Music facilities

Music facilities

We understand how important it is for music students to choose a place to study that can truly offer the variety and quantity of resources required to hone your skills and maximise your study time and employment opportunities.

Music students at the University of Hertfordshire have access to a stunning array of well-maintained resources and facilities aligned to industry standards. In addition to a well-stocked loan-store offering portable equipment to use, you will find:

Studio One

We are very proud to be able to introduce you to Studio One, our world-class flagship recording studio based around a 32 input Neve Genesys Black recording console and PMC IB2-SA active main monitors.

Outboard processing includes analogue (valve & solid state) and digital designs from some of the most highly regarded manufacturers in professional audio. The large control room is air-conditioned and can comfortably accommodate up to eight users. Professional acoustic design and treatment ensure absolute accuracy when tracking, mixing and mastering in stereo or 5.1 surround (including sound-to-picture projects).

The live room is similarly treated with the addition of variable acoustics, allowing the flexibility to control the ambience, and can accommodate groups of up to 10 performers. Line-of-sight between rooms, along with individual 8-channel headphone mixers, keeps sessions flowing and gives confidence to engineers, producers and recording artists. Sessions can easily be transferred to our Studio Two, which has identical signal paths and equipment, to keep the workflow uninterrupted.

This is an incredibly well-specified facility, designed with the intention of giving students access to industry standard equipment and enviable hands-on experience. Studio One can hold its own against any high-end studio of its scale worldwide.

Studio Two

Welcome to Studio Two. The smaller, more intimate nature of this space (compared to Studio One), hides its incredibly well controlled acoustic and its ability to punch well above its weight.

Here you will learn how to harness the full power of world class equipment and signal paths, the formidable processing power of the Neve Genesys Blue console, along with industry standard software titans such as Pro Tools and Logic Pro. Monitor through highly acclaimed PMC and Neumann systems in both stereo and surround. Dedicated 8-channel headphone mixers allow artists to set their own levels, saving valuable session time and creating a confident recording vibe.

It’s perfect for smaller recording or overdubbing sessions with its adjacent studio space but equally capable of handling huge mixing sessions due to its identical equipment list and channel count as Studio One. Sessions can easily be transferred between both studios allowing you to maximise session time and experience uninterrupted workflows.

Live sound and lighting stage

Situated close to the Television Studios and packed with the latest in performance technology is our impressive Live Sound and Lighting Stage, the latest addition to our music facilities.

This teaching space has been designed to accurately model a large, highly-specified and modern live venue, with the exception that the central audience space has been scaled down. This enables music students to authentically put their knowledge and skills into practice, whether that be organising and hosing an event, performing on the stage, working in the wings or behind the sound and lighting consoles(s).

The space also hosts four high-end workstations each with an Avolites Titan Mobile with full integration into Capture lighting design software. These dedicated high performance workstations allow the opportunity to create a lighting design in a 3D virtual environment. This offers the flexibility to programme using a 24” screen, save the file and deploy this in any real world setting from small capacity venues through to stadiums.

The John Lil teaching and performing space (plus control room)

In addition to teaching, this large 120 seat multi-purpose space can accommodate recording, live showcases and concerts.

For our concerts and live showcases, extendable raked seating provides a professional setting for an audience, while the acoustically designed ceiling helps project the voice from the front stage to the back of the space without the need for microphones.

For recording, the space is able to be transformed into a substantial live room. The raked seating folds right the way back, making the space ideal for working with and recording both bands and larger ensembles. A series of movable sound absorption baffles let our student engineers isolate and control spillage between instruments during the recording process. Using our Focusrite RedNet Audio Network, signals are routed through to the adjoining control room, for monitoring, tracking or live front of house mixing.

Our RedNet system also connects both these spaces to the other listening and edit rooms within the Film, Music and Media building, so other isolated instruments can feed in to recording session, or a live feed can be patched out to an edit room for monitoring a live broadcast.

This offers students across the music courses an effective and flexible way to record musicians in an environment optimised for performance.

Edit and monitor suites

In addition to our dedicated recording studios and workstation spaces, we have four bespoke edit and monitor suites available for student use (red, amber, blue and green).

In these comfortable facilities you will find powerful dual-monitor Mac computers utilising multiple Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) and an excellent range of the best, and most relevant, audio plug-in processors and instruments. Each room is fully-equipped with Universal Audio Apollo audio interfaces for very high-quality recording and full 5.1 surround-sound mixing and monitoring. Additionally, each room features the latest RedNet audio networking technology for connecting studio spaces throughout the University.

Whether you want to work on your composition, song writing, production, mix skills, mastering or sound design, or just need a quiet study room, these spaces offer everyday access to all the most relevant and up-to-date software in an environment optimised for the task.

Dubbing Studios

Our Dubbing Studios are the ideal space for the specific demands of film and media work.

The studio has a control room equipped with a large screen and 5.1 surround sound system, as well as a recording booth specifically set up for ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) and Foley work.

From the recording booth, with line of sight into the control room, dubbing and Foley artists can follow the action being re-played on a dedicated screen and perform dialogue and/or sound FX in sync with the image, while the recording engineer takes care of capturing and editing the sounds on a dedicated console.

Critical Listening Room

With the proliferation of portable music technology and home studios, an accurate listening environment is one area that is often overlooked. The ability to monitor your projects accurately depends on high-quality loudspeakers combined with an acoustically ‘neutral’ room for listening.

Our Critical Listening Room gives students the ability to mix and master their work in a well isolated and dedicated environment with Adams Monitors and Neumann 5.1 surround monitoring systems available.

The HD TV makes this space ideal for sound to picture work.

Critical listening environment are rare, and we are proud to provide our students with this invaluable and comfortable space to progress and develop their work. The Critical Listening Room allows us to carry out a crucially important area of our studies – to develop and learn how to listen.

Digital audio workstations / labs

Our two ‘Mac-Labs’ provide students with access to high-spec iMacs with an enviable suite of music software. Each machine is equipped with a Novation Launchkey MIDI keyboard and a second display.

As well as lecture spaces, these labs are open for student access whenever teaching is not happening, with opening hours from 09.00 - 21.00 throughout most of Semester A and B.

Support is on hand from a dedicated team of specialist music technicians to help out with any issues.

Teaching accommodation

Music teaching is accommodated from the film, music and media building within large, comfortable and well-equipped spaces. The building also supports film and television, digital animation and media courses, situating music students in close proximity to peers studying related disciplines.

Practice / rehearsal rooms

Rehearsal rooms have been designed to facilitate ‘quiet practice’ for ensembles of up to five people. A digital drumkit and keyboard are provided.

Inputs for microphones, bass and guitars have also been arranged around the space. Headphone outputs allow two discrete headphone mixes to be created. Guitar amp emulators and mixer units are housed in a compact, easy to use rack.

Recording is also possible allowing easy capture of rehearsal sessions.