Meet future student Rebekah Arnold

Rebekah will be joining our next Advanced Diploma in September.

Hi Rebekah, thank you for meeting me today.

Firstly, congratulations on your offer for the Advanced Diploma in Music Production and Sound Engineering at Abbey Road Institute. How does it feel?

I feel like I’m finally on the right path to getting where I want to be. I’ve got a great opportunity to make connections in the music industry and learn what I need to know to be in it.

Can you tell me a bit more about your background in music?

I’ve grown up around it. Most people in my family have played an instrument. I started off on the violin at around 8 years old, I then started learning the piano and teaching myself the guitar. I’ve always composed songs and then I started doing music and music technology A levels which allowed me to bring everything together and it sparked my interest in studying production further.

Why did you decide to do a technical course?

It will broaden my opportunities much further. After years of performing and thinking that I wanted to make my career from it, I got to grips with Music technology as an A level quite quickly and really enjoyed doing it. It didn’t feel like a chore to go to my lessons and do the work so I started looking into careers and I’m hoping to end up producing in a studio but of course it’s an incredibly competitive field.

It is wonderful that you decided to join our course in September. As you know, this industry is very male-dominated. Why do you think this is the case?

I think in a lot of cases, when women think about careers in the music industry, they don’t realise or consider that the technical side is an option. You learn about performing music from childhood but you don’t really have access educationally to music technology until you reach A levels and by that time, many people have decided that performance is what they want to do and they have tunnel vision on that goal. I also think that there are a lot more female role models who perform and very few in production that you hear about so it’s already thought of as a ‘male career’ because the producers that people know are mostly going to be male.

How do you feel as a female student and producer in a male-dominated industry?

I think I have a lot to prove and I’m going to have to work hard to be taken seriously but I’m willing to do that. It would be great to see other female students on the course and learning about production but I think often women feel like performance is the only musical route for them because they hear so little about other options.

What do you expect from the course itself?

I’m expecting a year of full on hard work. I think it’s going to be interesting working with other people who will have different musical tastes and experiences in production to me. I’ll learn a lot from the other students as well as the teachers. Hopefully I’ll learn everything I need to know to set me up for a career in music technology, whether in production, live sound or any other branch of it.

You have two more months until you start the course. What are you doing until September?

I’m going away with my family, but finishing my A levels first in June, then no doubt spending time creating some new things on my computer at home and preparing myself for an exciting year.

Apply for the Advanced Diploma

If you want to study Music Production and Sound Engineering apply now for our next intake in September 2017. Find out more on the course page for our Advanced Diploma in Music Production and Sound Engineering.