Education Focus: Sydney TAFE Music

Answered by: Kerry Furlong, Head Teacher Of Music

What kind of courses do you offer? We offer a huge range of courses in Music Performance, Electronic Music Production, Audio Engineering, Live Production and Music Business, Certificate II through Advanced Diploma, full time weekdays, part time nights. The big buzz lately is our free short courses, including guitar, keyboard, singing, songwriting, lyric writing, recording studio, and of course our infamous free Ableton Live course. Those give you eight to 10 sessions of three hours each, up to 30 hours, day or night, completely free.

Do you offer practical on-site learning or more of a theoretical base? We are totally practical, hands-on, real-world training. We are the only music school in the area categorised as "vocational training" in music. We literally train you to get a job done, whether the job is writing a song, playing a wicked guitar part, mixing a kickass recording in the studio, setting up an international record release, staging on a stunning show, booking a whirlwind tour, or running a high visibility promo campaign. With us, you physically do all that.

What makes you different to other educational institutions? I hear that Sydney TAFE Music is a lot better than others, students from other music and audio training organizations tell me that. The fact is, we give drastically more time for drastically less money. We are on a semester system, about 17 weeks, while others are on a trimester system, about 12 weeks. Competitors' students and teachers tell me there's not enough time to finish projects. And everyone knows TAFE costs up to 80% less, sometimes we cost nothing.

What kind of social activities do you offer? We have networking sessions every week where we get students together from all the different streams, like performance, production, business and electro, so they can show and tell what they're doing. That's how our Diploma Electronic Music student Samuel Burns met Diploma Music Business student Jannah Beth, and collaborated on the song Cut Sick, which has over 500,000 spins on Spotify this year. We also have song critiques, excursions and tons of shows at the Foundry 616 club.

Do you offer job opportunities, internships, or other ways to help students get ahead? Our Music Business Diploma gets internships and job outcomes at APRA, record labels, booking agencies, etc. Alumni include triple j's Assistant Music Director Nick Findlay, Gideon Bensen from The Preatures, and Thundamentals' manager Nathan Farrell. We have shopped student recording artists to industry, like Lanie Lane who later recorded her hit Ain't Hungry with Jack White. But more often they get famous on their own, like alumni Matt Mason did with The DMAs, and Tuka did with the Thundamentals.

When and where is your next Info Day/Open Day? I personally host Music Course Information Sessions at 6:30 every Tuesday night, except 15 Dec to 15 Jan. That's at TAFE Ultimo at Jones St Mall between Wattle and Harris St, building M, level 1, room M1.07. You can get info at sydneytafe.edu.au/careers/music, or facebook.com/sydneytafemusic, or by calling (02) 9217 3711, or emailing sydneytafe.music@tafensw.edu.au. Try our free short courses in January and February. Full time courses start 13 Feb. Come to info night any Tues at 6:30pm, we'll help you!

Website link for more info: sydneytafe.edu.au/careers/music