About the course

What you’ll learn

Forging a successful career in music production or sound engineering requires a variety of different skills, techniques and expertise. Our Diploma prepares you for this by focusing on three key industry-relevant subject areas:

– Audio engineering and acoustics
– Music production and theory
– Management and music business

The Diploma in Music Production and Sound Engineering is based on both instructor-led teaching and practice-based teaching. The duration of the program is 48 weeks, divided into three 16-week terms. Each term is comprised of lectures and workshops, for a total of 1170 contact hours, divided between the 3 terms of 390 hours each. Throughout the three terms students will go deeper into each of the subject areas so as to fundamentally increase their knowledge and skillset.

Our Abbey Road heritage is important in giving historical context. Students will learn about the evolution of the Studios and how innovation at Abbey Road helped drive the music industry forward. Alongside the history and theory, the program puts a strong emphasis on the application of technical skills, so students spend time both in dedicated lectures and independently working with Pro Tools and Logic as well as Ableton Live.

Our students participate in many practical opportunities that we make available to them. These include a wide range of ensembles, recording sessions and performance/composition workshops at our dedicated Art House Studios. We teach on industry standard equipment, including the latest generation Apple computers, an SSL Origin and Neve Genesys console, TubeTech, API, Neve and SSL outboard, Pro Tools, Logic X and Ableton Live, as well as a wide array of native plug-ins from our industry partners.

Lectures run from Monday to Thursday. The lecture duration is 4 hours, with the first three hours led by a lecturer dedicated to new content teaching and an additional teacher-led hour focused on practical student activities. This is aimed at ensuring the students understand the contents covered in the first block.

Tuesday evenings will also consist of a 3hr ear training session. Fridays are reserved for guest lectures, workshops, songwriting lab and production lab. The duration of these sessions is between 2 hours and 8 hours, depending on the content.