I am currently hoping to go to England next year. I have some money I can spend on university or any type of school so I want to study something with music.
Not music in a traditional sense. More along the lines of the future technology of music.
Does anyone know any good schools there? Anywhere near Bristol or London.
Also any advice is welcomed. Thank you
This may sound as an odd advice, but I know dubstepforum.com is filled with producers from Bristol and London who may give you pointers.
SAE, London : http://london.sae.edu/en-gb/home/
or
Salford Uni, Manchester : http://www.salford.ac.uk/
or
Liverpool (think this is the right one) : http://liverpool.sae.edu/en-gb/home/ (on link see it is SAE again so not what I was originally thinking of but may be worth considering. I’m sure there is another, very respected on in Liverpool.)
I believe Guildford is respected for Music but not so sure about the technology side of things. Think it is more classic music stuff.
Just reread the Bristol/London thing so guess first link is only one really of relevance. UWE definitely does something in Bristol but not sure how good/respected it is. Also City Of Westminster College in London is the home of the City and Guilds awards and used to do a few course http://www.cwc.ac.uk SAE is probably the only one that does shorter courses though.
there are a lot of good places to study music in the UK, many new courses have appeared in the last few years which are not classically orientated. look for ‘music technology’ courses or similar, for courses which are not focused around classical or traditional instrumental music, which do not require you to have formal music training for entry (usually a keen interest is all you need, though some background doesn’t hurt). the courses offered by different institutions are not the same, so you need to look at exactly what is offered and think about what you really want to do.
broadly speaking, music technology courses may be based more on the sound engineering side (e.g. recording bands/musicians, mixing the audio, perhaps with an electronics engineering component to the study), or on creative electronic/electroacoustic music composition (e.g. looking more at techniques in composing with digital audio and critical theory of aesthetics). many courses will cover multiple areas of music technology and allow you to specialise for a final project, but it pays to have a general idea of what the focus of the department is and what type of research they do there. if you want a course that is going to help you become a sound engineer for rock bands, don’t do a course which is primarily based around electroacoustic composition. if you want to programme breakbeats, find out whether people do that type of thing on the course you’re looking at or not. if you want to programme music software or build new electronic music instruments, does the course cover that or have enough of a computing element?
some places you may want to look at: york, goldsmiths, manchester, keele, demontford, huddersfield, leeds metropolitan, salford, manchester metropolitan (MMU), bristol uwe, staffordshire uni, durham, derby, edgehill, bournemouth. some of those do interesting world leading research in music technology. there are many others. liverpool institute for performing arts (lipa), founded by paul mccartney is good for sound engineering i believe (knew someone who went on to do sound for anthrax who went there).
i can’t recommend one specifically because it depends what your interests and goals are. finally, don’t expect a music degree to automatically land you an awesome job in the music industry, which is fiercely competitive. however, do expect to spend a few years doing something incredibly fun that might lead to many different things, some music related and some not. also, you don’t need a degree to make music, but it doesn’t hurt either.
Wow! Thanks everyone for all the info. I am always surprised at the amount of really good info I can get through the Renoise people. It will take me some some time to sort through all of it in detail but this is most def a great starting point.
thanks again!
Brighton / Bristol : http://www.bimm.co.uk/
Can’t comment on whether it’s good - I didn’t go to either.
@ genfu, just had a re-read of all the stuff that you wrote. your post really shines a lot on some questions that I was having. Most importantly being able to find an awesome job from just getting a degree. Although that would be cool I agree that it is unlikely… but not impossible of course. I am def open to having fun and learning something new and interesting.
Actually I have been a chef for the most part of my life and recently quit cooking to further my knowledge in music for many reasons but mostly to do something fun and interesting. Also it can only help my beat making too… Ultimately I want to make my company that incorporates music and food. Hopefully the school could help in that direction as well.
Thanks again!