Singapore Polytechnic's New Diploma in Music and Audio Technology

The Diploma in Music and Audio Technology or DMAT will be offered in the academic year 2005 and is designed to allow students to express their creativity in music through multimedia applications such as video, games and edutainment products.

Mr Low Wong Fook is the Principal of Singapore Polytechnic. He first talks about what the course will provide.

LWF: The course will provide students with broad based training in music and audio technology. The training will prepare them to become sounds engineers, audio engineers, music composers or recording engineers. The School of ICT (InfoComm Technology) is well placed to offer this course. It has extensive experience teaching modules in music and audio technology in its Diploma in Multimedia Technology course which was first launched in 1996. Modules taught in that course include music and sound production using MIDI or Musical Instrument Digital Interface, digital audio, music and sound for moving images and so on. The School of ICT has received very good feedback from students who took these modules. Encouraged by such positive student feedback and strong endorsement by the National Arts Council and the MDA (Media Authority of Singapore), the polytechnic has decided to run the DMAT course to meet the needs of the creative industry in Singapore.

In order to support the course, the Singapore Polytechnic has spared no expense. Principal Mr Low Wong Fook.

LWF: The Singapore Polytechnic has invested a sum of 600,000 dollars to build new studios and to equip them with state of the art hardware and software. These new facilities will support professional training in digital audio, music composition, surround sound mixing and sound recording mastering.

In conjunction with the launching of this new course, another related diploma course will be offered at the School of ICT (InfoComm Technology) namely the diploma course in Information Technology. Mr Low with the details.

LWF: The school will be offering a new game development option under the Information Technology course. The introduction of this new game development option is timely because computer games and cell phone games are becoming very popular, especially among the young. The games market is also expected to gain significance in the infocomm and media cluster of our economy.

Mr Seto Lok Yin is the Director of the Industry Development Division of the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA). He talks about the background of the MDA and Media 21 initiative.

SLY: When the MDA was formed in 2003, we launched the Media 21 vision. This is a 10 year strategic blueprint with the vision of turning or transforming Singapore into a global media city. What is a global media city? It’s a place where talents from Singapore have this opportunity to either produce a tv program, direct a movie, write a book, create animation characters and develop fantastic games for mobile phones online. Now, those are opportunities open to all our talents here and not only this kind of content for Singaporean to enjoy but able to export and distribute to the world then we become a global media city. It’s also a location where international big names and overseas foreign filmmakers want to come here because they can find the talent, the resources, the money and of course, the partners to do business with and make the movie and distribute to the world.

The MDA believes that talent is really the key to making Singapore a global media city. The universities, polytechnics and art colleges have been doing excellent work in training future talents. Foreign investors are very impressed by the work done by students and graduates of these higher learning institutions.

SLY: The MDA has put in place various initiatives to groom and grow our media talents. The ability to combine creativity and technological expertise and business acumen will go a long way in ensuring that talents can thrive in this exciting and often competitive world of media business. In this regard, I’m very happy to note that a DMT diploma offers modules to hone the creative and technological and entrepreneurial potential of the students.

Mr Seto also highlights how foreign investors have started seeing Singapore as a place with world class talents in these fields.

SLY: At the same time, it’s important that there are many opportunities for Singapore talents to produce films, animation, tv series that could be enjoyed by the world audience. In the animation industry for example, Lucas Film announced the set up of its animation studio and things should be up and running by this year. This is just an example illustrating that Singapore has the talent and the resources to create original stories to be enjoyed worldwide.

Just as we need creative individuals, like the writers, directors and producers who can translate ideas into stories, we need talented individuals who can create, manipulate and produce music and audio effects to enhance the expressive ability of this media. Mr Seto highlights the significance of this new diploma and how it will forward the industry in terms of training of talent.

SLY: So as our media industry grows, with more movies and television programs and games and animations projects, which will result in an increased demand for quality music to be composed, mixed and produced. I’m sure that our Singapore talents are capable of creating songs and compositions that will touch the hearts of audiences around the world. So the DMT will go towards fulfilling the objective of producing more creative talents to create and compose more original music for the growing media industry.

Dr Timothy Teo is a lecturer with the Singapore Polytechnic and one of the designers of the curriculum for the new DMAT diploma program. He touches on prerequisites of the course.

TT: The information, which is freely provided to the public, will list down various desirable characteristics for students who wish to apply for this course. Some of these characteristics would include a high level of interest in music and be able to play some instrument or have had been in a band or orchestra.

How comparable is this diploma to ones offered by private, professional institutions? A question I put to Dr Teo.

TT: Certainly if you’re talking about skills and knowledge there will be some amount of overlap however, ours will be more extensive given that our course stretches over three years studying fulltime as opposed to certain course which are provided by private institutions which are about six months fulltime or nine months. So in the area of developing musical and audio skills and in the area of teamwork and being able to work independently, we would do much better because we have three years with the students.

Dr Teo also touches on the career prospects of the graduates of this new DMT program to be offered by the Singapore Polytechnic.

TT: Production houses are involved in advertisements, short films and these houses will require personnel in the music and audio sector. Also in the area of education and the creation of teaching material and the internet and multimedia websites and media companies that develop specialized products like tv, games and even radio.

And that was Dr Timothy Teo, lecturer at the Singapore Polytechnic and designer of the curriculum for its new Diploma in Audio and Music Technology.

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