

These classes build upon the project experience of the CORE Program. The ADVANCED sound-for-picture project is much more complex and involves many more sound elements needed for an extended movie scene. Mixing the audio in 5.1 surround is another distinction of this advanced project.

In the CORE Program, student music projects lean towards a “band” approach to song creation. In the ADVANCED Program, student music projects utilize more MIDI production technologies that can supplement the “band” approach.

Students gain experience in proper system hookup and cable management. Once it’s all connected, there are initial settings of hardware and software needed to get it all operating smoothly.

Failure points are created in audio systems for students to find and fix. Coached to use logical flowcharts and the process of elimination, students get more skilled and faster at uncovering these problems.

The interaction of audio monitors with room dimensions, surface treatments and corrective signal processing is measured and optimized using reference microphones and analysis software.