Why Study Music At Kingston?

It was something along the lines of “The Kingston music department is often visited by Tony Visconti”, that made me skip a beat while going through Kingston’s website back in November last year. This started off a seemingly never-ending list of things that made Kingston seem like a no-brainer.

Starting off with the foundations of the university; being based in London, a city which houses one of the biggest music scenes in the world, there is no shortage of real-world exposure and opportunities, which is essential in a field like recording or producing. Also, being able to visit or work in a place like Abbey Road Studios is mind blowing.

The bricks atop this foundation, so to speak, have to be the facilities. The Kingston Hill campus features everything from, a range of studios all decked out with gear from companies like SSL and Neumann, to the synth lab which features a variety of legendary synthesizers, including a mellotron! (The Beatles used a mellotron on the intro to Strawberry Fields Forever), to, the cherry on top, the loans room, which houses everything from niche quirky synths to legendary mics like the U-87 to every single cable known to mankind. It somehow gets even better, as the studios, the gear and the synth lab can all be booked to be used on your own time with just a few clicks, even during the holidays, which makes someone like me who usually gets inspired very randomly, very happy.

Before my course started, I was expecting the same to be majorly focused on production and for it to lightly touch upon the other mentioned areas. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of focus all areas related to music technology received, as our modules ranged from physics to electronic music, from recording all the way to the history of music tech.

In the aforementioned recording module, we recorded a song over the first semester, which gave me loads of practical know-how about mics, recording techniques, mixers etc. All of which, not only directly translate to potential careers, but also, help in my own projects. The recording process also came with some less obvious benefits, the biggest of which was that the journey acted as an amazing icebreaker between me and my colleagues and started a lot of potential collaborations.

Kingston also acted as the perfect cocoon to nurture these potential collaborations, with its always-available studios. This has already led to me making music with people from different continents using world-class gear and techniques, which is nothing short of a dream come true.

Cheers :smile: