South Birmingham College training

South Birmingham College have 11,500 enrolled students and 723 staff spread over four campuses. They have Beacon Status.  Courses offeredBTEC L2 Diploma in MusicNCFE L2 Certificate in Music TechnologyBTEC L3 Subsiduary Diploma in Music Technology (Events Support) BTEC L3 Diploma in MusicBTEC L3 Diploma in Music TechnologyBTEC L3 Extended Diploma in MusicBTEC L3 Extended Diploma in Music TechnologyHigher National Diploma L4/5 in Popular Music Practice (in association with Birmingham City University)Computer SuitesSBC have three PC based suites with 63 music workstations with Cubase and Wavelab and two Apple Mac suites running Cubase and other DAWs. It is a goal of the music department to offer students training in a number of applications so they are proficient across a variety of up to date technologies.There are also a number of PC and Mac laptops for student use outside of timetabled lessons and for home/field use. In total, there are 105 individual workstations. Recording SuitesThere are four well equipped studios that run Apple macs - each offering the latest DAW’s and individual hardware configurations so that the student is able to gain valuable experience in differing recording and mixing environments. In addition, the college has six rehearsal rooms with an impressive collection of PA and backline systems and a full sized venue with a recording system and a flown Nexo PA system. We asked Nik Wells about the integration of Cubase into their curriculum. Cubase is currently used by students on all the above courses but is mainly used in the delivery of the BTEC Level 3 courses as well as the NCFE L2 courses. Reason is mainly used on the BTEC L2 Diploma in Music as an introduction to the concepts of MIDI sequencing then Cubase is introduced at Level 3 as a professional level/industry standard DAW and it is the main/only sequencing platform then taught on these courses. Units covered on these courses include Sequencing Systems and Techniques, Sound Creation and Manipulation and several others all of which use Cubase as the main platform for the delivery of these units. Cubase (along side other DAWs) is used as the main DAW packages for recording in the studios and is used for the delivery of all the recording/studio units on the L3 courses. Cubase is also the main/only DAW used in the delivery of the NCFE L2 course. Students doing the 2 year L3 Extended Diploma courses are also introduced to other DAWs in their 2nd year and continue to use both if they progress to the HND course. Students on the HND course are allowed to make their own preferred choice of DAW for use in project/studio work. We prefer to expose the higher level students to various sequencing platforms in preparation for the real world where they will encounter a mixture of all these programs within the industry.All of our computers (PC and Mac) are currently 'standalone' which means that they are individual units which only connect to the Colleges network for Internet access. All other computers in the College are remote-booted from the College network and access all their software from a central server. The reason why our computers in the Music department (and the Media department) are standalone is mainly due to the software we use. We have found that high-end DAW's such as Cubase are so reliant on processor, RAM, HD and general computer performance due to the real-time nature of a lot of their functions and the speed/performance required for real-time multitrack audio recording and playback (not to mention any kind of processing etc) and unfortunately our current College network cannot cope with these kind of demands placed upon it. This issue is further compounded by the requirements of multiple users all at one time as well. However, we are working with our IT department to look into the possibilities of upgrading our College networks so that they can deal with such software requirements in the future.As you can imagine, installing Cubase on over 100 individual computers can be time-consuming and labour-intensive so we tend to create 'base' machines to create images from and then use software such as Norton Ghost to install these images on all the machines. Despite the range of instruments available in Cubase 6, we also install a range of free 3rd party developed VST instruments and plugins to demonstrate the range that are available. Nik also mentioned that where possible, they install the dongle on the inside of the machine. With Mac’s they have devised a system where they book dongles out. We know of other schools who store dongles and keys in metal boxes underneath the desk. We thank Nik and the South Birmingham College for their time in putting together this case study. We are very much looking forward to running some Steinberg training events at their impressive facilities in the near future.

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