FTCC will offer a Entertainment Technologies degree starting in the fall of 2024. [Photo by Brad Losh]
FTCC Music Instructor Alec Powers has heard the concerns.
“Students would come to us and say, ‘I don’t really play an instrument, but I want to do something in music,’” Powers said.
Powers and his colleagues in the Media & Fine Arts department have found a solution, developing the Entertainment Technologies program, an Associate in Applied Science degree designed to give students skills in the more technical aspects of music production and live entertainment.
The two-year program will make its debut this Fall. Enrollment is open now.
The courses cover a wide range of technical topics, from running sound and lighting at live shows to recording engineering, as well as songwriting publishing and entertainment law.
Powers said the Entertainment Technologies program might draw an interest from students who have focused on making beats on their laptops or contemporary music production.
“This program might be for students who don’t want to pursue a four-year degree or study classical music in that sense,” Powers said. “Maybe they do DJ-ing or producing or they’re interested in working for a sound house.”
The Entertainment Technologies program includes coursework on technical skills like running sound at live events. [Photo by Brad Losh]
The curriculum also touches on marketing and promotion in the entertainment industry and managing a career in a field that might include working contract-to-contract.
The program prepares students for entry-level jobs as crew or production assistants in concert or event setups, with recording companies, or with sound/lighting companies.
The Entertainment Technologies program still includes plenty of fundamental music instruction, providing opportunities for students in the Associate in Fine Arts in Music degree program to take courses in the Entertainment Technologies pathway — and vice versa — and fulfill their requirements for graduation.
“The feedback that we get sometimes is from students who end up as Music majors but are disappointed in the actual academic structure of the degree,” Powers said. “They want these hands-on technical skills.”
