The digital music production (DMP) minor, launched this semester, is an interdisciplinary program that will appeal to students from many different fields.

The program’s director, Tomas Henriques (pictured), assistant professor of music, said that students from majors other than music have been very successful in Electronic Music Composition, one of the minor’s required courses. “They were committed and enthusiastic,” Henriques said. “They knew how to play guitars and use computers, and they were thrilled to be able to bring order to their experiments in creating music.”

Henriques, a composer himself, sees music composition as a way to harvest the creativity people already have. “Luciano Pavarotti and Paul McCartney didn’t know how to read music when they began their careers,” he said. “Music is within us; we just have to explore it.”

The 21-credit-hour minor is interdisciplinary, offering courses from the Communication and Physics departments as well as the Music Department. The required courses are Understanding Sound (PHY 103); Introduction to Sound Recording and Reinforcement (DMP 221); Electronic Music Composition I (DMP 350); and Final Project (DMP 495), in which students compose a short original work.

The three elective courses can be chosen from the Music and Communication departments. They are Recording Techniques (DMP 321); Electronic Music Composition II (DMP 351); Real Time Interactive Computer Music (DMP 450); Basic Media Production (COM 312); Audio Production (COM 328); and Advanced Audio Production (COM 428).

In addition to his work as a composer, Henriques is a creator of innovative electronic instruments. He won the 2010 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, an annual event at the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, for his Double Slide Controller, an electronic instrument featuring two slides inspired by the trombone. The prize is awarded for an instrument that integrates musicality, design, and engineering.

Before coming to Buffalo State in 2009, Henriques was a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, working in the area of real-time interactive music composition and also developing new interfaces for real time speech synthesis. His compositions have been played in concerts in the United States and Europe.

Henriques sees technology and music as inseparable. “Any instrument is technology,” he said, “and so technology has always been part of music. Now that we have these exciting new digital tools, it would be remiss not to take advantage of them.”

Music is, of course, sound, and sound plays an important role in arts and entertainment, whether it is music for dance and theater or the sound of rain or footsteps in a film. “The minor will benefit students by giving them the skills, knowledge, and tools to design and compose sound and music digitally, to learn the performance capabilities of new electronic instruments, and to learn sound recording techniques, thus significantly expanding their career options,” said Henriques.

Henriques noted that today’s students come to college familiar with digital devices. He said, “It would be a waste if we didn’t give them a chance to use the talents and skills they already possess to apply them musically.”