Immersive Music Production

Course Description

This course gives students hands-on experience in the techniques of music production, studio composition, and sound design, focusing on both traditional and novel approaches. Aspiring producers, composers, songwriters, and sound designers will explore modern music production techniques including multitrack recording, acoustical and digital effects processing, and spatial mixing. They will also gain understanding for the components and signal flow of a recording studio and how it operates. Through a series of individual and collaborative projects, participants will learn to record and process audio in physical and virtual environments, develop production and compositional techniques, and build proficiency in a digital audio workstation (DAW).

Additionally, the course introduces students to immersive audio and guides them through mixing in Dolby Atmos and recording in augmented environments using CCRMA’s unique virtual acoustics system (CAVIAR). Students will have the opportunity to experiment with creating 3D “immersive” soundscapes, design custom virtual instruments, and create their own acoustical environments from impulse responses. The course culminates in a final project where students integrate their skills to produce an immersive song, composition, or soundscape. By the end, students will leave with a portfolio showcasing their growth and abilities in immersive music production. The course culminates with a public show.

Meet the Instructor

Hassan Estakhrian

Hassan Estakhrian is a cross-disciplinary musician based in California. He works as a composer, performer, songwriter, intermedia artist, producer, music technologist, audio engineer, and educator. Hassan performs and records on multiple instruments, including voice, electric bass, guitar, keyboards, drum set, and others. He collides genres of rock, funk, and jazz with experimental and contemporary classical, sometimes integrating various technologies and media to create large scale intermedia works. His body of work includes rock operas, chamber pieces, games with adaptive graphic scores, structured improvisation, and intermedia stories based in fantasy and science fiction. As a technologist and audio engineer, Hassan produces records in the studio and immersive mixes, develops tools for music production, compositional aid, and live performance, and does research in virtual acoustics and immersive audio.

Hassan directs his band Antenna Fuzz and is half of experimental-pop duo Meoark. He also works with a variety of artists across genres and media. He has performed and recorded with rock bands such as Valerian Sun and contemporary classical ensembles like WasteLAnd and Dal Niente. As a composer and performer, he has written for ensembles such as JACK Quartet, Tak Ensemble, Variant 6, and Kukuruz Quartet. His work has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia. 

Hassan holds a DMA from Stanford University and lectures at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He also helps maintain and develop CCRMA’s virtual acoustics system (CAVIAR) and manages its recording studio. More info at antennafuzz.com.