Mission Statement
The mission of the Music Production and Engineer (MP&E) Department at Berklee College of Music is to educate and train students in the art and craft of music production and engineering. Within a collaborative, project-oriented environment, we prepare you, the student, for a meaningful career in the music industry.
It is our belief that your success in the highly competitive and rapidly evolving field of music technology begins with a solid musical foundation, including strong musicianship, musical sensitivity, versatility, and critical-listening ability. Also paramount to this endeavor are the development of strong communication and interpersonal skills informed by professional standards, practice, and etiquette.
To this end, we have designed a curriculum that focuses on critical thinking, problem solving, the development of strong listening skills, and collaboration. Time management, organizational skills, attention to detail, and proper documentation are also integral parts of the experience.
Collaboration is the cornerstone of MP&E. Being dependent on others and having others depend on you cultivates the acquisition of all of the above skills and traits. This interdependence also fosters the development of relationships toward career network support. Student collaborators of today become music industry peers tomorrow.
The MP&E engineering curriculum is built on the notion that one’s ability to absorb and adapt to ever-changing technology is dependent not only on the capacity to think critically, but also on a foundational understanding of digital and analog audio systems from an acoustical, electrical, and signal flow perspective, balancing new state-of-the-art techniques with an understanding of historical context.
Further, we know that reinforcing this knowledge with substantial hands-on project time, using professional equipment, is the only way to attain the technical facility necessary for a real career involving music technology. Therefore, we emphasize small class sizes and hands-on production projects in a professional recording environment.