Audio: Associate Degree of Audio

What You Will Learn

With an Associate Degree of Audio, you'll be ready for cutting-edge industry roles using modern creative business concepts and strategies. You'll learn and apply theoretical knowledge and best practices while accessing studios to amplify your talents on cutting-edge equipment like the Neve, or an SSL, or an Audient console. Your growth and development as a creative practitioner will be assessed through the completion of industry-based projects. This will ultimately help you build up a body of work and portfolio to share with potential employers or your first client.

In preparation for an industry that commands agility and adaptability, you'll cut your creative teeth on projects initially in partnership with your course peers. As your skills develop and you work on more dynamic projects, you'll apply your capabilities to cross-discipline projects in games, film, music, and animation. By the end of your course, you could be collaborating with fellow students across all SAE disciplines.

Ultimately, a qualification from SAE in Audio will expand your career. As part of your course, you will be provided practical experience and work with others to help build your network. We'll also equip you with employability skills, giving you professional strategies in communication and self-promotion.

With an Associate Degree of Audio, you'll be ready for cutting-edge industry roles using modern creative business concepts and strategies. Career options include Games Audio Specialist, Audio Engineer, Sound Editor in film, live music, broadcast media, or games development.

The Associate Degree of Audio has two stages that provide foundational learning and applied skill.

• Develop the essential technical audio skills and the knowledge required to collaborate with other creative media students and professionals.
• Credit Points: 10 Thinking About Audio and Music introduces you to creative and scholarly thinking in your discipline. By examining leading thinkers and movements in audio and music, you will develop an understanding of key practical and professional skills that will enable you to develop a deeper understanding of the industry, scholarship, and the nature of creativity. This unit forms an essential foundation for your studies and future career by fostering your skills as an independent learner and reflective practitioner.
• Credit points: 10 Establish a basic knowledge of the principles of sound, foundational acoustics, human hearing, perception of sound and the range of technical terms related to audio. You'll sonically assess a listening environment and be able to communicate your ideas using industry terminology. Potential projects: Improve the acoustic properties of a home studio setup. Using technology analyse the sound of different rooms.
• Credit points: 20 Gain the audio recording skills required to operate studio equipment and a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) system by undertaking simple recording and mixing projects. You'll be able to demonstrate an understanding of session planning, studio etiquette, microphone placement, signal flow, multi-track recording and signal processing (EQ, filters and dynamics processing) and be able to edit your session in preparation for mixdown. Potential projects: Develop a plan for a professional recording session. Analyse sound recordings and create multiple mixes using balance, pan, equalisation, automation and FX processing.
• Credit points: 10 This unit explores the concepts of entrepreneurship, innovation and project design. You will develop approaches to identify promising opportunities and actionable strategies to transform them into tangible successes. Through exposure to developing new ideas, processes and ways of working - both individually and in entrepreneurial teams - you will hone skills to put creative ideas into practice and achieve real-world impact. As Alan Kay explained, "The best way to predict the future is to create it", so let's get at it!
• Credit points: 10 An introduction to the technology used in various audio systems such as recording studios, live, and audio-visual sound reinforcement systems. Develop basic soldering and electronics fault-finding skills and investigate the connectivity and terminology of small-scale audio systems. Potential projects: Safely set up and operate small live sound or audio-visual systems for music or spoken presentations.
• Credit Points: 20 Apply your acquired production skills in real-life audio, music or sound design projects, one 'in the box' and one in the recording studio. You'll deliver to a brief, using production skills and researching comparable works to create well-rounded products through iterative processes. Potential projects: First project: Enhance an audio production using sequencing, sampling and synthesis for music composition or sound design project. Second project: Working on a collaborative studio production, You'll apply project management skills to demonstrate effective use of time and resources, whilst documenting and reflecting on the production process, identifying areas for improvements and responding to feedback from your your classmates and facilitator.

• Broaden your scope to work on complex multidisciplinary projects in accordance with industry standard practices.
• Credits points: 10 In this unit, you will collaborate on interdisciplinary projects that blend creativity and technology across fields such as film, audio, music, gaming, design, and computer science. Through project-based learning, you'll explore how different disciplines contribute to innovative outcomes-like immersive installations or interactive experiences. The unit focuses on strengthening communication, problem-solving, and teamwork across creative and technical areas. You'll be challenged to apply your existing skills while embracing new perspectives and ways of working, developing a holistic understanding of contemporary media production and preparing you to deliver complex, boundary-pushing creative solutions.
• Credit points: 10 Sound in the environment is crucial in our daily lives and in the production of nearly all media. When working with sound, we constantly desire to control our acoustic environment in the first instance to obtain uncontaminated recordings and, secondly, to clinically listen to and work with these recordings. The goal of this Unit is to guide you through and expose you to various disciplines of sound and sound recording that exist outside of the controlled environment of the studio-to lead through sonic encounters with the world around us. From Film sound and its associated location recordings, documentary recordings and acoustic ecology to recreating these environments through Foley recording, this Unit aims to expose you to practical and theoretical experience with location sound. Exploring recording devices, microphones and microphone techniques to multi-track digital audio workstations (DAWs)- this course expands through ideas and practices of location sound, exposing these components and exploring their connection to various media.
• Credit points: 20 This unit will further develop your recording studio skills with hands-on experience in audio production and related areas. The first project aims to give you insight into alternative methods of marketing and promoting your skills as an audio practitioner. The second project requires you to research a concept related to audio production and develop a media asset based on your findings. Throughout the trimester you will develop and refine your professional skills, document your participation in various activities and assignments, and showcase your technical proficiency and writing aptitude. You will also further develop your DAW skills and knowledge. The course is structured to foster your initiative and creativity, with the objective of serving each of the learning outcomes through self-designed projects. These projects will provide you with practical experience in audio production in the recording studio, and help to refine your critical thinking, research, and writing abilities.
• Credit points: 10 Creatives have always contributed to real-world problem solving, whether through innovative inventions, creative calls for action, public awareness building, or art and science collaborations. In this unit you will use your interdisciplinary collaboration skills to address a real-world problem. Using different theoretical frameworks within a 'hackathon' style studio environment you will produce a prototype that can be presented within SAE, as well as to external stakeholders.
• Credit points: 10 The unit introduces the theories and applications of user-experience design principles relevant to interactive Augmented and Virtual Reality experiences, and the practical knowledge required in the technical production and development of introductory experiences. Practical, project-based learning activities will be completed in parallel with theoretical discourse and collaborative research. Blue-sky thinking and speculative design are encouraged to allow for the conceptual development of ideas.
• Credit points: 10 In this audio unit, you'll enhance critical listening and technical abilities by comparing and contrasting environments, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and workflows. You will chronologically explore the art of mixing through a variety of styles and gain insights into its contemporary role in music consumption. The course addresses environmental impact on mixes and offers optimisation strategies, allowing you to expand and refine your workflows to service a variety of musical styles and listening environments.