More Info About Our Holistic Curriculum

Once here, students will take business & technology courses as they relate to the specialized needs of the contemporary music industry in tandem with a series of production and performance, musicianship, & songwriting courses. Students will be expected to become proficient in a range of popular music practices. Concurrently, students will also explore critical writing and music journalism, delving into the cultural impact of popular music and the history of contemporary musical genres.

Lastly, to round out and connect all the components of our holistic curriculum, students will take a series of professional development courses that will provide them with the knowledge, skills, and customized training to foster personal and professional growth, and prepare them for global engagement and success. In order to complete the degree, students will create a senior professional development project - a customized, entrepreneurial music business venture. Much like a graduate thesis, this project is the culmination of the creative, technical and business skills they have acquired. Then, in front of a panel of distinguished music industry leaders, students will have five minutes to pitch their innovative idea, accompanied by a business plan. They'll then receive 10 minutes of constructive feedback from the panel of industry leaders, selected for their expertise in relevant fields.

Below you will find learning goals and objectives for individual curricular areas within our program. Each area is only part of a larger holistic curriculum. Our curricular areas do not stand alone, and these descriptions explain how different parts of the program work in conjunction with one another. 

Professional Development

The Professional Development area of the CDI Core Curriculum (Professional Development Core Curriculum) provides students with knowledge, skills, and customized training to foster personal and professional growth, and prepare them for global engagement and success. The  Professional Development curriculum helps every student transition successfully from undergraduate to working professional. Starting in the first year and continuing each year until they graduate, the Professional Development Core Curriculum includes colloquium-style classes, experiential learning opportunities, co-curricular experiences and mandatory senior-year coursework where – in their final 1-2 semesters – every student develops a customized entrepreneurial music venture (Professional Development Project) accompanied by materials that demonstrate the full range of the creative, technical and business skills acquired in the Program. Then, at the end of their final semester, students pitch their projects to faculty, invited guests and a panel of distinguished music industry leaders. Students have five (5) minutes to present their innovative ideas and they receive 10-15 minutes of constructive feedback from the industry panel to help them move their projects forward. The Professional Development Project is a powerful instrument in the student’s portfolio that they can use to pursue jobs and opportunities after graduation. The final two semesters also include post-graduate career exploration and planning which helps students transition from college to  post graduate life.

The Professional Development area also provides students with  access to leading industry professionals and companies and they gain insight into current developments and opportunities in the music and tech fields. Throughout, students build upon their written and oral communication skills, expand their professional networks, practice their interview skills and develop targeted resumes.

Working in tandem with the Professional Development Core Curriculum are specialized senior-year elective classes in business and tech, performance, songwriting, studio production, and journalism & writing that offer career focused learning, tailored to students’ interests and career goals. The CDI Business & Technology Core Curriculum directly supports the objectives of the Professional Development Core Curriculum. Students take Independent Project Management in tandem with the senior Professional Development coursework. There, they conduct feasibility testing and actualize their marketing plans and business plans for their projects.

Business & Technology

The mission of the Business and Technology area is to provide breadth and depth of knowledge of the music and business industries, as well as, experiential learning opportunities and professional development training to prepare students to succeed in music, business and music industry fields.

To carry out its mission, the Business & Technology area offers core courses in music industry studies; recording, publishing, audio/video streaming copyright, licensing, radio, music contracts and live music and; business; marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship finance and technology innovation.

Core courses are complemented by electives that allow students to build on, apply and transform their knowledge and skills in their fields of interest and open their eyes up to new fields. Students  gain abilities and skills that enable them to monetize their music, skills and ideas; create and market  compelling content for different audiences; launch and fund their startups; and communicate their professional value and vision as creative entrepreneurs.

The Clive Davis Institute internship program provides students with the opportunity to gain practical work experience, build their networks and receive on the job training. Students test and confirm career paths and many students receive full-time job offers from their internship employers.

Professional Development is a culminating learning experience for students in their last two semesters in the program. Every student develops their own customized business venture under the guidance of industry mentors which they pitch to a panel of distinguished music industry leaders, at the end. The professional development project offers a chance for every student to publicly convey the creative, technical and business skills that they have acquired while in the program. It also helps students launch themselves into the industry field of choice after graduation and set themselves up for career success.

Technology has had a transformative impact on the way music is made, shared, consumed and monetized.  The Business and Technology area believes that students must understand and be fluent users of digital tools and technologies to compete for job opportunities This belief and a technology focus infuses all courses offered in the Business and Technology area.

The Business & Technology area, working synergistically with the musicianship and performance, music production, and writing, history, & emergent media areas, equips students with the necessary business acumen to forge their own career paths, lead and effect change, leverage opportunities and realize their career goals.

Writing, History, & Emergent Media

The overarching objective of the Writing, History, and Emergent Media Studies area is to develop students as successful and creative writers, thinkers and communicators about popular music. We prepare all Recorded Music majors to work in an open-ended variety of styles, genres and approaches--research-enabled reporting and academic writing; reviews and criticism; biography and memoir; liner notes; radio, podcasting and video scripts; blogging/vlogging; tweeting and Instagramming; as well as emerging, increasingly experimental methods. 

Our area goals are multi-faceted, and they include: To introduce students to diverse and creative ways to think, write and communicate about entrepreneurship in recorded music; To introduce students to the history and geography of recorded music, including the history and geography of specific genres and styles of music; and to encourage students to conduct research and make links between them; To introduce students to iconic performers, producers, songwriters, executives, journalists, social and tech entrepreneurs in the popular music field, and their impact on its history and culture; To introduce students to the major conflicts, controversies and debates in popular music; To inform students how to analyze and fairly critique popular music in relation to issues of  identity and to larger social and political contexts; To write about sound in descriptive, evocative, and insightful ways; To improve students' analytical skills through thinking, writing, research and discussion; To introduce students to a variety of high-quality and influential writing on popular music, including works of historical importance; To improve students' creative and technical skills as writers, because being able to think deeply, write clearly and communicate powerfully about music is an essential skill for any music professional; To give students the creative, technical, business and social skills to pursue careers as "journalist and multi-media entrepreneurs," in light of the writers, editors and publishers who made a significant historical impact on the art and business of recorded music; To enrich students’ practical production and business skills through the development of their writing, research and communication skills; To expose students to insightfully consider historical, current, and newly emergent technology and the impact of that technology on the production and reception of recorded music; To teach students effective methods of storytelling in traditional and emergent media and across a variety of outlets and platforms; and To inform students about the core values of music journalism in a changing media landscape and cultural climate.

Production

The mission of the production curriculum at the Clive Davis Institute is to teach technical and artistic self-sufficiency in the art and craft of arranging, orchestrating, producing, recording, editing, mixing, and mastering recorded music.

The area follows a song first philosophy. The song, and its relation to both the artist and the audience, is the driving force behind not only the curriculum, but the music industry itself. Statements, both musical and social, are made through song. We believe that the song, the statement, and the artist are to be served by production practices, not hindered by them. The Institute’s stepped approach to teaching technical skills is presented in a way that leads the student to understand that production, and its vast set of underlying, highly detailed skills, is a means to an end. That end is the creation of music and related multimedia content that will highlight the best of the composition, as well as enhance and forward an artists career, and their sphere of cultural and social influence. While affordable and intuitive technology has enabled unprecedented access to the tools of production, meaningful content cannot be purchased; it must be painstakingly developed and realized by highly skilled people, with wide ranging talents.

We embrace the fact that the walls of separation traditionally found in music production - separating writer from artist, artist from producer, and producer from engineer and mixer - have all but eroded within the context of pop music production. The curriculum is therefore designed to teach the music production process in a holistic and pragmatic way. The pedagogical focus is on best practices, artistry, listening skills, and musicality, more so than traditional technical theory, and old guard pedagogy. In terms of engineering, science and math are kept to a minimum. That being said, all students are expected to become proficient users of both digital and analog recording technologies. 

Lastly, we believe that production sits at the intersection of art, commerce, and technology.  Therefore, leadership training,  emerging technologies, the business and logistics of production, and the principles of artistic development are taught alongside the more commonly embraced areas of creative methodology, sound creation, and recording techniques. Students are trained to be prepared and well at ease in handling the pressures of varied recording studio environments. Students are taught to understand the artistic and cultural sensibilities of the world in which they create, leading them to develop work of lasting social and artistic value. In line with the principles of Tisch School of the Arts, our aim is to train our students to be deeply informed critical thinkers.

Performance, Musicianship, & Songwriting

We believe that artistic self-exploration is a discovery process that relies on the development of  three main components. One’s skill set, a constantly evolving and growing collection of tools and techniques that is within the control of each student-artist to continually expand.  One's Instincts and the ways in which one reacts and responds to each artistic decision they and their collaborators make are carefully refined with exposure to iconic songs, styles and approaches as well as extensive stage, studio and workshop opportunities.  One’s aesthetic filter or their cultural diet is vigilantly curated in order to maintain a sense of artistic and cultural relevance in the shifting landscape of the music industry.

The fundamental goal of the Musicianship and Performance area of the Clive Davis Institute’s core curriculum is first to verse the students in the techniques, theories and processes of constructing, arranging, orchestrating and performing compelling songs and artistic content.  Secondly, it is to give the students context for their own craft by investigating the history and pedagogy of songcraft, stagecraft and the art of performance through self- exploration, and faculty and mentor guided performances. 

Students are encouraged to discover their own sonic identities and to realize a convincing approach to content creation and  performance that reflect their individuality, style and message. Through a process of emulation, exploration, and experimentation students are empowered with a strong sense of artistic vision and the ability to execute their vision.

The key defining attribute of an impactful artist who contributes lasting and meaningful work on a consistent basis is that they have unlimited creative access to all of the possible choices, techniques and relationships that their disciplines provide.  Using a “leave no stone unturned'' approach, we encourage an investigation of each concept in the multitude of ways that exist with the goal of eventually reaching an “automatic” or instinctual relationship to creation (rather than cerebral or cognitive). At the same time, we train our students to be able to emotionally detach from their work and to recognize that creation and analysis are two very different processes.