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“Music production is almost like creative writing: You can’t teach someone exactly how to do it. You can give overall guidelines, but you have to let students learn by experience. I teach the philosophy behind good producing and the aesthetics of production—how to balance art and commerce. I particularly enjoy talking about the history of recording, which is really the history of 20th-century music—just a blip in the whole history of music. Recordings, and changes in the way we record music, affect the way we listen to and play music."
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"The ongoing goals for the Music Production and Engineering Department are centered in three critical areas: curriculum, faculty, and facilities. Every topic, class, and assignment has been evaluated for its relevance, emphasis, timing, and balance. And with 12 studios operating 22 hours per day, seven days per week, it is critical to maintain a state-of-the-art technical infrastructure."
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"From the production side, it's easy to lose sight of that ultimate goal by getting 'lost in the toys.' Obviously when you're in school it's important to try out a lot of different techniques, and to get facile with the tools. But ultimately we want to make the technology disappear—to be in service of the process and the creative moment. We're trying to get out of the way, to be masters of the tools and not slaves to them.
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"Many of the technical tools and methods used today in the recording studio are quickly going to become obsolete, and it's important for the contemporary music production and engineering student to have an education that's going to allow them to not only change with the new technologies, but help invent them as well. I think it offers a student the opportunity to create careers in all segments of the audio industry."
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Prince Charles Alexander, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Music Production and Engineering Department"I want to create, in my classroom, an environment that closely mirrors my experience in the real world. I'm a former recording artist, a producer, an engineer. . . . I've managed, I've done tour support, I've done live sounds. . . . So I want to teach my students how to survive in the music business and put them in as many realistic situations as possible. If you're going to take advantage of this educational process, you need to investigate as many of those tangents as possible. You never know when one of them might be the one that opens the door.
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"A good producer needs perspective above all else. You need to be clear about what you've been hired for, what the artist's real goals are, what is possible and what is not within the confines of budget, ability, time, and personalities. And you need to be able to step back and know when to stop."
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"Recording music is taking part in a kind of alchemy—you're transforming intangible, cerebral ideas into something real, something physical. It's a sort of magic. And you're working with material that is personal, emotional. Appreciating that and being sensitive to it is one of the most important things we can teach. Studio work is social. You can't do it without the technical knowledge, but you can't do it well without fostering a good creative environment. That's something I really want to pass along, because it isn't something that books can really teach, but it's the kind of thing that gets you work or not; it's the kind of thing that gets a record made well or not."
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- B.M., Berklee College of Music
- Trumpeter
- Independent Engineer
- Former staff engineer at the Record Plant Studios, Hollywood, California
- Credits include Yes, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Guns N’ Roses, Bruce Springsteen, Y&T, Bob Seger, Cher, and Bob Malone
- Video game credits ranging from sound designer, chief audio engineer, sound engine architect, and director of tools and technology on more than 80 video game titles, including the God of War series; Uncharted 1 and 2; Resistance 1 and 2; MLB: The Show series; NBA: Shoot Out series; NFL: Gameday series; SOCOM series; Ratchet and Clank series; Jak and Daxter series; Sly Cooper series; Twisted Metal series; and Syphon Filter series
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"We try to broaden the students' experience as much as possible. The work they may do on an alternative record, or a country record, or a jazz record, may support them later on when they're doing urban pop, just for ideas. Some of the more creative guys out there have a pretty good musical base. They've worked in a lot of arenas. They know not only how to get good vocals out of people, but also what works for the song. This is what's going to separate them from the kid down the street with the laptop and the beatboxes, who's got his stuff all over the Internet."
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Jeanine Cowen, Vice President for Curriculum and Program Innovation, Academic Affairs
DEPARTMENT : Music Production and Engineering Department"My teaching style has always been one that encourages self-reflection and discovery. I like to push my students to be self-motivated. For me, it isn't about the grades they will receive, but rather the knowledge and skill set they can build on. Assignments always have the capacity to be completed to the level the student is capable of, and by witnessing other students' work, they can see different approaches to the same task. I'm never expecting to see students complete their assignments in exactly the same way as their peers."
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