Facilities for Music

Find out about our facilities and learning spaces for Music students.

  • Video transcript

    Welcome to the Media, Arts and Humanities Technical Facilities. In this short video, we will walk you through the wide range of resources and facilities available to students of Creative and Critical Practice, Journalism, Music and Drama here at the University of Sussex.

    Available to students is our equipment store, which will be able to collect equipment you have booked online. We have a broad range of equipment, depending on which course you are on from photography, video and cinematic cameras, professional lighting, microphones, tripods, rigs, follow focus and much more. The equipment store also supplies more specialised items such as light boxes, Wacom pen tablets and displays, and a range of physical computing kits. There is a dedicated photography and TV studio on site featuring a white infinity curve and lighting rig with the ability to mount up to five flash heads along with accessories. There is also a green screen available and various other backdrops.

    There are three audio recording booths equipped with audio interface and microphones for voiceover and podcasting.

    Music students have access to three professional quality studios for composition, recording, production and mixing. Studio A features a vintage Neve 66 recording console originally made for the BBC alongside outboards and more. It also features a live room with drum kit, piano and amplifiers, and a studio with a large modular synthesizer.

    Studio B features a modern SSL console and a live room with a baby grand piano. The newly opened Jonathan Harvey Electronic Music Studio features a Trident desk, outboard from SSL, API and more, all in a purpose built production suite with vocal booth. Performers have access to five practice rooms, each with a piano and workstation and a recital room featuring a Steinway grand piano, drum kit, amplifiers and more. And for your final performances, there is the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, a world class arts venue right here on campus.

    We also have two animation suites equipped with Wacom Cintiq 270HD creative pen displays.

    The Makerspace is a dedicated facility for 3D printing and soldering. The 3D printing workstations include two PCs connected to Raise3D Pro2 3D printers. The Pro2 is a professional, large format 3D printer which includes dual extrusion, a built in camera and much more. There are two soldering stations with a rework station a de- soldering station and a wide range of soldering accessories to help you work faster and smarter.

    Onsite, there is also a Foley studio for audio production. This has a dedicated control room and a separate live room.The control room is fitted with a Toft Audio ATB24 desk and Genelec 8040A monitors with a subwoofer. The Mac computer in this room also runs the Adobe Creative Suite and is fitted with Avid's Pro Tools as well as iZotope RX 7. The live room is spacious and offers a variety of different surfaces and props to create Foley sounds. Professional microphones and support equipment required to record a session are supplied by the equipment store.

    We have dedicated Mac and PC computer labs with the full Adobe Creative Cloud Suite installed, including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition. Da Vinci Resolve is provided on a select few workstations for colour grading your films. We have

    dedicated multi-screen editing booths available to book for individual and group use. For those studying music our Mac computers across our facilities run a suite of software including Sibelius, ProTools, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, and lots more. Most of these facilities are available to you 24 hours a day.

    Journalism students have exclusive use of our custom built newsroom. The news studio has a dedicated research room and production room featuring a Blackmagic ATEM 4K Switcher and Sonifex S1 audio desks. In the main set, there are Sony Z-150 cameras, autocue, an LED Lit set and much more. This dedicated studio contains all the equipment you need to create high quality broadcast standard video and audio productions, using professional equipment and skills mastered throughout your time at university.

    Based in the equipment store, and supporting all of this is a team of technicians with subject specific expertise. So if you need any technical advice or support to keep everything running smoothly, you can always find help.

    Thank you for watching this video, and if you have any further questions regarding any of our facilities, please feel free to get in touch with the Media, Arts and Humanities Technical Team at our email address.

Facilities and resources

You have access to: 

  • School Resource Centre: with 2,700 music scores and 100 music CDs and DVDs
  • Music Mac Lab: which has Mac Pro computers for audio and visual processing. Each computer has Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Ableton, Sibelius, Peak Pro, Max/MSP, Pure Data, Supercollider, and specialist applications supplied by IRCAM (including AudioSculpt and Open Music).
  • Jonathan Harvey Electronic Music Studio: a control room with access to two studios. At the centre of the studio is an SSL mixing desk, with outboard microphone pre-amps and compressors (Neve, Focusrite, Drawmer) and effects units (Lexicon, Fireworx etc).
  • Practice rooms: five practice rooms with acoustic pianos and composer workstations including Doepfer, Moog and Korg synthesisers. We also have a practice room with PA, drum kits, backline and a studio control room.
  • David Osmond-Smith Recital Room: Our recital room has a Steinway grand piano, full backline, lights, HD projector and music software.
  • The Meeting House: You can also use the facilities at the Meeting House. It houses two grand pianos - a Steinway and a Kawai, as well as a bespoke Grant, Degens and Rippin pipe organ
  • Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts: which includes gallery and display areas designed for art and audio visual installations, rehearsal studios and a breakout creative space

  • Studio A: consists of three rooms; the Control Room, the Dead Room, and the Live Room. With its vintage desk and selection of outboard, it is particularly suited for tracking and production, and for surround production in its 5.1 room

  • Studio B: consists of a Control Room, and a Live Room. With its grand piano, hybrid desk and selection of outboard, it is particularly suited for piano tracking, production, and mix automation. With its PA, drum kit and amps, it can also function as a band practice room. 

Explore more facilities

You might also be interested in: