Berklee today is the official alumni publication of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a forum for contemporary music and musicians.
Issue link: http://berkleetoday.epubxp.com/i/180042
Hollywood to Valencia Round Trip In the fall of 2012, Laura Karpman joined the scoring for flm, television, and video games faculty to teach video game scoring. A multi–Emmy Award–winning flm and TV composer, Karpman works with top movie and TV directors, creates music for popular video games (Kung Fu Panda, EverQuest, and others), and composes works for the concert stage. As an expert in orchestral music and technology, she was a perfect ft for Valencia. "We had students from all over the world," Karpman recalls, "just four Americans. It was a crossroads musically, conceptually, and socially, and that was the best thing about this experience." With collaboration being the watchword in Valencia, the flm scoring students worked extensively with one another and with performance majors. Karpman collaborated with the students too. "I composed two major scores during my year in Valencia and featured all Berklee musicians," she says. "There was such diversity of instrumentation here in addition to the typical flm-scoring instrumentation. This program enables students to record and produce a range of music and engage with world music in a way that's unlike any other program." Given her experience and vision, Karpman was named the interim program director last January. Nora KrollRosenbaum, who works extensively with Karpman, assisted her in fne-tuning the program for the spring. The students all had strong musical backgrounds, but some had less facility with recording and flm scoring technology. Among other things, Kroll-Rosenbaum taught a course to help all students learn the technology. Musical backgrounds varied too. Carla Patullo, an American, graduated from Berklee Boston as a songwriting major and Camilla Giovanna, an Italian, is a classically trained composer. Although they have vastly different musical sensibilities, both were assigned the same scoring exercises. "Carla has gift for creating great melodies but needed experience orchestrating," Karpman explains. "Camilla wrote very complex modern music and needed to learn more about writing memorable melodies. We took each student's needs into consideration." "As students, we all infuenced each other," Patullo says. "It was interesting to see the different strengths and styles, and how differently everyone approached the same scene." "I became a professional composer here," Giovanna says. "I learned to manage many different aspects of this job. I didn't know how to use Pro Tools when I came here, and while I'm not yet a master, I know I can work now." Karpman devised a stellar culminating experience for flmscoring majors. "For their fnal project, I arranged for all 20 of the students to come to Los Angeles and record a cue they'd composed with a 50-piece orchestra on the Warner Bros stage," she says. "I wanted them all to have a 'Hollywood experience' and leave the program with a great portfolio of recorded music." After completing her contract in July, Karpman returned to her scoring work in Los Angeles. Several of her students chose Hollywood for their next career move. Patullo and Giovanna are currently working with Karpman and Kroll-Rosenbaum. Irish-born composer Amie Doherty is in Los Angeles and worked on a short flm with director Mark-Anthony Marez and is interning at Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions. Kevin Smithers is interning with rising composer Lucas Vidal '06, and Riley Hughes is interning with composer J.A.C. Redford. "They're trained and ready to go," Karpman adds. Argentinian flm composer Lucio Godoy became the major's new director in September. Unleashing a Tech Tsunami Stephen Webber, who for two decades has been a faculty member in Berklee Boston's MP&E; Department, is the director for the Music Technology Innovation graduate program. After helping to outft studios, hire faculty members, and audition students, the actual teaching began in September. Having "innovation" as part of the title of the major gave Webber a moment's pause. "That upped the ante," Webber says. "I've read every critically hailed book on innovation I could fnd. My goal is to teach it in a nuts-and-bolts fashion examining the traits of innovators and deriving strategies by studying the lives of people like Leonardo da Vinci, Bob Moog, or Imogen Heap. It was amazing for me to see how often some of them failed but kept going and developing. It will be exciting to try to inspire the students and give them real tools for innovating." The tech majors will work extensively in Valencia's studio facilities that are loaded with the latest gear and software programs. The fagship studio, the Ann Kreis Scoring Stage, is named for Berklee trustee Ann Kreis, whose gift helped create a state-of-the-art scoring stage for recording music to picture or straight audio sessions. The booth has 7.1 surround-sound capability and Avid's System 5 console. Webber recruited to his faculty MP&E; grad Ian Kagey '07, who is an expert on the complex Avid system. The studio also has an extensive video network for communication between the musicians and engineers in the booth, and for making video recordings of the sessions. Additionally, two technology labs are equipped with digital-audio workstations housing a Mac Pro, a PC, and an Xbox, two screens, and a Euphonix Artist Control. The students will also create a variety of projects on laptops and iPads. During the auditions, Webber encountered many musicians with extensive musical skills who realized that spending a year learning how to exploit technology would aid their careers and amplify their musicianship more than anything else. They included composers, performers, music producers, DJs, and those who write apps. "Everybody in this major is going to develop video chops; learn to write some code; reach Ninja level on Pro Tools, Ableton Live, and MaxMSP; and then design their own fnal project," Webber says. "This promises to be an intense year." Of course, cross-department collaborations are fostered. Webber is teaching a production class for performance majors that will "get their hands dirty working on all aspects of a project from start to fnish." Performance majors will be paired with a music technology innovation major as their technology partner for the project. Conversely, performance majors will serve as musical advisers to technology students on their projects. Webber will teach the innovation seminar to prepare students for their fnal project. "I think we will be surprised by what they come up with," he predicts. "Some want to write apps for the iPad, iPhone, and Android systems for music interactivity projects. Others want to create a multimedia composition that includes video, live performance, and surroundsound aspects. Others want to design hyper-instruments that have electronic components, a system made up of controllers and recognizable instruments. I think the projects will run the gamut. We want them to get out in front of technology and help invent the future. "Although the program has barely begun," Webber says, "I've already been contacted by headhunters for music instrument technology companies who want to conduct interviews here at the end of the academic year." Laura Karpman Stephen Webber Toward the Future While the program is still nascent, word about Berklee Valencia is steadily spreading. There were more applicants for this year's class than there were during the frst year. Currently, there are 109 students from 30 different countries enrolled in the master's programs, and 80 undergraduate students will participate in the study abroad in Valencia over the course of the fall and spring semesters. "The Berklee Valencia campus is an achievement of enormous scope," says Roger Brown. "We're no longer simply an American college with international enrollment, we're a truly global institution. In addition to our fagship campus here in Boston, we're offering online courses that reach people regardless of geography. But we now have a European campus accessible to North Africa and the Middle East that is accredited throughout Europe and the U.S. So many people within Berklee helped to make this a success. 'Abrazos fuertes' to all!" Fall2013 27