Music Recording Arts Concentration

The Don Reddick Recording Studio, housed in the School of Music, provides a context for students to learn the practical, musical, creative and philosophical skills necessary to build a career in recording and producing music.

Program Overview

Students who pursue a B.A. in Recording Arts will develop diverse skills to bring into a career in creative recording and audio engineering. The School of Music’s recording studio is available to Recording Arts students for school projects and personal projects. This creates an environment of collaboration and hands-on learning, much like creativity happens in the music industry.

This program focuses on developing the skills and critical thinking required to approach the art of recording music successfully. There are many practical considerations addressed, including fundamentals of recording technology, studio operation, DAW use, recording techniques, and mixing strategies. However, students are encouraged to approach recording music artistically and find their voice as audio engineers, music producers, and recording artists.

Each class in the Recording Arts major focuses on hands-on learning through individual and group projects. Senior Recording Arts Majors will complete their undergraduate study with a final project pursued in the Recording Practicum. This project, accompanied by creative analysis and research, is a more extensive work representative of their learned skills and contribution to the recording industry.

More About Our Studio

The Don Reddick Recording Studio is an educational facility available to Olivet students and faculty to develop professional and creative skills in recording arts. Students, faculty, alums, and community members are invited to collaborate with Olivet’s studio engineers to record and produce creative works that are musically and technically excellent, commercially competitive, and glorify God.

The centerpiece of the recording studio is a Focusrite RedNet interface system integrated via Dante. The studio connects the control room to the main live room and two isolation booths via Dante to record 24 simultaneous inputs. This hybrid studio is processed through an HDX Pro Tools system in the control room. In addition to a package of Pro Tools standard plugins, our studio hosts the entire Slate Digital All-Access Pass collection of plug-ins and virtual instruments.

The recording studio is well-suited for most recording applications, with a diverse collection of microphones from Shure, Electro-Voice, Sennheiser, and Warm Audio. Available instruments include a Hammond B3 organ, a Nord keyboard, a Pearl Masters Maple Gum Five-Piece drum set with Zildjian K series cymbals, and several guitar amps, including a Fender Twin Reverb. The main control room features a dual monitoring setup that can switch between the center Yamaha HS8s or the outside Focal Be6. The control room has a PreSonus Faderport 16 DAW controller for hands-on mixing and an M-Audio Hammer 88 Midi keyboard for playing virtual instruments. For monitoring, our studio utilizes Allen & Heath ME-1 personal monitoring units connected via Dante for high-precision custom mixes for all musicians in the studio.