Jamie Bell Recording Studio Gets Upgrade Thanks to Microgrant

With the innovation grant featured in the latest episode of our "FutureCast" podcast*, we learn how SCH is moving into the next frontier with an immersive sound system in the school’s Jamie Bell Recording Studio. Students in music, film, and VR are now able to gain hands-on experience creating in Dolby Atmos, the cutting-edge audio technology that is used in professional film and sound studios.

CEL teacher Adam Butz-Weidner’s innovation microgrant takes the studio from a stereo environment to the next level with eight speakers providing a spatial and immersive sound experience. Catch the team’s enthusiasm for the impact of Dolby Atmos here as they listen to a Star Wars trailer highlighting the effect of the installation. Here are some highlights:

On Dolby

Dolby Atmos expands the space where you can be making sound and designing music from not just the left, right, and in front of you but all around you and specifically above you as well.

On Immersion

So many things that students are interacting with now—whether it's the music they're playing on their Airpods or the video games they play—are really centered around immersion, and a huge aspect of that, of course, is the sound. As we step into the future where people be making content in that space, I would love our students to have experience making, creating, and thinking as immersive creators. Already, our students have been in here absolutely marveling at the idea that they can suddenly put an electric piano behind them, a kickdrum in front of them, and they can put the snares above them to make it sound like some kind of heavenly boom. 

On Future Plans

The plans are for this upcoming semester when the songwriting class is underway. One of our major projects is to have two things that the students will be doing in here: first off, sound designing a scene from a film that they might already know where the music has been stripped and then on top of that composing original music in the same fashion that Hans Zimmer might where they have access to the space.

Listen to the podcast here.

*FutureCast: Unbounded Curiosity—The SCHool Podcast is produced by CEL executive director Ed Glassman and chief innovation officer Pete DiDonato to dive deeper into the 12 projects that were awarded funding with the faculty & staff whose vision will be coming to life this spring. (DiDonato recently spoke about microgrants in another podcast, which you can read about and watch here.)