Producing Beats in Digital Audio Workstations as a Musical Competency, from 2001-2026

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The Cambridge University Centre for Music Performance has recently started offering Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)workshops to students. Rapidly growing interest in hip-hop production has highlighted a significant gap in musicologyregarding the production of beats using DAWS. This research aims to shed light on the learning processes, techniques,and sub-communities of digital hip-hop producers, and ultimately provide evidence for the argument that beat productionin DAWs is a multimodal musical competency. This ethnomusicological project aims to contribute to the "youngacademic field" (Shelvock, 2019) of music production studies through practice-based fieldwork. As a music producer withindustry connections, I am well-equipped to conduct this research, which aims to fill a gap in the literature on hip-hop andmusic production by examining how producers learn to use and master DAWs and how producer workflows haveevolved due to rapid technological advancement since the early 2000s. Some musicologists, including Williams (2013)and Schloss (2004), have written about the sociological and cultural aspects of early hip-hop production techniques, butthere has been little research on the modern, highly collaborative, "egalitarian" culture of "bedroom" production, in whichproducers use DAWs to create beats for global artists. This project will study the technical aspects of 21st century beatproduction, ultimately contending why producing in DAWs is a musical competency.