Perhaps your interest lies in working at or opening up your own state of the art mixing or mastering facility to create professional recordings for paying customers. Or maybe you are interested in learning to record, produce, mix and master your own high quality professional sounding music in your own home studio. Both of these options require an understanding of the tools, techniques and general music production, mixing, and recording know-how that Berklee’s renowned music production faculty presents in the Professional Certificate in Music Production.

This five-course program provides intermediate students with an extensive background in the critical areas production, from concept to a fully mixed and mastered recorded master. This certificate starts with Music Production Analysis, which distills decades of experience from record producers (including course author Stephen Webber, as well as Phil Ramone, Kyle Lehning, Don Was and more) into a focused step-by-step approach of the essential elements of successful records. This course identifies the elements of effective records through in-depth analysis and will instruct you on the best practices for bringing these elements into your own productions. From there, you’ll dig deeper into the key elements in a mix, what sort of arrangements you should be working towards, and how to optimize your mix to make your song as compelling as possible in Critical Listening 1. In this course you’ll look at depth, frequency range, dynamics and the different mix approaches, which you can use to help direct your productions in any musical genre.

Next up is Recording and Producing in the Home Studio, where you’ll learn the basics of recording and producing, and how to configure your home studio for optimal results. This course outlines the roles of the producer and engineer in the recording process, and is a great hands-on introduction to the mixing, mastering and editing process. Now that you have the theory under your belt, and have started your hands-on approach to producing music, the Art of Mixing course provides a more in-depth look at the technical and artistic approach to mixing. In this course you’ll acquire the core skill-set needed to mix multi-track master recordings to a stereo final mix-down suitable for release. In this course you’ll learn the different steps of the mixing process, including equalization, panning, dynamic processing (compressors, gates, expanders, and limiters), reverb and delays, as well as automation techniques and practical examples. The final course in this program is Audio Mastering Techniques, which details this last, critical, step in the post-production process. This course will equip you with a professional level understanding of the day-to-day mastering process, which will enable you to create a level matched, hi-fidelity, error free, and duplication-ready master with associated documentation.

By the end of this program, you’ll have a complete understanding of the music production, mixing, and mastering process; information that can be used regardless of the specific production software or DAW you plan on using. You’ll possess the skills to take a music project from concept to completion – whether it’s a project that you are working on for a third party client, or your own work!