Diploma in Sound and Music Technology

duracellPlus

Hi All

I was looking at this course in Griffth College Dublin:

http://www.gcd.ie/index.jsp?1nID=108&2nID=124&nID=221&aID=270

Does this course look good?

And if not could someone recommend another college that does a better course?

Cheers

cornbb

What do you hope to get out of it? Thats an important question - there are tons of music courses out there all aimed at preparing you for different careers. Do you want to be a recording engineer? A producer? A DJ? A musician? An electronic music composer?

duracellPlus

Hi

Yes sorry i should have said that orginally. I play guitar and would love to have some full/part time career in that but also i would love to be involved in the sound/record engineering field aswell.

Cheers

cornbb

Cool, well by looking at the syllabus I'd say it looks fairly suitable for what you want to do but to be honest I wouldn't be able to give you much helpful advice given my background. But someone in here will wander along eventually and give you decent advice I'm sure

Best of luck with it.

Darren O'Connor

The course looks okay, but be very careful not to fall into the trap of having a mainly theory based course. These types of courses require more practical hands on work than theory, I say this because (correct me if I'm wrong) I'm not aware of a music/recording studio facility within GCD.

Check out these links for other training centres/courses/advice:

http://www.soundtrainingcentre.com

http://www.pulserecording.com

http://www.skoool.ie/skoool/careermatters.asp?id=505

I'm currently studying the Sound Engineering/Music Production part-time course in the Sound Training Centre in Temple Lane, it's not that bad a course, but make sure you shop around first, as they can cost between €3000 and €4000 per year, so you wanna get your monies worth!

Best of luck!

Darren

Steve_o

There's a really good course in BCFE...just look at www.bcfe.ie

Also i'm starting Music Technology and Production in Limerick IT in September, it looks like a deadly course, its a 3yr B.Sc.

sei046

Lads i really wouldnt advise these courses. I know a good few lads who did them and lets just say it ruined them. They dont really have a clue in practicality and you loose a lot of years where you should just be out with small bands or anything getting experience with sound. Its all about who you know end of story.

You WILL NOT get a job on your degree, you may have a degree and get a job but it will be a direct result of someone knowing you and trusting you can do it. Might seem a bit harsh but thats the way the game runs as anyone with a bit of experience here will tell you. Get out on the scene and do any little things you can like running cables or just talking to people. You will learn ten times more!

Good luck with it either way!

Niall - Dahlia

Might as well add my 2 cents to this. I'm just finishing up first year full-time in Pulse, and while I wouldn't outright recommend it I wouldn't try to put anybody off it either.

I think it comes down to what you're willing to put in yourself when it comes to these courses. If you're there for all the lectures, get involved and do all your practicals and assignments, then you will learn alot. You're basically paying to be around people who work in the industry. If you don't take that opportunity to learn from them then you're wasting your time and money.

I'm happy enough with Pulse and am 90% sure I'll do the 2nd year. I read a few books alongside the course (none of which were ever recommended to us unfortunately), and everything we were taught was in them books. But I guess you could say the same about anything, it was still taught to us very well, the lecturers do know their stuff.

The Pro Tools classes are excellent, and really the best thing about the course in my opinion. Again, you can teach yourself these things, but the exams for the Pro Tools 101 and 110 (and further in 2nd year) really focus you. I think whereas sei is right in that any of the City & Guilds/Fetac/college awards don't mean **** in the real world, the Pro Tools operator qualifications can bear a bit of weight.

Also there's no reason why you can't do your own thing while doing the course. I've been recording bands almost every weekend since September, and have bands booked in to record every weekend in May ring up until my exams. I thought that'd be a bit of an obvious thing to do, but from what I can tell there's maybe only one or two other people in my course doing the same thing, if that. I have to say I've learnt more practical stuff in regards to mic positioning and the like from doing out of college recordings, and that's the only letdown I found in the course. There's plenty of practical classes where you get to mess about with mixing desks and vocal mics, but only twice we've had the chance to mic up instruments. Right now for example, our "big end of year practical" is adding voice, sound effects and foley to a ****ing Tom & Jerry cartoon... :rolleyes:

I'll leave it at that, could go on for ages about the pros and cons, you really have to decide for yourself whether you can put the time and effort in or whether your money would be better spent elsewhere.

sei046

what niall is saying is what i was saying. My problem really though is getting thrown in on pro tools is not really the best idea. and working with all this great equipment all the time is not the best idea. When someone then goes to a behringer setup and some cheap as chip compressors they run into problems when they have to squeeze a sound out of them!

The problem is your meeting some great people but you will forever be a student to them! you wont get too many calls from your tutors to do sound for a band at the weekend! I wouldnt worry so much about doing your homework and spend more time really getting to know these lads!

Savman

I'd tend to lean towards sei046's view on this, mainly because most people who do these courses use them as an excuse not to do anything practical outside, in the real world, where gigs happen.
I suppose it depends where you plan working, if it's in studios then maybe qualifications will help but if it's on the road doing live sound then forget about it. You have to deal with all sorts of problems (many of which you'd never believe), there is no training for that kinda stuff you just have to get stuck in and graft.

But if you're doing a course whilst networking and also gaining some real world experience, it's wise

sei046

Savman +1. And like he said some of the biggest problems have very little to do with sound!

ungratefuldead

Hi lads,

i add my personal experience too.......

I'm finishing the part time first year in pulse.....i'm fully satiesfied with it until now......

I thing is a personal choice to do a course........the best way is to learn is from experience and works with professional people......this was possible until 10 years ago , walk in a studio and simply ask can i sit and watch you? You will have few refusal but there was always someone that said its okay dude......

Today is simply not possible few people gonna give you a change.....also if you going to a concert or a simple gig and ask to the engineer can i sit and watch you working? For my personal experience 99% they told you: man i'm working can you see it?

The main question before do a course is......is that really what a want to do?


Many of the guys of my course they don't know nothing about music at all they don't apply themself on the task so.....impossible to learn something usefull.......

If you have a good background and apply yourself results came your way....in my case i record band a couple at month and work on my project and help friends with their project......i had a good background but after i started the course things are changed for the better.....


So at end before start any kind of course, ask to yourself if is it what you really want ....otherwise you waste your time and money.....

Alter-Ego

Niall - Dahlia wrote:

I read a few books alongside the course (none of which were ever recommended to us unfortunately), and everything we were taught was in them books.

Hi Niall.

Any chance you could tell me what books you've been reading please? Its a subject i've been looking into recently and i'm looking for some reading recommendations. Thanks.

PeakOutput

after doing a fetac course in sound engineering and a private "diploma" i would recommend not doing any of these type of courses as any i have looked into are very amateurish and are teaching you amateurish methods...........the private colleges are better in that you have access to proper "pro" stdio facilities but they are money driven courses not student welfare driven..........

I dont know what age or education you have but if you have adecent leaving cert or you are over 23 you should look into something like digital media design or maybe music technology............

there are a number of degree courses in both these subjects...i feel that digital media design has better career prospects and still involves most of what you need to go into music production / sound engineering whereas music technology narrows down carreer options but is more directed towards performance and recording so it might be more up your street

by the way the courses i was refering to are the two in ul i mentioned the music tech in maynooth and the digital media engineering in dcu
if you want more info on the degrees or other private colleges let me know iv been to two of them have researched most of them and hope to start digital media design or music, media and performance technology in ul in september

by the way the courses i was refering to are the two in ul i mentioned the music tech in maynooth and the digital media engineering in dcu