The Soundtracks & Sound Design course comprehensively teaches and develops various skills involved in creating bespoke music and soundtracks for film, TV and video.

In addition to learning skills of musical composition and production for visual media, students will learn the craft of ‘Sound Design’ (the process of developing and manipulating recorded or sampled audio elements for creative purposes) and the art of ”Foley” (the reproduction and recording of everyday sound effects for film, tv, video, theatre etc). 

Furthermore, the course outlines a clear career path in the Irish and international film music arena, through the demystification of the music publishing world, the teaching of the practical skills of music administration (such as creating a synch licence for film) and in the dissemination of a general understanding of the film making process and its requirements for sound.

This is a selection of work from this years very talented students.

Alessandro Amato

Alessandro, originally from Spain, mainly produces music for video games. He joined the course in order to extend his knowledge of music industry practices and also learn new studio practices. This is his second film project, scoring a previous St. John’s film students work.

John Hodder

John is a Cork musician, having played in a number of bands he wanted to immerse himself in film music to help extend his musical language and add another revenue stream to his practice. This soundtrack is a deliberately ambient work, using atmosphere and sound design to help tell a mood led story set at night.

Milo Shanahan

Milo is a breakbeat / rap producer who had mainly been working with purely digital music. Through taking this course he discovered the power of analogue elements, from voices to drums and analogue synthesisers — so much so that he has now saved up and invested in a huge modular synthesiser. This piece is a remix he made for course leader David Bickley as part of his work experience module. The original track was recorded over 15 years ago by David and the West Cork band Nu Wazoo and under supervision Milo brought his modern touch to the project.

Saoirse Murphy

Saoirse is a singer from Cork city, she joined the course to learn more about production for her own work – this is a piece of generative music using a system based on the random casting of Tarot cards, a process that she developed herself. This project is designed to help students “break out” of their habitual modes of composition. Generative techniques have been employed by many composers from John Cage to Brian Eno.

Saoirse says —

“For my theme I decided to go with the four elements which was inspired by the four suits of the tarot cards. 

FIRE- I recorded a fire sample and used stretching techniques and reverb to make this the basis of my ambient piece. The “luminous surface” Space Designer preset gave me the key which informed the other instruments in the arrangement. 

The remaining pieces were represented as follows: 

Piano – air
Xylophones – water
Strings- earth I shaped these improvised textures using a combination of reverbs and delays“