Immersive Music Production and Performance

MUSIC 19AX

This course integrates music production, performance, audiovisual media, and technology as tools for creative expression and immersive intermedia storytelling. Aspiring producers, composers, songwriters, and performers gain hands-on experience in studio composition, music production and sound design, engaging both traditional and novel approaches while examining the relationships between sound, image, and live performance. Through lectures, critical listening and viewing, and a series of mini-projects, participants develop skills in recording, editing, and composing with audio and visual materials.

The course emphasizes the use of software tools, including Max and digital audio workstations, to control musical and visual parameters in both fixed and live contexts, and is based in the music studios up the hill in CCRMA,. Students learn techniques for immersive spatial mixing to support expressive and narrative goals and apply these methods in original compositions and performances. By the end of the course, students produce and present immersive music and intermedia works that integrate sound, image, space, and live performance.

This course has requested certification for Way-CE, decision pending.

Examples of Field Trips and Guest Speakers

Possible field trips include excursions to sites focused on capturing audio and visual materials for student projects such as Marin Headlands, attendance of live music and audiovisual performances in San Francisco, and visits to recording studios such as the historic Hyde Street Studios to gain insight into professional studio workflows and production practices.

Guest speakers may include professional music producers, composers, sound designers, and intermedia artists who work across music, performance, and audiovisual media, offering perspectives on creative practice, technical workflows, and professional pathways.

Sample Student Projects

Students complete a series of short and iterative projects that integrate sound, image, space, and performance. Example projects may include:

• A short fixed audiovisual composition using original recorded sound and video.
• An immersive or spatial remix of classmates’ audio materials.
• A live audiovisual performance using software to control musical and visual parameters in realtime.
• The creation of a custom virtual instruments or virtual acoustic environments.
• A final immersive music or intermedia performance or experience presented in a public showcase.

What Comes After Arts Intensive?

Students leave the course with practical skills in music production, performance, and integrating technologies, along with a stronger conceptual understanding of audiovisual relationships and immersive storytelling. The work produced in the course may serve as a foundation for future creative projects, preparation for related courses, and a portfolio of original material suitable for applications to internships, grants, performances, or other academic and professional opportunities.

Meet the Instructor

Hassan Estakhrian

Hassan Estakhrian is a cross-disciplinary musician based in California. He works as a composer, performer, songwriter, intermedia artist, producer, music technologist, audio engineer, and educator. Hassan performs and records on multiple instruments, including voice, electric bass, guitar, keyboards, drum set, and others. He collides genres of rock, funk, and jazz with experimental and contemporary classical, sometimes integrating various technologies and media to create large scale intermedia works. His body of work includes rock operas, chamber pieces, games with adaptive graphic scores, structured improvisation, and intermedia stories based in fantasy and science fiction. As a technologist and audio engineer, Hassan produces records in the studio and immersive mixes, develops tools for music production, compositional aid, and live performance, and does research in virtual acoustics and immersive audio.

Hassan directs his band Antenna Fuzz and is half of experimental-pop duo Meoark. He also works with a variety of artists across genres and media. He has performed and recorded with rock bands such as Valerian Sun and contemporary classical ensembles like WasteLAnd and Dal Niente. As a composer and performer, he has written for ensembles such as JACK Quartet, Tak Ensemble, Variant 6, and Kukuruz Quartet. His work has been performed in the United States, Europe, and Asia. 

Hassan holds a DMA from Stanford University and lectures at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He also helps maintain and develop CCRMA’s virtual acoustics system (CAVIAR) and manages its recording studio. More info at hassanestakhrian.com.