This pathway could lead to a desk job! In a world where content is king, being able to professionally capture audio and visual at the highest quality whilst creatively treating it for its desired output is paramount. Alternatively, learners might be a beatmaker with a yearning to get their music heard, the Production pathway will help professionalise their practice and hone their skills.

Learners will demonstrate:

• Sound recording skills

• Mixing and mastering skills

• Sequencing and production skills

• Video production skills

• Understanding of contextual issues relating to music production techniques

• Understanding of the music production industry

Unit example: Digital Recording and Production
This unit has aims to develop learners’ skills in effectively planning the recording process and recording instruments and voices, and to develop skills to edit audio samples for future use. The purpose of this unit is to enable learners to record and use source material (instrumentation) as sample patches for future projects. The unit also focuses on the ability to plan and manage the recording process.

Unit Example: Studio Audio Mastering
Mastering is an essential process in producing a commercially viable musical product. Any professionally released track has almost certainly been through a mastering process. This aim of this unit is to develop learners’ skills in effectively mastering a given piece of music, using a variety of methods and assessing best practice. The purpose of the unit is to use mastering equipment to develop and create two different mastered tracks to two different formats.

Skills Unit Example: Remixing and Production
Being a remixer has a number of significant benefits in terms of employment in the music industry and personal development as an artist. Remixing other artists’ music can provide an all-important potential revenue source, which can grow substantially as the remixer’s profile grows. Remixing can also be used as a tool to raise the artist’s profile, which can lead onto opportunities to release their own original music. The remixing process itself helps the learner to develop their compositional, music theory and technical skills. The act of remixing informs the learner’s own music through working with the music of others.

Unit Example: Digital Synthesis
An informed knowledge of a variety of digital synthesis techniques, coupled with the ability to select the appropriate one for a given sound design scenario, gives artists the ability to craft specific sounds ‘to order’, allowing them to compose using their ‘mind’s ear’ and reducing the need for trial and error. Having this ability can open up job possibilities in composing for media, sound design and studio production.