IU Jacobs School to offer recording arts certificate through online courses
Guest post courtesy of IU Communications colleague Jaclyn Lansbery:
IU Jacobs School of Music professor Michael Stucker has worked with some of music’s biggest artists and bands – John Mellencamp, Tori Amos, The Fray and Eddie Kramer, to name a few. His work as a technical engineer in music studios allows him to merge two of his greatest passions: music and technology.
Soon, Stucker will be teaching an online class, part of President Michael A. McRobbie’s IU Online initiative, that will teach students the fundamentals of recording studio equipment. The course A111: Electronics 1 is the first in a series of four classes for a proposed certificate in Analog Audio Electronics offered through the Jacobs School of Music. The course will be offered in the fall, and was formerly available to only Recording Arts majors.
Michael Stucker. Credit: Alain Barker
“The content for this course is basically what I’ve been teaching for a number of years for recording arts majors,” said Stucker, a lecturer in music at the Department of Recording Arts in Jacobs. “So for instance, other majors – performance majors and music education majors – those are people identified as wanting something like this. And then other majors – like telecommunications, informatics and theater – they can learn about the recording arts without getting a recording arts degree.”
Stucker collaborated with Online Instructional Design and Development, a team within the University Information Technology Services, to develop the course website, which will be delivered through Canvas by Instructure, the new learning management tool that will replace Oncourse.
All four courses will lead students to an understanding of the goal circuit, one of the first guitar amplifiers ever made and one they’re likely to work with in a recording-studio setting.
“The idea is that they understand how the equipment that they’re using works from a fundamental perspective, helps them understand how to use it, understand what to do when something doesn’t work and then also being able to fix it if there’s a problem,” said Stucker, an IU alum.
Stucker said there will also be more generalized audio production courses for non-recording arts majors in fall 2015 in the Media School, which will officially come into existence July 1.
Stucker has served as a technical engineer for the Bloomington-based Echo Park Studios for over 20 years. He began working with Mellencamp in 1995 after one of the owners of Echo Park recommended Stucker.
A former musician, Stucker actively played the saxophone, guitar and piano before pursuing a music degree at the Jacobs School.
“It’s really a calling,” Stucker said of working on the technical side of music. “Music has always been a part of my life. I really like the mix of technical and artistic, and the really technical side to fixing things is fairly natural and intuitive to me.”
Tags: Canvas by Instructure, Echo Park Studios, Eddie Kramer, IU Online, Jacobs School of Music, John Mellencamp, Michael Stucker, Oncourse, Recording arts program, The Fray, The Media School, Tori Amos
