Tileyard Education Tools Up
London Creative Hub Expands Into Education With Focusrite & Novation Hardware Packages
Tileyard is the largest professional music and entertainment community in Europe, providing a home to more than 80 state-of-the-art music studios, as well as 120 creative industry businesses, in the exciting King’s Cross area of central London. The creative hub accommodates many different facilities — including homes to artists, composers, songwriters, producers, labels, publishers and even Ampify, a division of Novation.
The newest commitment Tileyard has made is in education. Recently, students have been supplied with hardware from Focusrite and Novation at Tileyard Education, a new postgraduate and professional training centre based at Tileyard Studios. In addition, Tileyard Education has partnered with the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) to provide ICMP final-year students with access to the new education facility. On-demand music education platform MusicGurus delivers the facility’s online learning, and a suite of DAW short courses has also been devised for launch in 2018.
Tileyard Education has been developed by Managing Director Harry Leckstein, previously Head of Music Business at BIMM London where he launched an undergraduate degree. “I’d written a BA (Hons) in Music Business, and while I was there I wrote an outline for an MBA Music and Entertainment Industry,” said Leckstein. “I wanted to teach it where the industry was, rather than in a traditional higher education institution, and a friend of mine said I should check out Tileyard.”
What originally started as one course is now scheduled to be six MA programmes. Tileyard Education is launching MA Commercial Songwriting and Production together with MA Music Industry Entrepreneurship in 2017, and planning MA Commercial Producer, MA Digital Film and TV, MA Creative Digital Design, and MA Games Developer and Entrepreneur over the next few years with partners Nottingham Trent University and University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
Only 20 students are being taken per programme per year, so it is a very intense experience that allows the small cohort — taught and mentored by the community — to get really embedded. Other unique components include one-to-one industry mentoring and the ability for graduates to present their work to the Tileyard investment fund on graduation.
There are a number of spaces in the facility — a main recording studio and live room, a tech lab, four writing rooms and a classroom. The tech lab is equipped with Novation Launchkey Mini keyboard controllers for Ableton Live software, and Focusrite Scarlett Solo interfaces for recording guitar and vocals simultaneously, onto separate tracks. For the writing rooms, Tileyard Education chose Launchkey 49 controllers and Scarlett 2i2 interfaces for recording two vocals at once, or miking up a vocal and guitar cab separately.
The facility installed the Launchkeys and Scarletts for their high quality, reliability and easy of use. “I think from a student point of view it’s about comfort,” said Leckstein. “Some students, certainly at an MA level, have got enough to contend with. And if they’re familiar with certain types of machinery it makes that role easier for them. We wanted to ensure that they had spaces and facilities that they were familiar and comfortable with, so that they could focus on the main job at hand which was the songwriting, creating and production.”
Find out more about Tileyard Education here.
