This lesson gives students practical music industry knowledge that will help them plan their careers. They’ll be taken through all aspects of the music industry, including record and publishing deals, management, music synchronisation, legal issues, copyright, music teaching, live music and business plans.

Students will develop their aural and theory skills in this lesson by learning to explore and identify musical components such as rhythm, melody, harmony, tonality, instrumental timbre and structures. This will enable them to acquire the critical listening skills required in the production environment and will enable them to communicate quickly and effectively in a variety of musical situations, opening up many employment opportunities throughout their career.

This lesson not only gives students the skills to critically listen to music, but also understand the personal, social and cultural conditioning that can inform our musical tastes. The lesson will give you chance to analyse the factors behind changes in personal responses to music over time identifying the key events that are likely to have influenced these changes.

The Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is essential in the production of contemporary music. It has enabled a producer to create and record music through a piece of software and is used in numerous applications from recording in a studio, writing an electronic track or producing for the moving image. This lesson provides students with the skills to be able to use the key concepts within a DAW such as MIDI programming, editing audio and MIDI, virtual instruments and automation and apply them to their own practice.

This lesson will look at the fundamental concepts behind a range of digital and analogue synthesis types such as subtractive, additive, wavetable, FM and more. Students will explore sound design skills, study signal flow, understand and apply basic FM theory and explore oscillators, filters and modifiers. With this foundation students can develop their skills in sound creation and manipulation and apply them to a range of applications.

This lesson explores the skills and techniques required to write, record and edit music and sound to a range of moving picture applications including adverts, TV documentaries and film.

This lesson provides students with a practical understanding of the fundamentals of sound recording and production centered on the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Alongside the Studio Recording Project, they’ll work towards producing a recording of an artist or band and will have the opportunity to apply project management, team working and marketing skills to the project.

This lesson allows students to plan, manage and deliver a contemporary music production portfolio. They’ll study aspects such as management skills, team roles, budgeting, digital audio editing and mastering techniques. Study of this supports the Studio Recording Techniques lesson.

The ability to carry out a mix has become increasingly important to the modern producer. Whether sending demos to collaborators, sending a final production to be mastered or delivering the audio for a moving image project, the ability to produce a professional sounding product has never been more important. In this unit, students will study mixing theory, the basics physics of sound, effects, EQ and dynamic processing in a DAW in order to create mixes for a range of genres. Students will learn how to plan and prepare a mix and utilise and understand automation, monitoring and metering in order to apply these techniques to their own work.

This unit is a chance to recap and review key areas of the curriculum, as well as receiving information relating to assessments, auditions and Masterclasses.