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    • Music Technology

    • In this Music Technology taster course you will complete the following.

      Introduction
      Web Resources
      Video
      Summary
      Quiz
      Extended Reading

    • Introduction

    • Welcome to this short introductory session to the A Level Music Technology course.  

      This will help to prepare you when you start learning Music Technology with Gower College Swansea!  

      Whether you are working in the college recording studios, creating and composing using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), or simply learning about how some of the greatest rock and pop music was created, sound, how it behaves and how we can shape it, will form an integral part of your learning. 

      Although your A level will cover many things from studio recording to MIDI and sampling, this short introductory course concentrates on synthesisers. 


    • Web Resources

    • Here’s a link to a great webpage where you can explore the basic principles of creating sound using a synthesiser:  Learning Synths - Get Started. Don’t worry, you won’t need any equipment for this page to work, but make sure you have your volume turned up!   

      There are a lot of pages to navigate through so don’t expect to complete them all in one go.  They’re pretty basic at first but they get more complex as you progress so take the time to learn what each section means and how the controllers modify a particular element of the sound. 

      Here’s a quick summary of the things covered: 

      1. A synthesiser’s basic tone is produced by an oscillator. 
      2. The shape of the tone can be changed over time by an envelope. 
      3. The tone can be sculpted using a filter. 
      4. An LFO can be used to modify or control a particular element of your synthesiser.  (Think of a basic vibrato where the pitch is constantly increasing or decreasing around a central fixed frequency) 

      Using a more complicated synthesiser, the ideas you have learned can be combined to recreate the recognisable synth sounds heard on the classic 70s rock tracks below.  

    • Video

    • Watch these YouTube videos: Where each sound is faithfully recreated, step by step, and compare each one with the original timbre found in the classic rock track.  You can check out the original tracks in the videos below:

      See Video 1 - Fly Like an Eagle (Steve Miller Band)(1976)  appears at 1:00 in the  Classic Rock Synth Sounds video.Listen to the original timbre at 0:40 & 1:55:

      See Video 2 - Karn Evil 9 (Emerson, Lake &  Palmer)(1973)  appears  at 2:18 in  the  Classic Rock Synth Sounds video. Listen to the original timbre at 8:36:

      See Video 3 - Frankenstein (Edgar Winter Group)(1972) appears at 4:08 in the Classic Rock Synth Sounds video.Listen to the original timbre at 3:15:

      See Video 4 - Life’s Been Good  To Me So Far (Joe Walsh)( 1978) appears at 6:42 in the Classic Rock Synth Sounds  video.Listen to the original timbre at 2:54:

      See Video 5 - Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who)( 1971) appears at 9:08 in the Classic Rock Synth Sounds  video.Listen to the original timbre at 6:40:

    • Summary

    • Thank you for completing this short course, we hope you enjoyed it!  We look forward to seeing you when you join us for the next step in your education with Gower College Swansea.


    • Quiz

    • Try this quiz 

      Launch the quiz and test what you have learned!

      Launch quiz

    • Extended Reading

    • Watch the video: Jean Michel Jarre talks about the instruments he used to make the classic album Oxygene...


      If you would like to learn more about Music Technology then have a look at some further resources and

      reading below: