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News & Notes
THE LEADING EDGE
News about happenings in MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment
On the Move
The Department of Media Arts has elevated two additional programs to stand-alone degrees, has created capstone courses for all concentrations, and is considering launching a Master of Fine Arts in Independent Film and Television.
Media Management and Photography, formerly concentrations under Media and Entertainment, are now free-standing majors. Animation, Interactive Media, and Video and Film Production have also become stand-alone majors, with the latter offering new concentrations in Filmmaking and Live Production.
Senior capstones, meanwhile, give students an opportunity to create culminating projects supported by faculty to add to their portfolios and to help launch their careers.
The focal tracks of the new master’s degree would create a unique offering both in the region and the state, said MTSU Board of Trustees member Pam Wright, especially as film and TV remain burgeoning industries, as noted by the Atlanta Film Commission. The proposed program, currently undergoing a feasibility study, would be composed of three tracks: Documentary, Creative Producing, and Live Event TV.
Bringing Home the Gold
Two MTSU graduates won Grammy gold for helping create 2021 best country album Wildcard by Miranda Lambert. In fact, Department of Recording Industry alumnus Jason A. Hall (’00) and Audio Production grad Jimmy Mansfield (’14) had a great chance of winning this year’s country album category, thanks to their teamwork on three of the five nominees.
Along with Lambert’s winning effort, announced from Los Angeles’ Staples Center, engineer Hall and assistant engineer Mansfield also were part of the crews nominated for Brandy Clark’s Your Life is a Record and Ashley McBryde’s Never Will.
A third MTSU-trained pro, Audio Production graduate Jeff Braun (’12), was Hall and Mansfield’s friendly country-album competition. His mixing work on the project by Ingrid Andress, Lady Like, earned him a Grammy nomination.
As of the March 14 ceremony, the number of MTSU-connected Grammy winners since 2001 has risen to 13 with a total of 33 Grammys in categories from classical to pop to country to gospel.
Whether they created the words or captured the music, MTSU alumni’s work stood out throughout the 63rd annual Grammy Awards. School of Music alumnus and producer/ songwriter Wayne Haun (’00) competed against himself again with recognition for three of the five best roots gospel album nominees in a repeat of the 2018 Grammys ceremony.
Former student and multi-Grammy winner Lecrae Moore, known professionally as Lecrae, was back in the golden circle for two new efforts: nominations for best contemporary Christian music performance, “Sunday Morning,” with gospel icon Kirk Franklin, and a best gospel performance/song co-writing nod for “Come Together” for Rodney Jerkins Presents: The Good News.
Music Business alumna Laura Rogers (’09) and her sibling, Lydia Slagle, who perform as The Secret Sisters, were nominated for two Grammys: best folk album for their fourth release, Saturn Return, and for writing a best American roots song on it, “Cabin.” And former student Hillary Scott and her bandmates in Lady A were nominated for best country duo/group performance for their song “Ocean.”
History on Audio
The Center for Popular Music (CPM) recently added several oral history collections related directly to the Nashville music industry to the archive.
CPM graduate assistant Tiffany Minton, from MTSU’s Public History program, created the Women Musicians in Nashville Oral History Project as a collection of narrative histories from some of the industry’s most prominent studio and stage musicians. Minton also organized an online panel discussion with several of her interviewees (view at mtsu.edu/popmusic).
Recording Industry faculty member Odie Blackmon launched the center’s Soul of a Songwriter oral history collection with an extensive series of interviews with legendary country songwriter Kostas. Born in Greece, Kostas grew up in Montana and in the 1980s launched his songwriting career with a string of hits for artists such as Patty Loveless, Dwight Yoakam, Martina McBride, and The Mavericks.
Additionally, West Virginia University’s Travis Stimeling donated the interview recordings and transcripts from his research for the book Nashville Sounds: Record Production in Music City (Oxford University Press, 2020). Stimeling’s interviews with many of the session musicians, arrangers, and businesspeople who helped create Nashville’s famed production practices in the 1960s and ’70s include such legendary figures as Hank Bradley, Bergen White, Ray and Polly Edenton, Rose Drake, Ray Stevens, and Wayne Moss.
Animation Domination
Animation students Tyler Aldridge, Ngoc Chi Nguyen, and Virginia Lake Petty took home the prize for best Tennessee student short at the 51st annual Nashville Film Festival. The animated short film Cat Burglar was created by the trio in their Animation capstone classes.
Rodeo with Reba and Cody
With Tennessee Miller Coliseum as the backdrop, MTSU alumni and students from the College of Media and Entertainment helped produce the Dear Rodeo music video for country star Reba McEntire and rising artist Cody Johnson in fall 2020.
Prince of a Hire
The Commercial Songwriting program welcomes musician and singer Dez Dickerson, who will teach Performance Skills for Artists and Songwriters starting in the Fall 2021 semester. Dickerson was an original member of Prince and The Revolution and performed on tracks such as “1999” and “Little Red Corvette.”
He joins other prominent music industry professionals teaching in the program, including producer Torrence “Street Symphony” Esmond (’03), hit songwriter Shelly Peiken, and producer/ engineer Doug DeAngelis.
Musical Chair
John Merchant, the new chair for the Department of Recording Industry, is a Grammy-nominated producer and engineer who has worked with a multitude of A-list artists, such as Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Lenny Kravitz, and David Foster.
While earning his degree in Music Engineering from the University of Miami, Merchant interned at Middle Ear Studios on South Beach, owned by Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees. He worked his way up from assistant to chief engineer and then opened his own studio called RedDoor in Miami in 2004. He produced a top-selling DVD on mixing techniques for Multiplatinum Productions in 2007 and was nominated for a Grammy as producer for the British artist Mika in 2008. That same year, he completed the Master of Fine Arts degree in MTSU’s Recording Arts and Technologies program.
Merchant soon joined the Recording Industry faculty. During his tenure, he helped bring Barry Gibb to campus as part of the department’s Chair’s Speaker Series. In recent years, Merchant has produced and engineered Gibb’s critically acclaimed album In the Now and served as Coldplay’s monitor engineer at the Glastonbury Festival.
Pleasant Honor
Jennifer Woodard, assistant dean and associate professor in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, received the 2021 John Pleas Faculty Award.
Woodard, an MTSU alumna, teaches classes on convergence, digital writing, podcasting, audio journalism, women in the media, and race, class and gender. Her emphasis on media literacy instructs students in how to judge the media they see and hear based on credible facts, a valuable skill in an age of growing disinformation.
As assistant dean, Woodard focuses on diversity issues, assessment, student and faculty mental health programs, curriculum development, internship development, and a mentoring/advocacy program for faculty. She also is the faculty advisor to the National Association of Black Journalists student chapter.
The award, created in 1997 to honor the MTSU professor emeritus of Psychology, is presented annually during Black History Month to a Black faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and service.
“John Pleas was the first African American professor that I ever had a class with,” Woodard said. “I took his psychology class my freshman year at MTSU, and it changed my life. You see, representation matters, and he represented what was possible for me in the classroom.”
McDonald’s Track
Music producer and alumnus Tay Keith (’18) teamed up with McDonald’s to promote the restaurant’s new Crispy Chicken Sandwich. For a limited time, the sandwich was available with a gift box set that included an exclusive track written and produced by Keith as well as a limited-edition hoodie.
Keith, who has produced songs for Travis Scott, Drake, and Eminem, received a Grammy nomination for best rap song for his work on “Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott during his senior year at MTSU. Billboard also recently named Keith among the 50 Greatest Music Producers of the 21st Century.
Local News Service
The School of Journalism and Strategic Media has launched Middle Tennessee News (MTN) in order to bring an immersive, teaching hospital-style learning experience for students.
Aspiring journalists training for the multimedia and sports media fields are creating content and providing local news, sports, and educational programs for the middle Tennessee region.
Faculty advisors, including Dan Eschenfelder, Christine Eschenfelder, Keonte Coleman, and Chris Bacon, work with students in the MTN newsroom and the classroom. Student staffers participate by taking contributing classes, such as Video Journalism Practices, Video Reporting and Editing, and News Producing, as well as practicum courses.
Students report, produce, and anchor livestreaming newscasts at 5 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, along with contributing to the website (middletennesseenews.net).
“I get excited every Monday and Wednesday when I know that I am about to put together a newscast with an amazing crew,” said senior Kristi Jones, an MTN manager, anchor, reporter, producer, and assignment manager.
“I love the people that I work with and the content that we are able to create in such a short amount of time. I cannot wait to use what I have learned in this newsroom in my future career.”
MTSU students with an interest in sports also produce a 30-minute weekly sports show, Blue Raider Extra Point, which airs on True Blue TV every Saturday in the fall semester at 10:30 a.m. I
In spring 2021, MTN sports journalists launched live streaming coverage and play-by-play of MTSU tennis and produced an interactive special when the Blue Raider men’s tennis team achieved an impressive streak of 25 home wins. MTN News covered the 2020 election with three livestreaming news cut-ins and newscasts, paying special attention to local races in seven counties within a 40-mile radius.
Students also produced a special report on the 100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast, which won a 2021 national award of excellence from the Broadcast Education Association and a silver in the Telly Awards, and an MTN special and website for the 75th anniversary of D-Day as part of a study abroad that won Best of Show at the 2019 Tennessee Student Associated Press awards.
True Mastery
Recording Arts and Technologies M.F.A. students excelled through a very challenging year of creative production despite restrictions imposed by COVID-19. Classes were conducted remotely over Zoom using multi-iPhone-camera and highdefinition-audio streaming tools put into place during summer 2020. Hands-on studio classes were conducted online with student recording sessions taking place on campus.
• Christopher Lippincott completed an outstanding final project that was an original film score, composing and recording piano and strings for No Country for Old Men. • Michael Ryan composed, produced, recorded, and mixed a folk-rock concept album centered around his experience of the pandemic.
• Dustin Painter, selected as this year’s Outstanding M.F.A. Student, completed his final project of interactive immersive audio for gaming. Painter and Gabe Pacino were selected as ambassadors for AdamAudio, a manufacturer of studio loudspeakers.
• The M.F.A. program began an accelerated bachelor’s-tomaster’s (ABM) program, which allows top undergraduates to begin the M.F.A. while completing their bachelor’s degrees.
• M.F.A. students recorded and mixed nine original songs written by undergraduate songwriting students utilizing the talents of professional American Federation of Musicians session players from Nashville. The sessions occurred in Studio B and were livestreamed over Zoom so student songwriters and engineers could collaborate online in real time with the pro players in the studio.
• The M.F.A. also underwent a very successful program self-study and program review conducted by New York University’s Agnieszka Roginska.
• Michael Fleming and Bill Crabtree were co-chairs of the AES Conference on Audio Education July 22–24.
Field of Dreams
The Sports Media concentration was launched by the School of Journalism and Strategic Media in fall 2019. The program offers students targeted educational and hands-on opportunities to be successful in the sports industry.
Chris Bacon’s Advanced Reporting for Sports class gives students a chance to cover local sports events and stories on a weekly basis for Middle Tennessee News. Bacon is a community advisor for Music City Baseball, a group working to bring Major League Baseball to Nashville that provides MTSU student internships. Students also have done production work for ESPN, the NFL Draft, and the Nashville Sounds.
Leading in LED Video
MTSU alumni Billy Pittard, chair of the Department of Media Arts, and Mike Forbes, assistant director of technical systems, use their years of media and entertainment experience to equip students with relevant and in-demand industry skills.
The Media Technology course taught by Forbes trains students on LED video display technology, a developing and booming area of the industry, Pittard said. Not only does Forbes teach students how to use the technology, but he also has them use it with real clients out in the field from the initial design stage to on-set operation.
“As far as we know, we’re the only university in the world doing this,” Pittard said. “MTSU has become an important player in workforce development for the touring industry.” MTSU has access to the specialized equipment, with donations from partners like Nashville-based PRG Gear, as well as the space to host large events and provide students with hands-on opportunities.
“I have gotten to work on countless ESPN broadcasts, several award shows, concerts, studio shows, and live newscasts,” said Brea Robbins, a May 2021 Video and Film Production graduate. “What better way to learn than to actually go out and do it? It doesn’t get better than that.”
LED video display technology is used to visually enhance everything from live performances like Super Bowl halftimes to reality TV programs to Broadway plays to the faraway galaxies depicted in sci-fi programs like The Mandalorian. Alumni have worked for major artists such as Rascal Flatts, Little Big Town, Twenty One Pilots, and Keith Urban.
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Modern Politics
MTSU media graduate Ben Burnley’s timely research into how social media can affect politics and voting was chosen as 2021’s best thesis by the Tennessee Conference of Graduate Schools. After earning his M.S. in Media and Communication, Burnley is now working toward a master’s in Public Policy and a doctorate in American Government at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy in Washington, D.C. Burnley toured with a band out of Nashville and worked in music publishing before the 2016 election convinced him to shift his interests to political science.
mtsunews.com/burnley-thesis-win-spring21
Advisor Advocacy
Like most things on campus, the way academic advisor Laura Helen Husband advised hundreds of Commercial Songwriting and Music Business students changed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic—meeting with students via Zoom and by phone, instead of face to face. But one thing that didn’t change is supporting the 250 students she advises: “Our passion for students is the same; our advocacy and hope for them is the same.” Husband said she believes “we may be creating one of the most versatile and resilient communities that we’ve seen in a long time.” mtsunews.com/academic-advisor-says-listening-is-essentialto-helping-students-adjust-to-new-normal
Scene and Heard
MTSU‘s WMOT-FM Roots Radio 89.5 earned acclaim in the Nashville Scene’s annual “Best of Nashville” issue as the best roots radio station, along with recognition for Whit Hubner as best blues and Americana radio host. Ron Wynn, a Grammynominated music critic, praised the 100,000-watt station for making a difference by focusing on “contemporary and vintage acoustic music, much of it deemed a commercial liability by the corporate types who rule mainstream radio.” He deemed Hubner, a two-time alumnus, “an active, vital part of Nashville’s blues and Americana scene.” mtsunews.com/mtsu-scene-best-of-2020
Industry Titans
Several MTSU alumni were finalists for the 56th annual Academy of Country Music Awards. Commercial Songwriting graduate Michael Hardy (’13), who uses his last name professionally, was nominated as ACM songwriter of the year a second time.
Recording Industry alumni Jason A. Hall (’00) and 2019 category winner Reid Shippen (’94) were both up for audio engineer of the year. Audio Production grad Jimmy Mansfield (’14) was assistant engineer for two ACM-nominated albums, and new scholarship creator Hillary Scott was nominated in group of the year and event of the year. mtsunews.com/mtsu-acm-nominees-2021