Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien

The fmsbw studios are supplied with all the leading industry-standard software to support the artistic aims of Incontri's students and staff. Our approach is intentionally flexible and adaptive, and our approach focuses on teaching the basic technical principles of audio, so that students can move freely and comfortably between different software rather than being tied to a specific feature, tool, or plug-in.

fmsbw has a special commitment to Open Source software. As a public institution, we not only use but also contribute to the co-development of software in the public domain, for example Audacity and Ardour as audio editors and sequencers, Csound, PureData and SuperCollider as audio programming languages, Spear and Praat for analysis purposes, OpenMusic for computer-aided composition, or InScore for music notation.

Beyond these free software tools, fmsbw also holds licenses for all the most common commercial software, so that students have access to and experience working with a wide range of software resources. This includes for example Max, Ableton Live, Logic, Reaper, Audition, Native Instruments Komplete and Kontakt, as well as a wide range of free and commercial plug-ins. Additionally, the studios have access to Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes Premiere Pro for video editing and a wide range of graphic design, photo, and animation tools, such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and AfterEffects. Students also have studio access to Sibelius and Dorico for music notation tasks.

As a result of a recent wave of investment for fmsbw's ongoing modernization project, much of our newly purchased hardware runs on Dante, a cutting edge audio protocol that allows sending up to 1,024 channels of audio over ethernet networks with as low as 150 microseconds of latency. Incontri’s new hardware includes  various devices that can send and receive audio across the Dante network, including to/from the Dante Virtual Soundcard software, which means all those channels of audio—which can be connected at either end to microphones, loudspeakers, audio playback from the computer, or other hardware—are all carried across only a single ethernet cable. Because the audio is carried entirely digitally across the network, it is possible to route that audio almost infinitely, sending/receiving audio data between any of the network’s components. (Additionally, our Yamaha mixers can also be controlled from an iPad app via WiFi, which means levels and EQ can be changed while moving around the performance space rather than just while standing at the mixer, and an individual musician’s monitor mix can be controlled independently by a separate app on their phone, also via WiFi.) In short, the line between hardware and software in fmsbw's studio is blurred, and as such our students have access to some of the most cutting-edge digital audio technology available today.

One of the unique elements of the curriculum structure of Incontri is that the study of electronic and instrumental composition are closely intertwined, rather than being separate options, as is more often the case in German music universities. All of our students study electronic music—including both technical skills and repertoire knowledge—alongside acoustic music, which means our students are particularly well equipped to participate in and contribute to the multidisciplinarity that defines much current and recent work in contemporary music. Recent student projects have included video, live digital signal processing, transducers, interactive works for instruments and live electronics, multichannel pieces for fixed media, and invented instruments using Rasberry Pi.