Facilities
- Performance area, ensemble room and gamelan room | All three new performance areas have been acoustically designed to prevent sound interference between rooms whilst delivering a controlled acoustic within each room. The main performance area provides seating for up to 100 in many different configurations, and special acoustic wall panels 'tune' the acoustics for different types of performance.
- Rehearsal rooms | A suite of 10 sound-proofed rooms with pianos used for instrumental and vocal practice.
- Studios | The studios include a recording studio, two surround-sound composition studios, one of which is dedicated to multimedia and live electronics work, and five stereo composition studios, all equipped for sound editing, processing and mixing. There are PC and Mac laboratories with a total of 24 workstations for Sibelius music notation and music technology work.
- Equipment | There is a new facility for video editing, and portable video and recording equipment is available for location recording and fieldwork projects.
- Technical Support | Specialist support staff are on hand to provide advice and support for events and student work.
Instruments
- Gamelan orchestras from Bali, Sunda and Java
- Three sets of West African drums
- A large collection of South American and Cuban percussion instruments
- A variety of Japanese, Chinese and Indian instruments including eight sitars
- Three Steinway grand pianos
- A harpsichord, a Flemish virginal and a 1777 square piano
- A wide range of Renaissance and Baroque instruments including recorders, transverse flute, baroque violin, viola d'amore, 1632 Grancino cello, lute, baroque oboe and baroque trumpets
Library
The University Library is continually expanding its collection of texts, scores and CDs and has a particularly large collection of contemporary music and there are specialised CD-ROM databases for research. Arrangements can be made for students to have access to the many other specialist libraries in London.
- Music resources in the Library
Students have also made considerable use of such libraries as the Barbican Library, the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance, the British Sound Archive, the National Jazz archive, the British Music Information Centre, the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Commonwealth Institute.
The Department has its own specialised collection of books and CDs which reside with members of academic staff.