NACTMUS - National Council of Tertiary Music Schools - Conference 2001

Futures in Music Technology Education

by Fred Cole

Sixteen years. That's how long it is since Atari released their ST series of computers with built in MIDI sockets. Sixteen years since electronic music escaped from the ivory towers of University 'music concrete' studios and started to proliferate into the bedrooms of young and old synthesiser enthusiasts. That's also how long we've all had to develop new teaching strategies in a field where the pace of change can often overtake our technical 'comfort zone'.

Unless each and every one of us keeps abreast of current developments by studying manuals & spec sheets, as well as reading magazines such as the excellent UK publication 'Computer Music', 'Electronic Musician' and 'Keyboard' from the US, or our very own 'Next Music' & 'Audio Technology', we will soon find ourselves struggling to keep abreast of the concepts and software that our keener students are working with on a day to day basis.

Is there really a place for face to face Music Technology Education in the curriculum of a University level Contemporary Music course?

We consistently relegate important core skills like aural training to computer programs such as Aurelia. Perhaps we should be concentrating on developing similar programs to teach sequencing fundamentals. These should be collaborations with graphic artists and multimedia specialists, creating elaborate animated style-based tutorials. They could then easily be offered online, freeing up teaching staff to attend to their real passion, which must surely be inspiring and encouraging students to create original music with professional production standards.

I suggest that the best way to facilitate this is to be consistently producing this type of creative output ourselves. It is a waste of time and resources to be teaching students computer keyboard shortcuts in this or that sequencing program. At university level students should be expected to research the use of appropriate software tools, and then spend the long hours necessary to become proficient in them.

Having said this, however, the practicalities of keeping a computer-based music production studio up and running, with multiple users, each at various levels of expertise, is challenging to say the least. Adequate and informed technical support is an essential ingredient for any music technology program. Students must be encouraged to develop their own computer composition facilities, as they become increasingly affordable.

From my viewpoint, TAFE courses would be the ideal setting for introductory music technology skilling. At University level we could then offer courses such as 'electronic music production aesthetics' and 'advanced audio collage techniques'. As an intellectual community, I think we should try to develop a language to describe the sounds and textures of electronic music, in the same way that visual artists use a highly developed vocabulary and syntax in their critical analyses of paintings and sculptures.

In my experience, students who end up taking a music technology component fall into 3 main categories.

The first group has generally had little computer experience, have always been suspicious of software-based music composition and production, and seem mostly to be guitarists with limited piano keyboard skills. Some of them continue to resist developing their computing expertise, completing the absolute minimum of work required to pass the unit. However, I have noticed that once they examine the benefits derived from instant aural feedback of their work, an increasingly large number of this group begin to embrace the technology, even to the extent of using it later on to produce substantial compositional realisations.

The second group have had limited computer experience, but are enthusiastic and open to the opportunities and experiences music technology can offer. They enjoy the sonic freedom the computer music studio can provide, and revel in the absolute dictatorial power that enables them to tell every musician what to play....... and when.

In the third group, individuals have considerable sonic manipulation expertise under their belt. They have often DJ-ed, they seem to have a crack of every software music program in existance on their computer at home, and they know their way around most of them.

DANGER! These are the students who will render your University music studio computer unusable for days on end, by just installing that one piece of new software, which they think they can't live without. On the other side of the coin, this is the group who will generally produce the most interesting and stimulating material.

In an ideal world, the obsession with software and sonic manipulation observed in this last group should be a prerequisite for admittance to study music technology at University level, in the same way that we demand a particular level of musicianship or AMEB certification in order to be admitted to an instrumental performance degree.

One of the quandaries of tertiary music technology pedagogy is developing a curriculum that can cater to all three of these groups, each of which has different needs and goals. What do we teach? Do we concentrate on software synthesis? Certainly, programs such as Native Instruments Reaktor offer undreamed of power and versatility when it comes to teaching analog and hybrid synthesis.

Students can patch together oscillators, filters, envelopes and modulators onscreen to their hearts content, and hear their interaction in real time. Programs such as these are crying out for someone to invest the time and energy to produce interactive educational synthesis training aids.

Propellerheads 'Reason' is another inexpensive all-in-one synthesis and audio workstation program, which could be used to develop curriculum material. If we choose such a software package for our curriculum developmental model, however, should we then stipulate that the student must purchase the software, in the same way that we require them to purchase a textbook?

To my knowledge, most tertiary music technology courses in Australia seem to have selected either Cubase VST or Logic Audio as their sequencer of choice, and Digidesign Pro-Tools for the more advanced composition and production students. Each of these programs can be used as a stand-alone compositional production tool, with virtual instruments and audio samples taking the place of conventional hardware synths, mixers and effects. Even mastering is now only a couple of plug-ins away.

The resulting audio file can be burned straight to CD. All we need, apart from a reasonably well speced PC, is a high quality audio interface to get the sound in to the computer, and a pair of high quality powered studio monitors. However, there is no getting away from the fact that only one person can be working on one computer at any one time. This is the case even if an elaborate high-speed network with many gigabytes of central storage is implemented.

So, of necessity, in the first year courses we end up with music labs full of entry-level machines, with ten or more students using headphones. This is not an ideal situation to inspire the computer-fearing composer to take the first steps to digital enlightenment.

In the second and third year of a course, access must be provided to more substantial music workstations, and when we equip these, I believe that the closer we can mimic real-world production techniques and philosophies the better the learning outcomes will be.

We should not neglect the collaborative, promotional and distribution aspects of these new technologies. New versions of Cubase and Logic contain inbuilt access to the Rocket Network, designed to allow collaborative composition over the Internet. MP3 distribution can reach a potential audience of millions, so we should definitely be teaching strategic site placement as a core component of career development.

Finally, what place should we give the offspring of the traditional computer synthesis programming languages? Should we teach composition using algorithmic software tools such as 'M' and the Random Music Machine, or even 'C-Sound'?

It's a brave new world in music technology, and, as teachers, we are skiing down a steep slope at full speed, just in front of an enormous avalanche.

2001 NACTMUS Conference