Thread: To all you media/music technology people out there..

With my 'mission' to do new things now that I am in a new city, I am pondering on starting to study music and/or media technology, specializing in production.

Seeing as I have no experience whatsoever in the creative hardware or software (which luckily is not deterring the institution doing the training ), i was wondering if we have creative people with ideas and recommendations luring in the background.
I have already been directed towards the software reason as a good one to learn..

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I studied Music Technology at A-Level...

But I don't really understand your question/pondering, sorry!

Originally Posted by Carmina De Ville

i was wondering if we have creative people with ideas and recommendations luring in the background.

Ideas and recommendations for courses? Ways to learn? Coursework to produce?

About worthwhile technologies/programs to learn - ie things that are widely used. Nice as it would be to have some niche knowledge on something, I think it'd be better to know something that is widespread..

Cubase is pretty much a standard in many recording studios but is a steep learning curve and varies quite a lot between different itterations. For more video stuff I think final cut is common. With anything media it's probably worth looking at some web/graphics technologies too for distribution - FLASH, photoshop, illustrator are again all pretty standard. You can use dreamweaver if you must but you are probably better learning some HTML and either PHP or .NET

What do you want to do with it in the end? I think is the determinant. There's lots of music production software out there that can be self taught....once you have an understanding of what you want to do with it and what it's capable of, loads of knowledge about it is transferable.

How do you want to use what you learn?

I've been trained to record with sonifex, marantzs, nagras, mini-discs and I now work with a Zoom H4 (a 4 track hand-held recorder) and edit audio with Burli, Brian, Cool Edit Pro, Radioman, Cubase and some others. I've also had training with Avid editing for tv. But it's not so much the technical side that I found important as the practicalities of production.

EvilDrNeil is also right - more and more these days, employers are looking for 360 degree skills - so knowing not just about audio, but also visual and web-development is important. I am lagging behind on the third as things change so rapidly that most of the software I learn to program on is now obsolete - but I do have the transferable skills (and enthusiasm) which gets me by.

I think I'm a bit with Beatrix, I don't quite understand what you want to get out of this - can you explain a bit more?

Thanks for the replies.

What I am trying to get out of asking the question (which is vague, yes) is finding out which software packages people who use them have found good and comprehensive. Some are better than others, and it'd be good to hear opinions on which ones are not worth the effort.

I am more and more leaning into learning something that is an 'all-round' package, and not solely used on music - guess I lean towards media production as opposed to just music.
In the end, I do not have a direct or absolute 'goal' what I want the studies to lead to. I am interested in producing multimedia content for a website and working in a journalistic way, in a sense (and no, that probably makes no sense to anyone apart from me ).

If you want to work in a journalistic way see if you can do a bit of old fashioned print jounalism either as a section of the course or in something like a student paper. There are a lot of web journos around who are actually just bloggers / commentators rather than actual journos

I used to *prepares for losing face and embarrassment* run a semi-journalistic political website when I was a student (before going to the pub and being hungover took over my life). I kind of want to do that again, but be able to do all sorts of 'posh things' too, hence the looking into studying media production.
I'm under no illusions I'd ever make a living out of it - my view is that I'm not talented enough to be an artist (much as I like to draw etc.), young enough to work in advertising (which is what I'd love to do) or good enough writer to be an actual journalist . But I like to rant, and I will gladly do that, pay or no pay !
I just want to show off and to have another obscure and useless skill to add on my CV..

Originally Posted by Carmina De Ville

I used to *prepares for losing face and embarrassment* run a semi-journalistic political website when I was a student (before going to the pub and being hungover took over my life). I kind of want to do that again, but be able to do all sorts of 'posh things' too, hence the looking into studying media production.
I'm under no illusions I'd ever make a living out of it - my view is that I'm not talented enough to be an artist (much as I like to draw etc.), young enough to work in advertising (which is what I'd love to do) or good enough writer to be an actual journalist . But I like to rant, and I will gladly do that, pay or no pay !
I just want to show off and to have another obscure and useless skill to add on my CV..

Don't do yourself down - there are always plenty of people out there who will do that for you!!!

P.S. take a peek at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/ if you haven't seen it already

If you take a course, you'll probably find the software is prescribed. I was taught using Cubase for recording and Sibelius for making printable music scores. That was what the teachers knew, what the school could afford to license on their limited number of PCs and, therefore, what I learned to use!