Introduction

A Proposed Curriculum Model

Institutional culture & recording industry culture are very different

Course structure may not be appropriate to quirky music industry culture

There is a gulf between sound production theory and practice

Industry wants studio-savvy practitioners who can demonstrate operational fluency

Studio owner/engineers - the very people who vilify lecturers for being 'academics' - are often themselves underqualified to deliver accurate underpinning knowledge and core skills to their trainee engineers

Bringing the cultures together is the challenge

Institutions which design and deliver courses often need to comply with external accreditation procedures. These can sometimes be a little rigid, often requiring adherence to generic course structure templates which may not be appropriate to the quirky music industry culture that is ultimately expected to embrace the graduates of these courses.

Worse, institutional lecturers are not always practitioners of the audio arts themselves, and may forget that there is a gulf of monumental proportions between sound production theory and practice.

The recording industry is often underwhelmed by the skills of audio course graduates, who are perceived, often incorrectly, as theoreticians with little or no hands-on real-world experience. The industry wants studio-savvy practitioners who can demonstrate operational fluency with equipment, techniques, music, and people.

As a result, potential employers may be cynical about externally-trained production personnel. As a result, they may prefer to employ non-graduates and provide in-house on-the- job training programs themselves. In their view, non-graduates can be moulded, by them, into real engineers; whereas audio school graduates must first be 'untaught' before they can learn real-life production skills.

Unfortunately, some studio owner/engineers - the very people who vilify audio school lecturers for being 'academics' are often themselves underqualified to deliver accurate underpinning knowledge and core skills to their trainee engineers. Although an intern has a right to employment mobility, without a solid skills and knowledge base their future progress in the industry may well be bumpy.

By now I've probably upset everyone - institutions and studio owners alike. If so, this was not my intention. Having worked extensively on both sides of the divide, I have seen both inadequacies in formal sound production training and the consequent hostility on the part of potential employers in studios. Perhaps it's time for a change.

Bringing the cultures together is a challenge that I feel can be partly met by an evolutionary change in the structure of music industry curricula.

The next few pages show the structural model I am proposing. It is a work in progress and is intended as a starting point for discussion, not as a flag to salute. If you are an audio education professional, or other stakeholder in this field, feel free to mail me with comments or suggestions.

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