The reason for everything

While finishing high school here in Ontario people always asked what I was doing after high school, I told them "University" and when they inquired as to which school and program I'd be going to, I said "Digital Audio Arts at the University of Lethbridge". More than often did I get confused stares or responses of "where's that" or "I've never heard of such a program", so if you the reader is also wondering what that means, here's a description from the website.

"This Bachelor of Music in Digital Audio Arts is the only degree program of its kind in western Canada. With a combination of academic courses and hands-on experiences in first-class studios and labs, the program provides students with the requisite knowledge and skills to succeed professionally in fields related to the audio industry."

Quite a mouthful, huh? Here's what's involved in this program:

Digital Audio Arts Courses

• Audio production and capture
• Sound engineering
• Composition for film and video
• Interactive and computer-assisted music composition
• Audio synthesis
• Data structures and algorithms
• Acoustics
• Music theory and history
• Electro-acoustic performance ensembles

Areas of Concentration
• Electro-acoustic composition
• Composition for film & video
• Audio engineering
• Production
• Integrated and collaborative media
• Technology in education
• Research in audio spatialization and computational models


Looks daunting doesn't it? Unfortunately for me, such a program seems to only be available outside the province but it's the only program of its kind in Canada, so I go where the wind takes me.

I've also received questions as to why I'd be pursuing such a program and there is a bit of a story attached to it, so if you want to skip it, feel free. If I got your attention...

Originally I wanted to study East Asian Studies (mostly languages including Japanese, Mandarin and Korean) and my first university of choice was the University of Toronto due to the extensive language department they had. Shortly before the start of my last year of high school, my school of choice changed to Huron College at the University of Western Ontario because they had a good East Asian department with excellent overseas exchanges but radically smaller class sizes and better student to prof ratios. Around this time I was also looking at schools for audio technology. The only school in Ontario that offered the full slate of content in terms of music technology and the like was the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology (OIART), which was a private career college. Although it was only a 1-year intensive program with excellent course content, great teachers and an extensive alumni network, the overall cost was $30,000! Originally my parents said "Go to university then look at OIART afterwards", I thought to myself "Why not find a university that teaches this kind of thing?" My search took me to Concordia University and McGill University (both in Montreal), Simon Fraiser University in Burnaby, BC and Acadia University in Nova Scotia, but the problems were that the programs only offered a third of what OIART offered (Concordia and SFU) or didn't have a Bachelor level program (Acadia and McGill). That was when I stumbled upon the University of Lethbridge and while I found it odd that a university in Alberta had such a program, it completely covered all of what OIART offered; it was perfect!

tl;dr Was going to schools in Ontario but found the perfect program in Alberta.