The Music Building is our central practice, rehearsal, recording, and classroom study facility.
It offers an impressive variety of large, acoustically isolated rehearsal and performance spaces, including a 198-seat Choral Hall, a 280-seat Recital Hall, four rehearsal rooms, seven recording studios, and 72 practice rooms and teaching studios.
The music building and practice rooms are open 24 hours a day.
Inventory of Instruments
Steinway B, D, L, and M performance pianos, including the largest number of B Steinways offered for student use by any music program in the country.
Franco-Flemish double and two doubles by Eric Herz
Two fortepianos, a clavichord, two celestes
A vast collection of professional standard woodwinds, brasses, and strings
A complete authentic Baroque string quartet
Gambas, sackbuts, crumhorns, and recorders
An array of additional Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and exotic Indian instruments
Recording Facilities
The conservatory maintains seven recording studio labs with both analog and digital workflows taught. Tie lines are wired into several additional larger live rooms where students record in every style and configuration, from small rock bands to full-size symphony orchestras. The studios are open seven days a week during the academic year.
All studios are equipped with industry-standard AVID digital audio workstations and peripherals and are kept up to date with the latest from Avid, Ableton, Waves, and many more. See the full list.
For live sound, students learn on Midas and Behringer X32 consoles with both analog and digital splits.
Studio A has our largest control room, suitable for large classes and sessions. Completely re-designed from the ground up this year, Studio A features a Dolby-certified ATMOS monitoring environment with world-class ATC monitors for immersive music, film & TV mixing.
It boasts a complete dual analog/digital workflow featuring a 32-channel Neve recording console, a full complement of the finest analog outboard gear, and plug-in libraries.
There’s an extensive microphone collection, a newly restored Steinway piano, vintage instrument amplifiers, and electric pianos, etc. A DANTE audio network connects Studio A with our Recital Hall, Choral Hall, 0078, and other spaces, allowing remote recording and mixing in multiple control rooms.
Studio B is a smaller control room, tied into the very spacious Jazz Rehearsal hall (Room 0081). We think of this as “our Abbey Road” recording space.
Among the many features are API and Vintech (Neve) microphone preamps, a Grace monitor controller and switching, improved work area/rack systems, as well as our individual cue mix stations.
The live room has 30-foot ceilings with an acoustic shell to direct sound forward. Most Studio Composition and Jazz recitals are recorded here.
M&T Labs are our new hands-on and ears-on teaching spaces. Hands-on classes and recording/performance ensembles will be held in an acoustically treated, purpose-built, large-scale control room/performance space.
Live streaming will be a large part of M&T Labs with a designated StreamLab space. Traditional analog signal flow, acoustic instrument mic techniques, ProTools, mixing, digital consoles, MADI networking, and master classes will all be taught in this new space.
M&T Labs also includes a real live sound shop and a new long-term project space on the third floor. M&T Labs are designated teaching spaces only and are not able to be booked by students.
One of our largest (and newest) studios, Mission Control is an acoustically treated mix room on the first floor with full a ProTools system, software complement, Grace monitor controller, and Focal monitoring.
Studio C has LOTS of room for master classes or students working together. A DANTE audio network connects Studio C and Studio A with our Recital Hall, Choral Hall, 0078 and other spaces, allowing remote recording/mixing in multiple control rooms.
The Yellow Room is a room suited to mixing and composing.
It is a fully featured studio with Sibelius 7 and Adobe Premiere Pro rounding out its software package. A new (reissue Cotk) MOOG system 55 analog modular synthesizer is the centerpiece of this space.
With monitoring options by Grace, Adams, and Dynaudio, an Avid Artist mix controller, and a lovely big-screen TV, Yellow Room is a powerful studio primarily used by our third- and fourth-year and grad students.
The Blue Room is our third-floor mixing and post-production control room.
Features include a Digidesign C24 mix controller, a 5.1 Genelec monitoring system, outboard DBX compression, and an improved work area. Purchase’s advanced private cue systems with individual mix stations are here now, as well as a sophisticated analog tie-line network.
The Blue Room is a powerful and capable favorite for mixing music and film projects alike. It’s tied via snake to the third-floor live room (room 3027). It also includes Sibelius 7, Vienna Ensemble Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, and a Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S88.
The Green Room is one of our three entry-level studios, though it still features a full Pro-Tools HD rig!
Among its features are a re-purposed vintage Neotek console, Grace monitor controller and switching, and an improved work area/rack system. Purchase’s advanced private cue systems with individual mix stations are here, as well as a sophisticated new tie-line network.
Likely the first place our students will begin to track their work, The Green Room also shares access to the newly renovated 3027 as its live space, with plenty of room to track an entire band.
The Live Room has a beautiful maple floor and a Yamaha grand piano and is an ideal room to capture hard-hitting, modern-sounding drums.
Featuring the latest in digital consoles—bridging Midas preamps and live sound controllers with studio DAW applications. Private cue stations round out the adjacent tracking space for Future Studio, with plenty of room for bands to track together.
Our second entry-level room, The Beat Suite is tailored to electronic and hardware-based synth production and features Avid HD hardware and various hardware midi synthesizers (Nord, E-Mu, Linn drum among others) and soft synths. It also features a Grace monitor controller, Mackie console, Sibelius 7, and Vienna Ensemble Pro.
Our third entry-level room is very well suited to mixing and composing (also features Sibelius 7 and Vienna Ensemble Pro!).
It has monitoring options by Grace, Event and Dynaudio, an Avid control surface, and an outboard tube compressor to juice up your mixes.
A designated location for our Music and Technology electric bands to rehearse, this bookable studio space has a full PA and monitors.
Spacious and reverberant, The Recital Hall is primarily used for recording recitals and it’s a favorite space for classical musicians.
0001 houses one of our “smart classrooms” where several of our M&T classes are held, as well keyboard classes. With sixteen Yamaha 88-key keyboards, 0001 also features a Pro-Tools system with large-screen projection for class participation.
Studios Include
Pro Tools
Ableton (with Max for Live)
Logic Pro
iZotope
Melodyne
Waves Mercury Bundle
SoundToys Bundle
Komplete
Slate Trigger
MIDI Controllers
The Performing Arts Center
One of the finest facilities on any East Coast college campus, The Performing Arts Center (PAC) is located adjacent to the Music Building and is available for the conservatory’s activities. The PAC has four professional performance spaces and one of the largest portable Flentrop tracker organs in the world.
