Recording Arts

The Stanford Recording Arts Workshop is back and better than ever! Week 1 (July 27 - 31) is Producing, Arranging & Recording; Week 2 (Aug 3 - 7) is Mixing, Mastering & Releasing. But the truth is that we go where the recordings take us both weeks. Enroll in one or both weeks -- over 90% of students do both weeks. We will once again produce and release an entire album as a class ensemble in two weeks at Stanford’s state-of-the-art recording studio. Click here to hear 2024's double album recording!

If you’re looking to learn how to record and release a high-end album efficiently, and/or a professional-level recording of that track you’ve always wanted to make with an established industry production team and talented collaborative fellow student musicians ready to help bring your vision to life — this workshop is for you. Students of this course, who range every year from gifted college musicians to music professionals and professors, have gone on to achieve international success with tracks they created at the Stanford Workshop. One is now a Disney Audio Imagineer.

Here’s how it works...

Each student produces one or more collaborative tracks, assisted by the teaching team and fellow students. As we spend our days producing your recordings, teachers and special industry guests will instruct on things like running a recording a session, composing and arranging, microphone selection/polarity/placement, digital audio workstations (DAWs), tracking, comping multiple takes, effects, mixing, mastering, file and project management, branding, promotion, and digital distribution… all by a team who does this on a regular basis professionally (see bios below) but is 100% committed, in work and teaching, on fostering a fun and inclusive environment. That’s the best way to ensure a great recording or learning session, and there’s a reason why one of teacher Cory Cullinan’s most recent hits is called “Positive Energy."

So come get your minds and hands wrapped around custom-tailored solutions for your dream musical projects on Stanford's beautiful campus at one of the world’s most renowned music creativity and technology centers, CCRMA (Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics). You’ll live and breathe music all day and all week with passionate collaborators in a beautiful, acoustically treated Control Room and acoustically adjustable Live Room. A grand piano, collection of high end microphones, revered studio gear, instruments, synthesizers, and a team of collabrators making sure you get the recording you’ve imagined will be at your disposal. Doing so at a professional studio with equivalent facilities and expertise would cost you thousands with none of the personal training, connections and camaraderie.

Our Stanford Recording Arts Workshop ensemble has Stanford’s studio booked 24 hours a day for two weeks straight. Outside official Workshop course hours, students often spend the evenings, early mornings and weekends in the studio together helping each other track and hone their dream creations. The group often goes to lunch and dinner together right on campus. Longterm friendships and music connections are built. Students who attend online may still collaborate with in-person students; we’ve had remote students contribute bass tracks, synths, mixes and more to the collective album, and we trade off holding the Zoom phone for remote ensemble members to keep you right in on the sessions.

A weekly discount is given for students attending in person both weeks and helping create the album from start to finish; each week is $599 on its own, or $999 for both weeks. Favorite on-campus restaurants are a few minutes’ walk; rehearse together in other rooms at CCRMA, on the deck, under the trees, or for the adorable skunks in the back yard. (You think we’re joking…)

We’ll close our unforgettable two weeks with a Listening Party of the album and songs we just created. This is the environment you’ve always dreamed of to learn more about recording, get your dream creative projects done, and rejuvenate your musical muse and collaborative spirit.