Overview
This 4-week short course is for electronic music producers seeking to advance their creative and technical approach to refining and finishing their tracks. We start from the assumption that you're familiar with the production process, but your mixes may lack the depth, clarity or warmth found in a professionally released track.
As a progressive education institute one of our core beliefs is that you need to spend lots of time with your own hands firmly on the gear. We call it learning by doing... and doing... and doing again. Stretch your capabilities, hone your skills in this specialist field or start to create a unique sonic identity of your own.
Develop a deeper understanding of the tools, techniques and thinking behind a well balanced, professional finished product and apply that knowledge in both commercial and home studio environments.
Course structure
Subjects areas
Your course will cover the following subject areas:-
- Mix analysis, preparation and workflow considerations
- Listening skills, mix approaches, styles and philosophies
- Pro Tools operation and workflow
- Balance and position
- EQ (surgical, subtractive and additive)
- Dynamics (surgical, parallel, multiband and combined)
- Space and depth
- Tonal processing
- Routing, patchbays and analogue/digital outboard
- Master bus finalisation
- Mastering philosophy
- Sonic analysis and metering
- Mastering chains, tools and processing
- Mastering standards and formats
- Mixing and mastering environments
- Studio and equipment considerations
Progression
This course is designed for two audiences.
The first audience are those looking for a productive way to spend 4 weeks developing their sound engineering skills to support their own projects and meet like minded people to work with. For this audience the likely progression routes are:-
- Returning to their own project with a new set of skills
- Returning to Catalyst to take one of our other short courses.
The second audience are those students wishing to progress onto one of our longer courses whom require some practical experience to help prepare them for the longer course. Our Electronic Music Production & Performance programme follows on logically from what you learn in this short course.
Our team
Our courses are taught by a team of permanent tutors & visiting international music industry professionals with a genuine passion for passing on their specialist knowledge to others.
Ciarán O'Shea
One of the things that excites Ciaran O’Shea the most in life is the journey. And when it comes to the Irishman’s career as a music producer and mixer, he’s been travelling the worldwide realm of sound for over two decades!
Conor Dalton
Conor Dalton has 10 years of professional mastering experience with his company Glowcast Audio Mastering, working on music from Daft Punk, Jeff Mills, Marcel Dettmann, Ricardo Villalobos, Carl Craig, John Digweed, Maceo Plex, and many more.
An international creative community
Catalyst is a thriving creative learning community of tutors and students from more than 75 countries.
Studying here is a golden opportunity to meet up and collaborate with like-minded peers from around the world. A key part of our approach to learning involves working with others whether as peers, mentors, collaborators, audience or fellow travellers. Passion is always better shared!
Essential information
Entry requirements
The most important prerequisite for attending any course at Catalyst is that you must be passionate about building and developing your skills as a sound engineer and producer.
This course requires some prior knowledge, so please check the content and make sure you’re ready for the ride.
Our short courses are designed to be accessible to anyone so we do not require any level of academic certification to apply. To qualify you should usually be aged 18 or over. If you're coming from outside the EU a holiday/travel visa will usually suffice.
For more information, please contact a member of the team. We love to chat! Please reach out to us at admissions@catalyst-berlin.com or call us at +49 30 2900 9052.
Course dates and application deadline
Course dates: Monday 17 June – Friday 12 July 2024
Course length: 4 weeks
Application deadline: Friday 17 May 2024
Although our final deadline for Summer Short Courses is Friday 17 May 2024, we strongly recommend that you apply by our priority deadline (5 April 2024) for your best chances of securing a spot on your chosen course. If the course is full, you will be added to a waiting list.
Tuition fees
Enrolment fee*: €495
Course fee: €1,755
Total: €2,250
If you decide to enrol in both a Summer Short Course and an undergraduate course (HE Certificate or BA) with us, you will receive a discount of 500€ on the total tuition.
* Note- Enrolment fee is non-refundable.
Open days, Q&As & taster workshops
Get a feel for Catalyst and our courses at a range of both online and in-person events. Join us at a Virtual Open Day or an Open Day at our campus in Berlin, chat to our programme leads at Meet The Tutor, or try a taster workshop.
Primer Workshop - Access to Higher Education
Designed for those wishing to join our main programmes, but lacking the formal education requirements to apply through standard entry.
These free workshops run at the same time as your short course programme and cover writing skills, reading, structuring arguments, debate and understanding context.
They utilise task and project-based learning methodology to ensure that you’re prepared and ready for our longer HE Certificate or BA (Hons) programmes.
Listen up
In the end it doesn’t matter how great we think our courses are. What matters is what our students actually do during their time with us. Have a listen, leave some comments and decide for yourselves.
More courses
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Electronic Music Production & Performance programme
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Creative Audio Production & Sound Engineering programme
Using challenging real-life scenarios develop industry standard tools, technical know how and the essential techniques required to record, mix, produce and master music whilst building a sound engineer or music producer portfolio.