Music Technology Workshops
12th October 15
This month has been very busy in DLD’s Music Technology department. The ‘Ask the Professional’ series of workshops returned, aiming to create collaborations between our music technology students and industry professionals through workshop, masterclasses and talks.
So, it began with a visit from Sacha Taylor-Cox, Head of ‘Impressive PR’. Sacha explained how Public Relations companies work and their role within Marketing and Promotion of the music profession.
Sarah Campbell, Music Industry professional, popped in to introduce and launch an assignment for the BTEC Music Technology course. Sarah firstly shared her experience in the profession working for EMI and PPL as well as a commercial singer/songwriter before demonstrating, explaining and evaluating the various tasks within the BTEC assignment.
Michael Hyland from PRS for Music, came into the college and highlighted the importance of copyright, royalties and contract within various areas of the music industry and students were encouraged to be responsible contributors to PRS.
Composing music to a given brief is a task set for A2 Music technology students. Ideas, tips and advice on Sound Design and Composing music to a moving image, was further explored through the visit and workshop of Composer, Sound Designer and Educator Elizabeth Cackett.
Next we were all excited, anticipating the visit of Stevie Wonder’s manager and huge contributor to the music industry, Keith Harris OBE. Keith gave a very frank, forthright but hugely engaging and rewarding talk on the ins-and-outs of the music industry. Of course we couldn’t let Keith go without a few anecdotes and stories about the legend Stevie Wonder. Without doubt Keith left a very positive impression with our students on how to get into the business, stay there and be successful.
The series came to a conclusion in November/December with the visits of international Film Music Composer Barbara De Biasi who gave an insightful masterclass in film music composition to the A-level Music Technology students and Alpha Plus’ Head of Marketing Lilla Somogyi who delivered a short but outstanding presentation to the BTEC Music Technology students on Marketing and Promotion.
We would like to thank all of our guest speakers and contributors to the 2015/16 ‘Ask The Professional’ series and look forward to working with them again.
