Berklee Launches New Independent Recording and Production Major Students in the new major will learn how to produce professional-quality music anywhere using their own personal music production toolkit.
By
John Mirisola
March 24, 2022
A Berklee student records vocals in a campus practice room.
Image by Cristian Avila
Later this year, four decades after the launch of Berklees highly competitive music production and engineering (MP&E) major, the college will roll out a new major that vastly expands the number of students who will have access to a world-class training in the art of music production: independent recording and production.
Whereas enrollment in the MP&E major is capped due to limited studio availability on campus, the independent recording and production major will train students to produce professional-quality music anywhere using their own personal music production toolkit: a computer, a suite of production software and plugins, a four-preamp recording interface, a microphone package, and a pair of headphones.
Not only does this new major enable more Berklee students to study production and engineering, it also allows them to delve deep into a ubiquitous modern production modality thats built around a personal toolkit used outside of a traditional studio setting.
Most of this style of work is done in a nontraditional fashion-in a rehearsal space, in an apartment, or even on an airplane says Rob Jaczko, chair of the Music Production and Engineering Department, which administers this new major. Thats part of the training: How do you maximize the emotional and technical impact, based on the fact that youre not in a $2 million acoustically designed room with a $600,000 console?
In fact, the artistry of this approach comes in part from how the engineer and producer selects and makes use of those unconventional settings. I think students will be very creative in how and where they execute their projects.
We can do wholly professional projects, we can go out and win Grammys and be commercially competitive using a personal production toolkit, forgoing all of the infrastructure of the traditional recording studio.
- Rob Jaczko, MP&E Department Chair
Recording artists have always been improvising, using the tools they have available in the spaces at their disposal to make the best sounding recordings they can. Led Zeppelin, Elton John, the Stones-they all recorded in chateaus in France and mansions in England, says Jaczko. Remote recording and nonstandard recording has been around since the very beginning. More recently, think of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas producing her first album in Finneass bedroom, or Justin Biebers engineer Josh Gudwin mixing Despacito on an airplane.
The examples of producers and engineers making successful records outside of typical studios with only their own tools at their disposal are too numerous to list, but they all point to the guiding philosophy of this new major: We can do wholly professional projects, we can go out and win Grammys and be commercially competitive using a personal production toolkit, forgoing all of the infrastructure of the traditional recording studio, says Jaczko.
A New Major Decades in the Making Virtually as soon as Berklees Music Production and Engineering Department was founded in 1983, student demand for the major outstripped the studio resources on campus. As the college grew and added more recording studios, the MP&E program also grew; but with each expansion and each decade that passed, still there were fewer available spots in MP&E than there were students who wanted to study in the program. Since the program's inception, students wishing to enroll in the MP&E major have had to apply, and the current acceptance rate is around 30 percent.
Remote Learning Inspires New Production Approaches
When instruction shifted to remote learning, MP&E professor Enrique Gonzalez M ller taught his production students not to measure their capabilities by the price of their gear.
Meanwhile, as powerful laptops, high-quality portable recording interfaces, and advanced production software and plugins have become standard tools of the trade for many artists and producers, the musical possibilities open to anyone with a modest personal production toolkit have expanded vastly. In 2013, the department launched a minor in recording and production for musicians, which began teaching students to use these tools to produce their own music. The minor has been a huge success, says Jaczko, and an affirmation to us that a broader population at the college really wants access to these topics.
Then, in 2020, COVID-19 caused all Berklee classes to move to remote instruction, and the shift prompted a deeper consideration of how production and engineering could be taught at the college without the use of the traditional studio spaces. The pandemic was really the tipping point, says Jaczko. Some of the pivots that we had to make during the depths of COVID 2020 and into 2021, with no access to the campus, and relying on all of our students having a personal toolkit of their own to complete their work...shaped our thinking that weve carried into the design of [independent recording and production].
How to Produce Music Anywhere The coursework in the new independent recording and production major will expand on the content in the recording and production for musicians minor (and all the courses in the minor will count towards the major). The minor touches on these various topics of production, recording, and mixing, but theres only so much you can do in 10 credits, explains Dan Thompson, assistant chair of the Music Production and Engineering Department. So where the minor offers a course on recording and mixing techniques, for example, the major will offer three levels of mixing courses. It gives you the opportunity to get into m
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Berklee Launches New Independent Recording and Production Major Students in the new major will learn how to produce professional-quality music anywhere using their own personal music production toolkit.
