Rising Music Technology Senior @NYU-Cliff, What classes should I take?

tfodor

tfodor

Inspired
Hey Cliff and Fractal Community!

I'm trying to spread my chops into something that aligns with amp modeling and what goes on at Fractal, Line 6, etc etc. I have a strong background in sound design, electronic components, and audio programming for video games.

Going into my 4th year, considering what comes into play for amp modeling, what classes should I take? I was going to take Signal Theory II and DSP Processing, hoping that these would throw me into some of the things you guys work on.

Thanks as always!

TF
 
If you're looking to design this kind of stuff, knowledge of DSP is a must. The signal theory course will help, too, but I don't know what a music technology degree is built on, or what courses you've had already (or what kind of work you want to get into, for that matter).

The "traditional" way of getting into digital design is with en electrical engineering degree, though these days there may be computer engineering degrees that get you there too.
 
Rex said:
If you're looking to design this kind of stuff, knowledge of DSP is a must. The signal theory course will help, too, but I don't know what a music technology degree is built on, or what courses you've had already (or what kind of work you want to get into, for that matter).

The "traditional" way of getting into digital design is with en electrical engineering degree, though these days there may be computer engineering degrees that get you there too.
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Thanks for the reply Rex! Music tech throws us into a lot of different things. I spent my first two years covering a classic music degree with theory/ear training/performance and since then have taken classes ranging from studio engineering, live engineering, developing with Max MSP, and a few electronics classes. I've interned at studios, hacked out some audio code (MIDI controllers to reverb plugins) worked at music labels and companies, built a ton of guitar pedals, and currently work as a sound designer for a VR startup. To summarize, music tech is a whole range of music and audio related stuff. pretty cool :)

I guess to answer your question, I'm just really curious about what the audio engineers 'do' at Fractal. I read that the majority (all?) are musicians, but I'm curious about the number of those who started in a place like me and progressed into digital design.
 
That's a good start. As near as I can tell, Max MSP is geared toward performance and music production, but it may not be the complete picture you'd need to design Fractal-type hardware and software. To be fluent in creating DSP gear, you need to not only know how DSP works, but also know the analog circuits that the DSP mimics, and be able to transform information between those two domains. To design at Cliff's level, you'll need an electrical engineer's understanding of those things, along with a solid understanding of the idiosyncrasies of tube amplification, which is filled with myths and half-truths that "everybody knows," and that you'll have to be able to filter out. If that's where you're headed, you'll probably want to steer your training more toward the hard-tech side.
 
I could be wrong, but isn't the hardest part of modelling technology more about programming than hardware? If so, I could imagine a degrees in IT more beneficial.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
I could be wrong, but isn't the hardest part of modelling technology more about programming than hardware? If so, I could imagine a degrees in IT more beneficial.
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That's a big part of it. But all that programming us for nought without a solid understanding of what you're going to model. If you're going to accurately model the eddy currents and magnetic fields in an output transformer, you'll need an engineer's understanding of that. Ditto if you're going to derive and solve mesh equations as a basis for your modeling.

The OP's question was framed in terms of what comes into play for amp modeling, and writing the code is just one part of that.
 
I'm no expert but I think to get to the level of modeling that Cliff has achieved here you'd need a good knowledge of circuit simulation techniques or computational electromagnetics.
 
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