Increased enrollment, funding from the foundation, and a recent remodel of the music building have spurred growth in the music program in recent years, including the development of a sound engineering class.

Since music teacher John Mattern began working at Redwood in 2004, total enrollment in the various music classes has increased from about 50 students to 180 students, according to Mattern.

One program that has seen major development this year is the sound engineering class, a specialized class within Advanced Performance Workshop, where enrollment has doubled since last year. While there has been a recording element to performance workshop for 10 years now, this is the third year that sound engineering has been an official class, according to Mattern.

Students in sound engineering learn to record, mix, and produce music that is played by other artists in Advanced Performance Workshop.

“This year we’ve been working on a project where the [students in the sound engineering] class gets into [groups of four],” said senior Stevie Becker, who’s taken the class for two years. “We went through the entire process of recording a song from start to finish–– that includes tracking each of the different instruments individually, compiling them all together in the program, and then editing and mixing, and polishing and getting everything together into a final product and putting it out.”

According to Becker, it was Mattern’s vision that brought about the growth of the sound engineering program.

“He’s sort of the guiding force behind the whole thing,” Becker said. “It was really his idea from the start, and it was basically his vision that put the program together.”

The sound engineering class provides a unique opportunity for students to learn a different aspect of producing music, according to Becker.

“Recording other people had never been a particular interest of mine,” Becker said. “I joined because it was the technical aspect that I was into, but through being in the class, I’ve gotten to really like recording other people and going through that whole process of helping other people and showcasing other people’s music.”

Remodeling of the music building three years ago coupled with funding from the foundation has allowed for the creation of a state-of-the-art recording studio for Advanced Performance Workshop students, as well as other equipment and facilities for students of all skill levels. On October 26, the music department received a $25,000 grant to purchase laptops, a laptop cart, and software for the program.

“Our recording studio is kind of like a real crown jewel of this department,” Mattern said. “It was many years in the making.”

Student in the recording studio are given the opportunity to work with high-end technology that is often not even found in higher level recording studios, according to Mattern.

“The recording studio is really a unique thing,” Mattern said. “It’s one of the nicest studios––professional studios aren’t this nice. Most college departments don’t have studios like this.”

Freshman John Carlo Redl, a member of Intermediate Performance Workshop, looks forward to taking advantage of the technology in the studio when he is in Advanced Performance Workshop.

“There are recording studios and every different instrument you could find in there,” Redl said. “You can’t ask for more. We haven’t used the recording studio yet, but that’s something I hope we do in the future.”

However, the sound engineering program faces a unique challenge because it is so new, according to Becker.

“Because the department is growing, we have to have things be more organized, which is very complicated because it’s something that has never been done before,” Becker said. “The biggest challenge is we don’t have a curriculum. We don’t have a definitive guiding force of what we should be doing in the class. It’s really up to the discretion of Mr. Mattern and the people he brings in to help us.”

In addition, the loose structure of the class can be challenging for students at times, according to Becker.

“Having more people in a very untraditional classroom environment where there’s no precedent for how people think they should behave––it gets kind of chaotic,” Becker said. Mattern hopes to see more student-produced music as the program continues to grow.

“My vision is just to keep getting better at what we’re doing: to produce records, to produce CD’s out of here,” Mattern said. “To really produce music, finished projects.”