Courses

In this course, students acquire the essential piano skills to self-accompany while singing. Students are encouraged to perform tunes from all genres for peer review, analyzing the most common voicings for each style and choosing what is genre-appropriate. Students evaluate key signatures to find which key works best for a given song, transposing and arranging a tune to highlight vocals, as well as adding intros, interludes, and codas. They also strategize about practicing and performing more difficult genres, such as r&b, which involve potentially complicated bass lines and rhythmic figures. Students examine tempos and how they effect a given song. Students also learn about stage performance and posture, practicing how to avoid looking at the keys; pedal use; optimum microphone position; and avoiding tension in the neck and shoulders or vocal strain during performance or practice.

An overview of the activities involved in managing a business, including marketing, accounting, finance, and the production of goods and services. The course focuses on the ability of the music business executive to analyze, plan, coordinate, and set objectives for these activities, through the presentation of business theory and problem solving.

Combines an examination of advanced legal topics relating to the music business with a workshop approach to the development of negotiating skills. Students will negotiate various agreements based on actual cases and work to settle disputes arising from the breaching and termination of agreements. Topics to be covered include record deals between artists and record companies, distribution deals between independent and major record companies, copublishing and administration deals, producers and production deals, touring and merchandising, trademark and copyright disputes, group breakups, and disputes between artists and managers. Intensive preparation and class participation by students is expected.

In this course, students from MIT, Berklee College of Music, and Harvard University work together on group projects developing virtual reality and new media experiences. The course examines spatial audio and visual experiences, human perception and the senses, haptics, and embodiment: the ways in which we come to experience ourselves and others through many forms of media. The class develops hands-on projects in lab settings and students learn how to tell stories interactively using 360-degree video and computer-generated environments. Students have access to state-of-the-art equipment at Berklee, MIT, and Harvard, and interact with visiting expert mentors.

This course is an introduction to the various disciplines and skills that make up audio post-production for visual media. Topics include: the history of motion picture audio; modern methods of synchronizing sound; the language of film and film production; on-location sound recording and mix treatments; basic dialog recording, editing, and mix; backgrounds, Foley, and sound effects; adding music to film. Students will work on short projects including an “industrial” film, a short dramatic clip, and a 60-second advertisement, bringing each to a professional level of completion.

This course explores techniques used for recording and reinforcing music on location. Topics include commonly encountered acoustical problems and an investigation of equipment and techniques used to overcome them. This class is a prerequisite for the hands-on Sound Reinforcement Lab (MP-325).

In this hands-on follow-up to MP-322, students practice setup and mixing of live ensembles and assist the audio staff at Berklee concerts and rehearsals in the Berklee Performance Center.

This course addresses recorded vocal performances and the technologies used to highlight and support them in modern record production and mixes. The course explores the sonic evolution of vocals as the focal point of modern recordings with a signature that has moved from simple mix placement, dynamics processing, and time based effects to advanced concepts in audio editing, synthetic processing, automatic and graphic pitch correction, time compression, time expansion, flex, and elastic audio. Through analysis and hands-on processing of selected projects, the student will gain an understanding of the many choices available to modern record producers as they record and mix with a modern tool set that includes the vintage Talk Box, the Vocoder, Auto Tune, Melodyne, Elastic Audio, Flex Time, Vocalign, tempo based editing, and a host of other file modification protocols that are readily available on most digital audio workstations.

This course provides a survey of immersive audio and related technologies, as well as hands-on techniques to developing and integrating audio assets for immersive environments such as virtual reality experiences, games, and 360 videos. Students gain a fundamental understanding of capturing and designing sound environments using Ambisonic recording techniques, and sound design techniques for 360 sound localization of traditional audio assets. Projects are designed around the use of Ambisonic microphones, VR headsets, and a Dolby Atmos speaker system.

This hybrid production/engineering course is a general overview of audio post-production. It comprises a semester-long project for which students create and finalize the complete soundtrack for an existing film clip. Topics covered include: dialogue replacement; environmental or background sound; sound effects design and editing; Foley; content creation and mixing in surround formats; synchronization; score (music) production; digital asset management; and other technical and aesthetic subjects. Students work together in teams, mirroring the collaborative nature of post-production audio in the real-world professional environment. In-class lectures and demonstrations focus on the practical challenges of completing the project, coaching of projects underway, and operation of the dub stage and associated systems. This course requires extensive out-of-class project work and studio time.

This course provides students with instruction in the techniques, tools, and workflow of the modern dialogue and music editor, ADR mixer, and dialogue mixer. Topics include ADR (automated dialogue replacement), clean-up and restoration of dialogue audio, advanced dialogue editing techniques, dealing with "problem" audio, organization of sound elements and projects in a professional DAW, and the management and preparation of complex, optimized, and ready dialogue tracks in a professional audio post-production environment. Students will undertake an in-depth exploration of the creative and technical challenges of setting music to picture editorially, including preparing a 'temp' score from existing score recordings, adapting to changing picture, and managing the flow of creative information between the creative team and the music team on feature films and TV productions.

This course gives students the opportunity to explore the collection, design, creation, editing, and mixing of sound effects for audio/visual media. Topics include use of sound libraries, field recording, Foley techniques, sound design using professional software tools, application of perspective and “world-izing” to sound elements, advanced sound effects editing techniques, organization of sound elements and projects in a professional DAW, and the aggregation, manipulation, blending, and synthesis of sound elements for sound design.