Full Sail Hosts On-Campus Audio and Music Production Workshops

Published Sep 08, 2025

Full Sail Hosts On-Campus Audio and Music Production Workshops

Students learned about getting the most out of their audio equipment and ways to use spatial audio at an Audio Production Town Hall and an Immersive Audio Talk.

Scott Dickinson and Evan Weiss sit onstage with a keyboard and two laptops. Students sit in an audience facing the stage.

Recently, Full Sail University students had opportunities to deep dive into all things audio at two workshops – an Audio Production Town Hall and an Immersive Audio Talk – led by faculty members and industry experts.

The Audio Production Town Hall is a monthly workshop for Audio Production students that’s usually held online, but on July 21, it was hosted in front of a live audience for the first time at Full Sail’s student-run live performance venue, the Treehouse, and also included Music Production students. It was hosted by Scott Dickinson, Full Sail’s Department Chair of Music Theory and Composition, and Evan Weiss, Product Specialist for Focusrite.

Typically, the workshop focuses on topics relevant to audio professionals, such as production techniques, mixing and mastering, new tech, and more. This time, the workshop centered on the Novation LaunchKey 49 MK4 MIDI keyboard that’s provided to students in the Audio Production and Music Production degree programs. The goal was to help students take advantage of their professional gear throughout their academic journey and beyond.

With a camera capturing Evan’s movements on the LaunchKey and displaying it to students on a screen, he demonstrated various features of the keyboard that students could use to optimize its capabilities, including using digital audio workstations like Logic Pro and Pro Tools.

Online students were also able to tune into this live town hall, as well as submit questions which Scott and Evan answered. For example, they explained LaunchKey’s scale mode, how to do chord mapping, and tips for transposing.

“It’s easy [for students] to get locked into the functions that serve their current assignment needs, but we want them to aspire to be power users – ready to work efficiently at the highest level,” said Audio Production Program Director Brian Smithers, who ran the event.

Scott Dickinson and Evan Weiss sit at a table with laptops and a keyboard. Two audience members stand by the table and talk with them.

In addition to this workshop, students had the opportunity to attend an Immersive Audio Talk on July 22 led by Darren Schneider (Director of Advanced Session Recording), Thomas Owen (Course Director and Department Chair of Workstations), and Jason Strawley (Dub Stage Assistant Manager).

Hosted at Full Sail’s immersive audio space, the Dolby Creator Space, Darren, Thomas, and Jason took turns speaking about immersive sound in the context of music, game audio, and film and television post-production, respectively.

Darren Schneider stands at the front of a room and speaks to an audience. Two projector screens are behind him displaying Pro Tools software.

The instructors discussed how to use spatial audio to create a truly enveloping experience for listeners and generate the feeling of actually being part of the film or video game. They demonstrated the concept in real time via the speakers placed throughout the classroom and displayed their use of Pro Tools on a screen so students could follow along.

“This event’s purpose was to give students a good overview of immersive audio and to get them inspired to start looking into the newest techniques,” said Darren. “I hope students walked away with an inspired thought process in incorporating immersive audio in how they create media as they go through their programs.”