Concentrations (Music and Media)

Classical Music Recording
In the Classical Music Recording major, students study the artistic sound design of serious music and spoken language on sound recording media. Key elements of the course are the selection and positioning of the microphones, editing, and absolute familiarity with the latest technologies. Prominence is given to developing and training the hearing and a creating a feel for sounds of high artistic quality. The course also deals with recording psychology and seeks to develop the participants’ sense of judgment with regard to aspects of playing technique and interpretation in the field of classical music. In Benno Müller vom Hofe's seminar, students can acquire knowledge of audio play production.

Media Composition
The Media Composition major involves composition exercises designed to foster stylistic flexibility over a broad musical range. The students acquire the ability to compose to both image and text as well as for specific genres and specific customer needs.
Through working with foley and sound design, all areas of visual-related sound design are dealt with, plus the ability to work as a team under pressure.

Music Informatics
Music Informatics is an interdisciplinary field which experiments with algorithmic processes and embeds them in the context of installations, compositions, programs and theoretical considerations. Projects in this area examine artistic and scientific issues as well as complementing other modules.

Currently, Music Informatics at the IMM is divided into the following areas:
- Algorithmic Acoustics (Algorithmic Sound Systems, Sonification, Philosophy of Informatics)
- Hybrid Sound Computing (Live Electronics, Interfaces, Semi-Analogue Sound Systems)
- Expanded Systems (Composition and Algorithms without Computers).

Courses combine practical abstraction and theoretical work on the materials in an engaging manner.

Music Production
The Music Production major includes seminars with Prof Werner Roth, in which the students engage in the recording of compositions of jazz and pop music in live and studio environments.
Various different recording situations are covered, from analog and computer-aided to in-the-box, taught by Timo Bader. Additionally, in Reinhard Klose’s seminar, students acquire knowledge of sound systems technology.

Music and Audiovisual Media
Instruction on technical, design and artistic skills is given as part of the major concentration Music and Audiovisual Production.
Students acquire the ability to critically assess primarily cinematic forms related to music such as portraits of composers and performers and other documentary forms on music themes, live concert recordings, opera and dance performances. This includes video clips of both jazz/pop and classical music, or formal audiovisual music productions in the studio or about a particular subject, and as well as experimental staging of musical events. In addition instruction is given in well-founded technical and design skills in screenwriting, directing, camera work, image design and lighting, film sound recording and postproduction, film editing and editing dramaturgy. The use of state-of-the-art equipment and well-equipped production and post-production units is also covered.
From the beginning of their time at the Robert Schumann conservatory, students apply what they have learned to cinematic practice and, in educational productions as well as in independent projects, gain considerable experience in cinematic work, and thus develop their own unique signature as an artist.

Music and Media Management
In the Music and Media Management major, the students acquire strategic skills for survival in the intense competition in the media world, as well as the ability to run and manage businesses in an effective and efficient manner. The curriculum also includes the planning, cost calculation and organisation of media projects as well as the production of a business plan in preparation for a business start-up.

Music and Text
The overlaps and tensions between sound and text are many-facetted and represent a field of work in its own right, which is able to integrate completely different approaches. At the IMM, the Music and Text major is divided into the following three areas: Writing on Sound, Artistic Text in Music, Film and Audio Plays, and Narration and Media Aesthetics.
Whether the focus is on the media-related or content-related aspects of artistic writing, whether a critical analysis of sound aesthetics is intended to lead to a cogent journalistic or scientific essay, or whether research and narration form part of the work on films, audio plays or performances – the study of text forms and writing methods holds great promise, as does the prospect of being able to access a further context of artistic, cultural, political or scientific topics. Music and Text is interesting for all those who wish to work on reviews, lyrics, booklets, audio plays, research art and documentary film, fictive narrations and theoretical arguments.

For further information check out this major's blog.

Visual Music
At the IMM, students in the Visual Music major acquire knowledge of design principles and techniques by producing visualisations of sound and music – e.g. in the form of music videos, VJ sets, installations or computer games/ applications.
In their projects the students use concept and design of the sound and image level as an expression of individual artistic attitude.
Music visualisations are located somewhere between media art and club culture, where the question whether they are art or service, club culture or highbrow no longer presents itself. The sharp delineation between audio and video is shifting. And since the new media have started to make real-time coordination processes between visuals and sound possible, there are more and more audiovisual teams being formed, or individuals themselves engaging in audiovisual work.

For further information on this particular genre check out the Visual Music Archive.