Point Blank Music School has opened a new facility near to its London base, doubling its core production portfolio and increasing its longest available course length from one to two years. This expansion brings industry-focus for students aiming for careers in commercial music, film, broadcast and games production.
As part of this development, Point Blank has invested in the best and most commercially-relevant production tools for its flagship Music Production & Sound Engineering Complete Master Diploma, including the installation of a 48-channel SSL Duality δelta SuperAnalogue console for the main studio.
‘We’re a cutting-edge music school and we want cutting-edge gear’ says Point Blank owner, Rob Cowan. ‘That’s what the Duality is. If students are going to go on and work in commercial studios, we need to train them on the best there is.’
The School has premises in London and LA, and is distinguished by the wide variety of courses it offers – from music production and sound engineering though live sound, song writing, singing, DJing, radio production, and music business.
‘We’ve been training students on Logic and Ableton,’ Cowan explains ‘In one year, taking them from not knowing anything to being competent music producers. With the Duality and becoming an Avid Training School, we’re training people to work in the industry.’
The new Point Blank facility incorporates seven studios and training rooms – including a live recording area – all connected to a central space that the school is calling The Hub. This relaxing space encourages student collaboration, while providing a perfect venue for master classes.
‘Students can hang out, but we can also do workshops in there,’ says Cowan. ‘We can easily rearrange the furniture and comfortably accommodate up to around 70 people. It’s fantastic for when we host guest producers and artists, and so on. We can now deliver all the new modules that we’ve been so desperate to start, and at the same time provide a better student experience.’
He regards the Duality room as both a studio and a classroom: ‘That is our number one space – a showpiece studio where we’re going to teach more advanced sound engineering, more advanced mixing. That’s where the Duality is really going to come into its own. We’ve now got more options, more at our fingertips – more exciting things that we can do.’
