Music Production Cultures

Brendan Anthony has an international career as a popular music producer of 30 years, holds a doctorate of education and lectures in music production within the Bachelor of Music at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. Brendan’s research engages with popular music production, popular music education and the relationship between technology and music production creative practice. More information is available at brendananthonymusic.com.

Winner of the 2024 International Association for the Study of Popular Music ANZ book prize- "This is an outstanding book that makes a significant contribution to popular music pedagogy, music production studies and praxes, and popular music studies. Brendan Anthony's book is novel in its research design, methodologically collaborative, comprehensive in scope, and presents useful findings that may be realistically implemented in contemporary music pedagogies. The book draws upon original primary research which lends it novel dimensions and an informed authority that comes from the incorporation of student and contributor perspectives as well as those of the author.""Brendan Anthony has produced a visionary, forward-thinking book which is not only fascinating, entertaining, and highly readable, but also rigorously academic. Drawing from an amalgam of professional experience across the music industry and higher education divide, he has woven a detailed and erudite research project through the two. A quite brilliant achievement which I hope will be a landmark in how higher education and industry work for popular music production in the future."Professor Lucy Green, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK"In this exciting new book, Brendan Anthony presents a timely and detailed student-centred exploration of teaching and learning in popular music production, engaging producers, performers and professors as he weaves together expert pedagogical advice and profound insights from both sides of the glass."Dr Gareth Dylan Smith, Assistant Professor Music, Music Education, Boston University, USA"Brendan Anthony has made a significant contribution to the world of pedagogical music production practice with this volume of work that will be celebrated by educators internationally. This authoritative work has been written from both the perspective of an academic and a working practitioner. It provides an insightful and much needed view of what goes on behind the glass from the lens of an educator and highlights the key issues for academics and students working in the field. The field of music production continues to develop from both technical- and cultural-perspectives that explore both the creation of the technology, its use, and the approach of musicians and record producers and how they create work in the studio. This important text and much needed work will fill a gap in the literature in terms of how we frame popular music production methods from pedagogical and cultural perspectives."Professor Andrew King, Head of School of the Arts, University of Hull, UK

• Introduction: Music production cultures and rationale Part 1: Modern popular music production skills, practices and processes 1. Music production skills and creative practice 2. Popular music production processes (Part A). Cognition, popular music production agency and socio-musical concepts 3. Popular music production processes (Part B). The manifestation of recorded works 4. Songwriting and production 5. Music production subjectivity and creativity Part 2: Popular music production pedagogy that bridges to the real world 6. What is the real world? 7. Popular music production learning approaches 8. The places and spaces of popular music production pedagogy 9.The cohort (both sides of the glass) Part 3: Pedagogical approaches 10. Popular music production pedagogy— an engagement with diverse music production cultures 11. Learning frameworks 12. The music 13. The educator’s role 14. Practice-based pedagogical applications 15. Collaboration and creativity in popular music production pedagogy 16. Learning popular music production 17. Class targets 18. Assessment 19. Student accountability and educator mentorships Part 4: Pedagogical timeline, graduate considerations and summary 20. Student progression and graduate futures 21. Pedagogical summary and challenges