Sound Engineering with a Foundation Year - BSc (Hons)

[00:00:02] Speaker 1 From studio spaces to mastering suites and workspaces. I'm going to show you what it's like to study sound at BCU. So this is the Concert Hall control room. This is where we do a lot of surround sound and get to record the amazing Bradshaw Hall here at the Conservatoire. So this is the SSL Duality Desk. It's one of the largest in the Conservatoire. Here we get to record the Bradshaw Hall and also everything in 5.1 surround sound and stereo. Now going to show you some of our recording studios at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. let's go explore recording studio one. Here we have one of the control rooms that leads over to the live room here. You can record bands of all sizes. And again, on our SSL desk. We have it fitted with ProTools and Logic, Ableton and those that I can't even name off top of my head. But Play us out...

[00:01:23] Speaker 1 Cheers mate. Let's go explore the live room. So here we have one of our biggest live rooms. And here is one of our biggest recording spaces. We've got kind of drum kits on the go grand pianos and mini grands in the studios. We've got Steinway here, Boston Pianos in other recording studios and Yamaha's across concert halls and stuff. We've got a range of great microphones ranging from AKG's to RODE's, Aston Spirits, and as you go through the years, the more better they get. So we don't just have one recording studio, we have multiple and they're all unique in acoustics and apparatus. So we have quite a lot of gear and different outboards to use to cater to your musical preference. We also have a very unique relationship here with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire students. So, whether it's recording foley or mastering an EP, BCU really gives you the experience you need for the working world. So this is the mastering suite. This is where you take your recordings and make them into masterpieces. So here we've got state of the art speakers, we've got Bowers and Wilkins. We've also got amazing outboard gear from Maselec. We've also got SSL control servers and this whole thing is fitted out with a PRISM audio interface. But my favourite part of this entire room is the tape machine. So over here we have a Studer tape machine. There's not a lot around and we're one of the only universities is to have one. I myself have mastered many of my tracks on tape and it just adds that little antique-y sound and makes it quite clean and also rough at times, depending how you want to master your track. So this is the edit suite. This is where we get to kind of fine tune and make rough edits of our tracks. So as you can see here, this is ProTools and one of our most kind of common editing tool softwares, but we can also record in this facility. So we've got some Focusrite gear, Audient gear as well as ways to make beats. So we've got some crazy synths and sequences that you get to play around with, plug into the system and mix, make your own music really. So next I'm going to show you the Mac Labs. That's where we spend most of our time learning software and kind of having our mini lectures there. So let's go check it out. So this is the Mac lab. We have two of these in the Conservatoire. We have Macs in both, MIDI keyboards and audio interfaces. Here, we'll kind of have 1 to 1 sessions or smaller workshops with your lecturers learning different software like ProTools, Reaper, Ableton and Logic. One thing to note about BCU is the lecturers. They are very passionate about music technology. They give you work opportunities and experiences. Like myself, I had an opportunity to go to the Royal Shakespeare Company for a day and shadow the head sound engineer there, So it's very impressive with how much they care about their students and how much they're willing to give you. Now let's go tour the Millennium Point facilities. Welcome to Millennium Point. Over here we have even more studio space. So in this one we're still fitted out with SSL desks. We've also got a bunch of outboard gears. You've got good pressers, limiters, anything to help you make the best production possible. We've even got some unique acoustic equipment. So over in the studio we have a Helmholtz resonator made by one of our students, which I'll show you now. So over here is a Helmholtz resonator where frequencies and air will resonate in the cavities here. So certain frequencies we like and don't like will resonate, making the space more acoustically appropriate. So welcome to The Orchard - another room filled with Macs where we get to learn ProTools, Logic, Reaper for video games, Matlab for coding. In your third year you get to sound design and collaborate with video game students and make your own video game. We also do a lot of experimental acoustic stuff. So over here we have the drum tank where we will run frequency sweeps through a room, learn how frequencies interact with the acoustics of the space, and just kind of learn how sound reacts to a room. There's a lot of experimental stuff we get to do in our degree, as well as producing and as well as studio time. So together, they kind of go hand in hand and you really learn the whole science of sound. So I hope you enjoyed our tour today and seeing what it's like to study sound at BCU. If you have any questions or want to chat with one of our students, please look at the link in the bio.

[00:00:02] Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the computing tour for Birmingham City University.

[00:00:05] I'm Alex, a second year Computer Science student sitting here today, and I'll be taking you around the facilities here at BCU.

[00:00:11] Right now we're in STEAMhouse. If you're coming on to a computing course, you may be spending time here doing your Innovation Fest project, where you'll be presenting your project that you worked on to industry professionals. So STEAMhouse is a £72 million conversion of the old bike factory that used to be here.

[00:00:31] This is one of the larger learning spaces that we have here at STEAMhouse, completely built around computing. The entire building is modular. All these walls can be opened up and these classes can be made gigantic.

[00:00:43] So here's another space here at STEAMhouse for, sort of like, breakout rooms or for independent learning places you can go as a group to work on projects. To the left of us, there is the business space where visitors come in and they can work on projects there and also allows for students and staff members to integrate with the tech industry. If you'd like to learn more about STEAMhouse, the video link in description. And now I'm going to take you over to Millennium Point.

[00:01:13] Here we are at Millennium Point. This is the level four project space, the space you'll be using in term time to work on things such as the Innovation project. It is also the home of the Maker's Lab, which I'll be showing you in a little bit. It's a completely transformative and modular space.

[00:01:28] Recently, Birmingham City University has spent six and a half million pounds in revamping their Millennium Point building. It's also the area where we will be holding industry events. One of the things that I want to show you very quickly is the Lapsafe here. So Birmingham City University has one of the largest collections of Lapsafes in Europe. And they're not just here in the Millennium Point building. There's also ones over in Parkside and Curzon as well as STEAMhouse. You're allowed to take a laptop out if you haven't got one personally, and you can use it while you're at university for about six or so hours at a time. We also not only have Windows laptops, but also MacBooks.

[00:02:10] So here we are in the Makers Lab, and this is where you'll be spending time as a first year student working on the Innovation facilities there. Basically, this is where the magic happens, right? So in this room is a bunch of component parts and things to work with your systems such as 3D printers.

[00:02:24] So what you can do is you build a schematic up in the software. We send it to the machines and they can print out component parts for your project. It's also a bunch of different other components here at the university that it offers to students that they can use for their projects, such as Arduino, Mark Controllers, and Raspberry Pi is sort of like the heart of your system. You write some code, you flash onto the microcontroller, then it can control the system that you've attached it to. Over here, we've also got a bunch of component parts even using such as light sensors and motion sensors and buttons and keypads and things like that as well.

[00:02:59] So we've got a bunch of previous projects here as well. Here's Sign Genie which is a sign language interpreter, you sign in front of it and it will send back the sign language on the screen here. You can find out more about this project in description below, showing you how they built it from start to finish.

[00:03:16] We also have laser cutting services at University, so if you need, you know, a frame cut out for your project, for example, that we've got here, you can use the laser cutter and cut out little component parts that all fit together as a housing for your project. Okay, So now I think we're going to head down to level one, which houses the network labs and the games lab.

[00:03:42] This is one of the games labs here at BCU. This is more of a high spec facility to help with rendering animation and, you know, running the games that you create as a games development students as well as that. We've also got the different component parts. You need to build a project VR here so you can experiment with VR within the game called events such as Games Jam where students from across Birmingham City University come together to create a game within 24 hours or 48 hours and present it to a panel.

[00:04:14] So this is one of our networking labs here at BCU. It is a Cisco networking lab. All the hardware in here is industry standard and the majority of it is Cisco related. This entire room and several other rooms on this floor are complete separate LAN network from the rest of university. And you can, you know, run tests and simulations and try and configure and connect to of computers within the labs. The software that we use here is called Cisco Packet Tracer or Nethercutt. This is what we use to prototype our networks. And then you can actually physically build them using the hardware in the room to see how it works in practice.

[00:04:55] So this is one of our many computing labs here at Birmingham City University at the College of Computing. We have about 20 computing labs here at the University of all kinds of different software. And then depending on the course that you're doing, we have experts here from industry working as lecturers to have that real world experience and incredibly helpful with helping you to complete your coursework as well as get any additional advice and sort of guide you in the right direction.

[00:05:22] This is one of the big open communal spaces where you can come and catch up on work, but New Macs here that you can work on as well as Windows PCs out at the back can also see that there's more lab space here. So if you want to use a laptop, you can get those as well. Along with that, there's also the main I.T help desk here where you can come in and ask questions if you've got any issues.

[00:05:43] That was just a taste of computing at BCU. If you'd like to experience it yourself, come along to one of our Open Days or applicant taster days in the future. As well as if you'd like to know more about the computing experience. You can watch this video right here.

[00:06:03] You still here? Go watch the video.