Annually, the university holds the Sound and Media Workshop. Designed to offer both students and prospective students beneficial experience from professionals, it has grown into something larger: a community of art.
The workshop, which is in its 14th year, has been organized by music technology professor Chad Loughrige since its inception. The workshop was originally designed to be a recruitment workshop for music tech students, but has since grown to include film and media production and journalism students.
“[The year after the workshop] we’re able to see all of our [first-years] and see that they were [at the workshop],” Loughrige said. “We can correlate exactly who came. Oftentimes, we will ask first year students, ‘How many of you decided to come to [the university] because of the workshop?’ 80% of them will raise their hand.”
Loughrige said the workshop grew out from humble beginnings — sometimes in a room or two — in the university’s Conservatory of Music.
“[For the first annual workshop], we had students doing lectures. Very grassroots, just kind of the resources we had internally,” Loughrige said. “It has grown a ton.”
However, with growth comes responsibility. What started as a small workshop has grown to almost 300 attendees at this year’s workshop.
Loughrige, who has taught at the university for almost 20 years, said the logistical aspect of the workshop is almost year-round.
“Pretty much the day after our workshop, we schedule the next year’s date, and we book all of our spaces,” he said. “Throughout the year, we start looking into our keynote presenter as being the first thing we try to book.”
Past keynote presenters include worldwide-renowned producer Ken Scott, who produced for artists like the Beatles and David Bowie; and Warren Huart, who produced for bands like Aerosmith and Ramones.
Additionally, Loughrige said that as the workshop has grown, the networking between keynote speakers has benefitted the workshop tremendously.
“[The search for next year’s keynote speaker] almost perpetuates itself now,” Loughrige said. “We’re 14 years in now, and we have so many connections of sponsors and previous keynotes that it’s almost funneling itself now.”
The marketing of the event is often a heavy load and requires a full effort by all of the event planners. Loughrige said the process involves sending physical marketing materials to prospective students, as well as working with the university’s marketing department to do printed promotional material.
For both Loughrige and Carey, this year serves as a homecoming of sorts. When Carey attended the university, Loughrige was one of his professors.
“[Carey] was actually one of my first cohort of students when I started working at [the university] in 2008,” Loughrige said. “I knew right away that he was a very talented person.”
After graduating from the university, Carey’s talents led him to the University of Southern California to participate in their Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program. Shortly after, he secured a position working for Hollywood composer Brian Tyler.
“[Brian Tyler] is the creative visionary behind everything, and I’m one of the people working under him that deals with all things instrumentation, orchestration and fine detailing,” Carey said.
Carey said his most recent work is one of his favorites. Carey is continuing his work in the Chris Pratt-led “Super Mario” franchise with “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” which releases on April 1.
Carey said that one of the biggest favors that young people in Hollywood can do for themselves is to be consistent.
“If you can be a reliable person that has a skill set that can be part of the larger puzzle piece, that’s a great entry level way for someone who’s young and fresh,” Carey said. “It’s a much more bite-sized way of thinking about it.”
Various sessions within the workshop itself were very hands on. Some sessions were taught by university faculty, but there were also sessions taught by students as well.
For any students who are doubting their place in the industry, Carey said that doubt is normal.
“It’s okay to try something fully and then change your mind. You learn by doing. College is about exploration, and there’s no single timeline for success.”
