New Orleans, Oct. 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aspiring producers, studio engineers, rap artists, singers, and musicians can now hone essential professional music industry skills through a new Urban and Electronic Music Production undergraduate degree program launching at Loyola University New Orleans in Fall 2019. Taught within the university’s celebrated College of Music and Fine Arts, the bachelor of science degree is the first of its kind in the country and allows students to develop valuable and relevant skill sets in production and performance that translate widely to the ever-changing modern music industry, while mastering the latest technology in the university’s state-of-the-art recording studios and studying with industry professionals in Loyola’s acclaimed Music Industry Studies program.
“It’s been 45 years since the birth of hip-hop, so it’s exciting to finally see academia focusing on the genres at the forefront of modern American pop,” said Lovell “U-P” Cooper, a New Orleans-based and Grammy-award-winning hip-hop producer and Loyola faculty member. “The great thing about this degree is that we make sure that the students not only get involved in performance and being creative with their music, lyric-writing, and productions. We also focus on their business skills and their learning the true business side of the music industry, while giving them a deep understanding of the hip-hop world and its lifestyle, history, and culture.”
Cooper — who both teaches courses in urban music production and live hip-hop performance and runs the recording studios at Loyola — emphasized the immersion aspect of the program. To stay true to the art form, and to really learn how to produce urban and electronic music, students need a historical context and deep understanding of the culture, lifestyle and music-making of the hip-hop world. To succeed in the industry, they also need to be grounded in core business skills that prepare them for work in areas “from legal to management to A&R, intellectual property rights, and marketing.” And, they need musicianship.
Rooted in the Jesuit university’s celebrated liberal arts curriculum, the program offers two tracks, one based on production, the other on performance. Students will master a multitude of music production softwares, learn the intricacies of the studio, and develop a critical ear that proves priceless in the business. In addition to learning how to navigate the business side of the music industry and use leading studio technology, students will hone their musical craft by studying with professional rappers, singers, and producers while expanding their musical influences in classes that focus on songwriting, poetry, and the history of urban music.
Like the university’s Popular and Commercial Music degree program, the new Urban and Electronic Music Production degree program at Loyola combines music technology, music production, and audio recording classes with courses covering the practices of the modern music business, said Kate Duncan, who currently leads the “PopComm” program at Loyola. Through regular music industry forums, students hear from campus visitors ranging from studio executives to artists.
With its four professional recording studios and numerous production courses, the Music Industry Studies program has developed a national reputation as a cultivator of upcoming hip-hop talent. Recent graduates include chart-topping rap superstar G-Eazy (Gerald Gillum, 2011), and Billboard-featured hip-hop producer Christoph Andersson (2014), among others.
“Creative expression comes in many forms, but they all have one thing in common: self-expression creates rights that create businesses that create revenue. The economy of the imagination is a real thing - almost one third of the GDP of this country flows from the monetization of intellectual property. It creates jobs, commerce, and culture,” said John Snyder, chair of the Department of Film and Music Industry Studies.
For more information on the program, click here.
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Loyola University New Orleans is a Catholic, Jesuit university located in the heart of the picturesque Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. For more than 100 years, Loyola has helped shape the lives of its students, as well as the history of the city and the world, through educating men and women in the Jesuit traditions of academic excellence and service to others. Loyola’s more than 40,000 graduates serve as catalysts for change in their communities as they exemplify the comprehensive, values-laden education received at Loyola.