Berkleemusic News

Tonight (Wednesday, July 1), join Berkleemusic business instructors Dave Kusek, George Howard, and Mike King, along with Berkleemusic Dean Debbie Cavalier, on Twitter for a conversation about the state and future of the music industry and their online business courses. Dave, George, Mike, and Debbie will be taking your questions from 9:00-10:00 P.M. EST.

To join, just post a tweet with your question or comment and add the tag #bmusic.

All you need is a Twitter account to participate. It’s free and easy to sign up at twitter.com.

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Check out Berkleemusic’s online music business courses and multi-course certificate programs. Enrollment ends tomorrow (Thursday, July 2) at 5:00 P.M. EST.

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Berkleemusic’s summer term begins today—Monday, June 29th!

There are limited spots still available in over 130 online music courses and programs. Don’t miss your chance to start studying online with Berklee. Enrollment remains open throughout the week.

It’s not too late. Enroll today.

In time for our summer term (which begins in just one week, on June 29), Berkleemusic is excited to expand our online curriculum even further into the field of songwriting for visual media. We’ve launched a brand new online course, as well as a new multi-course Master Certificate program.

Songwriting for Film and TV (12-week course)
Explore the techniques of writing music that will appeal specifically to music supervisors, editors, directors, and producers across any number of different genres.

Master Certificate in Orchestration for Film and TV (8-course program)
This extensive new program will arm you with the necessary skills to write and orchestrate songs to perfectly complement film and television, provide you with valuable placement techniques for your compositions, and offer you the most up-to-date tools and information to make you a more marketable songwriter and composer. This eight course program includes:

• Arranging 1: Rhythm Section
• Songwriting for Film and TV
• Orchestration 1
• Orchestration 2
• Film Scoring 101
• plus 3 electives

It’s not too late to enroll in a Berkleemusic online course or program for this summer. Our next term begins next Monday, June 29. Learn more at Berkleemusic.com.

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Meet the Instructor: Brad Hatfield
Songwriting for Film and TV course author and instructor Brad Hatfield is an Emmy-winning composer and one of Boston’s most prolific musicians. His compositions have been heard in movies such as Borat, Analyze This, and Cop Land, as well as dozens of TV series including The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, ER, and CSI.Watch this video interview with Brad to learn more.

Five years ago, Owen Gurry had a career as a data analyst, and the guitar was nothing more than a weekend hobby. He enrolled in Berkleemusic’s online courses to reconnect with his passion for music—and ended up studying at Berklee’s physical school in Boston as well as launching a new career as a professional musician.

Owen enrolled in Berkleemusic’s online Music Theory 101 course, where he began to learn the formal vocabulary of the music he played. With that experience under his belt, he jumped into music education with both feet attending the Berklee Guitar Sessions held in Boston in the summer of 2006, and then spent a full semester at Berklee in person. After his time at the physical school, Owen returned to London and took further courses online with Berkleemusic—in particular, Music Theory 201 and Harmonic Ear Training.  

As for what he ultimately did with all this education, he explains that “I always wanted to be a session player,” he says. “To me, session players represent the musical SAS, the guys you call in when you need the job done. And also, session work really challenges my ability. I never know what’s going to happen.” To date, Owen has worked as a session guitarist on project by South Africa’s Arno Carstens, spent five months supporting UK recording artist Natalia on tour, and currently has a regular assignment recording BBC Radio 1 “1ntros” each week for Music 4.

“It’s hard to explain how much Berklee and Berkleemusic have helped me, because they made me into a completely different player,” says Owen.

Read More…

New Online Music Scholarships for UK-Based Musicians in the Names of Sir George Martin, Jeff Beck, Paul Oakenfold, Simon Napier-Bell, and Steve Vai

In preparation for our upcoming summer term on June 29th, Berkleemusic has expanded our reach to the United Kingdom with a new online music scholarship program for UK-based musicians. Berkleemusic will award 50 scholarships over the next five years in the names of music legends Sir George Martin, Jeff Beck, Paul Oakenfold, Simon Napier-Bell, and Steve Vai.

“Music is a wonderful thing and something that I have been able to enjoy all my life,” said Berkleemusic UK Scholarship honoree Sir George Martin. “Getting access to a great musical education can only be a good thing and now with this initiative, UK-based students are going to be able to access Berklee’s remarkable resources directly. I am proud to be a patron of this innovative program and look forward to seeing it and the students flourish in the years to come.”

Applications for the UK scholarship program are now open. Apply Now

Outside of the UK? Check out our existing online scholarship program for students all over the world. Learn More

Joe Scrocca knows the value of a good education. At 47, when he decided to switch careers from mortgage financing to music business, Joe turned to Berkleemusic to prepare him. “I did my research knowing that I had to limit my studies to online courses. Berkleemusic had the most to offer not only in course selection, but quality of teaching staff.”

Joe enrolled in Berkleemusic’s Master Certificate in Music Business and, midway through his studies, launched his own artist management firm, Scrocca Entertainment Group (SEG). He credits his online studies with his success.

“Taking online courses at Berkleemusic are worth the investment,” says Joe. “And I truly mean that: tuition is an investment, not a cost.”

Read More

Hi, I’m John Mileham. I’m the CTO here at Berkleemusic, but like many (perhaps most?) of my colleagues here at Berklee’s online school, I’m also a musician. When I’m not busy trying to make our web platform faster, more powerful, and easier to use, I play keys and electronic percussion in a band called The Franklin Kite. If you spend as much time coding as I do, though, your geek side has a pretty good chance of coming through in the rest of your life. I am no exception here.

I’ve played electronic drum parts at a lot of shows using an M-Audio Trigger Finger, and it’s a very expressive controller, but there’s a disconnect between seeing a guy on stage tapping a rubber pad with one finger and hearing a huge chest-thumping kick drum. I was looking for something that an audience could really identify with.

Wii remotes have fascinated me since they came out. Thanks to the bluetooth interface, a lot of people use them as musical instruments, but I’ve yet to see a really flexible and musical drum controller using the Wii remote. So I set out to build one. The goal was to create a musically expressive instrument that’s as fun to watch as it is to play. It would be inspired by the way a drummer plays a standard kit, but not attempt to mimic a real kit completely. It wouldn’t use button-presses to emulate drum strikes. The audience should see a stroke for every note that they hear. And there should be more to it than a kick, a snare, and a hi-hat.

So I found some helpful Wii remote and MIDI libraries for the mac, dusted off my rusty high school trigonometry and proceeded to write some code that took accelerometer data from a wii remote and turned it into a real time stream of velocity-sensitive MIDI notes that could be sent to any drum sampler. I called it DrumChuk.

If you find yourself in Cambridge, MA on Monday, July 6th, you can see DrumChuk performed live at the Middle East Upstairs at the CD release show for our new EP, Explosions & Batteries.

And if you’re brave, you can download the source code for DrumChuk at GitHub and install it yourself. Note that the goals listed above did not include “easy to install.” Let me know what you think of it, customize it to meet your needs, and if you improve it, I’d be psyched to add your changes.

In the latest issue of Music Connection, the magazine asks, “Are You Mismanaging Your Fan Base?”

To find out the answer, they turned to Berkleemusic instructor Mike King (course author of Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail).

Check out Mike’s answers in Music Connection’s June issue, on newsstands now.

Download the article here.

The latest issue of Keyboard magazine features a production tutorial from Dave Franz, one of Berkleemusic’s Pro Tools gurus.

Dave brings his production expertise from his online courses—including Producing with Pro Tools and Recording and Producing in the Home Studio—to the page with a free “Effects Loop Basics in Pro Tools” lesson. Check it out in Keyboard’s June issue, on newsstands now.

Download Dave’s lesson here.

Keyboard players, be sure to check out Berkleemusic’s online keyboard curriculum:

• Berklee Keyboard Method
• Blues and Rock Keyboard Techniques
• Specialist Certificate in Keyboard Skills (3-course program)

When Guitar Player magazine needed new lessons for their readers, they turned to Berkleemusic’s Thaddeus Hogarth, author and instructor of Funk/Rock and R&B Guitar Soloing.

Check out Thaddeus’ first lesson, “Expanded Harmony in Pentatonics,” from the July issue of Guitar Player, on newstands now.

Download Thaddeus’ lesson here.