Chips with music...

Multi-media, man! Audio-engineering, cool! Not to mention psychoacoustics, digital signal processing and algorithmic composition. We're talking cutting edge here in terms of music and media technologies.

At the moment, 20 postgraduate students are studying for a new diploma course in music and media technologies at TCD. The course is run jointly by TCD's school of music and its department of electronic and electrical engineering.

Dr Dermot Furlong, course co-ordinator, explains that music has come to rely increasingly on the use of complex, electronic and computer-based resources for composition, scoring, recording, editing and even performance. "Applicants must have music ability and some knowledge of notation," he says.

The course has already attracted a lot interest among under-graduates. "There's a huge demand," says Furlong. "We interviewed over 60 people for 20 places this year. We take on roughly half music graduates."

The other half, he explains, is made up of graduates from all sorts of backgrounds, but particularly in engineering, science and maths. Each year the course also takes two or three students who have no degree but who do have relevant experience in a related industry or field. The course is now in its third year.

Furlong explains that, within the audio-engineering area and generally for many working in the music industry, a painful learning process is involved. Musicians have to come to terms with all sorts of technologies and engineers have to develop a musical understanding which will allow them to work effectively in their area.

Those who complete the postgraduate diploma are ready to work in computer-assisted composition and production, apply software tools for the music industries or enter the area of "music on screen" production for multimedia products.

At the core of the course is hands-on training on computer music work stations where students are exposed to computer-based composition and production.

The aim is to give creative individuals a chance to develop and allow them feel at home with both the technological aspects of music and multimedia production and the disciplines involved in music composition, arrangement and performance. The year develops a student's musical and compositional ability along with his or her technological capacity.

First year is a self-contained postgraduate diploma. Some who complete the year and achieve a sufficient standard in the diploma exams carry on to do a master's course. This second year has a greater research orientation - it requires the completion of a research project of a musical or technological nature in the second semester.