"It Takes a Whole College to Raise a Recording Degree"

Tom Smith ’03 sits perched over a mixing console lined with hundreds of dials and lights. With hawklike precision he adjusts several knobs ever so slightly on the panel before him. "When I arrived in Ithaca last fall," he says, "I had every intention of becoming a high school orchestra conductor — but recording comes naturally to me and I really enjoy it."

In the past students interested in studying both music and recording at Ithaca would have had to construct their own course of study. But now they don’t have to — we have a bachelor of music in recording degree program.

How it Started

This new program was a natural fit for the school. With recordings needed of each of the more than 300 annual concerts and recitals, as well as audition tapes for graduate studies and professional recordings by faculty members, the need for high-quality recording personnel and facilities was evident. And importantly, as noted by associate professor Peter Rothbart, M.M. ’80, one of the architects of the degree, "recording engineers with advanced musical training and excellent communications skills are in demand in traditional fields and in the burgeoning area of multimedia."

In the early stages of developing the program during the fall of 1995, music dean Arthur Ostrander, then–associate dean Jamal Rossi ’80, and Rothbart researched the recording programs available at other top conservatories and universities. What they discovered is that most programs offered a bachelor of science degree, which didn’t include as much training in music performance, theory, and history as one would find in a typical bachelor of music degree curriculum.

"From the beginning we wanted this program to be different, with its emphasis on music and a high performance standard," says Rossi. Students in this selective degree program are required to meet the audition standards for entry into the school and are required to take the same core classes in theory, history, and performance that all music majors take.

What makes this program unique is that it draws on the strengths of three schools: the Roy H. Park School of Communications, the School of Humanities and Sciences, and the School of Music. Students take courses and use the audio facilities in the Park School; they also take theater sound production classes in the theater department and physics of sound classes in the physics department. Recording engineer John Mehne was hired to fill the music school’s newly created position of manager of recording services. He will teach recording courses, maintain the recording facilities, and record concerts with student engineers. Mehne’s experiences in the industry began when he did freelance recording as an undergraduate music major; that led to jobs at Michigan State University and Wisconsin Public Radio as a recording engineer. Now our students get the opportunity to draw on his professional expertise in formal recording workshop classes and while working one-on-one in the studio.

Pulling It Together

The completion of the James J. Whalen Center for Music provided the program with a recording-friendly laboratory. Equipped with two recording control rooms and nine recording spaces, the facility allows students to run several recording sessions simultaneously. Students work with state-of-the-art digital recording, mixing, and editing equipment similar to what they would find in a major recording studio. The new construction also offered a rare opportunity to one major, Erin Beagley ’02, who got to wire one of the control rooms last summer. "By wiring the control room," she says, "I got a better idea of how the machines are related and a better understanding of the signal flow." She shared some of the insights from that project with this year’s new students.

Students get opportunities to interact with professionals when outside contractors are brought in for the Ithaca College Concerts series and Bureau of Concerts performances. Tom Smith worked with representatives from Northeastern Productions when they provided sound reinforcement for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Ben Fold’s Five concerts this past semester. That experience and those contacts helped him line up a summer job at Northeastern.

Such hands-on learning occurs throughout the students’ four years at IC. Students work as recording engineers for performances during the concert season in addition to working on recording assignments. They are trained to work in the recording industry in positions such as mastering engineer and recording engineer and in the film industry as music editor. Their capstone project is a seven-week internship with a major recording studio and the production of a senior portfolio CD. This CD serves as a résumé that demonstrates the ability to record music from genres as diverse as punk, folk, classical, techno, and jazz.

Beagley is interested in pursuing graduate work in recording and eventually working for a major recording studio. As she notes, "The flexibility within the degree program allows you to make of it what you want."

Photo: Brian Lane '02 watches Eben Turner '02 adjust levels during a recording session. Photo by Alex Dippold '98