Your timetable can be tailored to suit your needs. Modules can studied one after the other, or at the same time, depending on the intakes running across the year. 

The below are examples of when start dates typically run, but we advise booking a call with a course advisor to confirm the definite dates that we have in the diary.

January / June start dates
Audio Engineering – 6 months – Mondays & Wednesdays – 7pm – 10pm

March start dates
Audio Engineering – 6 months – Saturdays – 12pm – 6pm

January / June start dates
Audio Engineering – 6 months – Wednesdays 12pm – 6pm

September start dates
Audio Engineering – 6 months – Saturdays – 12pm – 6pm

Even if you work full-time, you’ll also qualify as a full-time student whilst you study this course, which means:

• Either full exemption or discount from council tax depending on your living situation (this can save over £1000 a year!)
• NUS Totum card and all the discounts that come with that (eg. Up to 15% off Apple, cinema, restaurants etc.)
• 1/3 off rail and coach travel
• Huge discounts on musical equipment

View our full list of SEM student discounts here.

Yes, a lot of our students work full-time, have family commitments, and study this course successfully alongside.

Your study is broken up into approx. 6hrs of weekly lectures (fixed time every week, see the ‘What is my timetable?’ tab).

Outside of lessons, you can book into SEM studios as much or as little as you need – we have long opening hours to cover evenings and weekends. You will have unlimited booking access to SEM’s pro studios and support from in-house tutors when you’re in for studio time. Recording slots are monitored carefully to ensure fair usage for all students. The tutors also have time-slots each week for 1-2-1 zooms, so you can tune into these from home too if you can’t make it into the studio as often.

Coupled with our comprehensive online learning resources to support your in-house training, it gives you the ability to cover the content at your pace, to fit your schedule. 

So as long as the lesson times doesn’t clash with your other commitments it is totally possible to study this course successfully alongside full-time commitments.

Book a call with a course advisor so we can chat to you about this in more detail and work out the best option for you. 

Music production headphones with a 1/4″ adapter, an external hard-drive or USBs to save your work, and writing materials are the only equipment you need.

If you need advice on what flat-response, comfortable music production headphones to purchase, please speak with Bop DJ Manchester who are 5-minutes walk from SEM. They can also offer you discounts as a SEM student.

Every student has access to their own iMac workstation in the school which contains all the software, samples and plugins that you will use throughout the course.

Home setup 

A home setup is absolutely not essential. Some of our best students have benefitted from only using SEM’s studios, as it has meant they have are working in acoustically treated studios, with the most up-to-date software, and access to in-house tutors.

With this said, if you have a home-setup, or are thinking of setting one up, these are some things you might want to consider:

Mac or PC?

We use all Macs throughout SEM, but PCs are equally fine and can be more cost-effective. If you’re working on a budget, we would strongly recommend firstly thinking about whether a laptop vs a desktop is going to be better for your needs. Once you’ve decided, we would advise focussing on processing power as this will allow your software to run more quickly. Remember that you can get up to 15% discount on Apple once becoming a SEM student. 

Flat-response monitors, audio interface and a MIDI keyboard

We have some awesome music production partners which you can view on our student discount page for a range of extra music equipment. Remember – these are not essential, but ‘nice to haves’! 

On the audio engineering front – we have a partnership with Aston Microphones so can offer SEM students amazing microphones at an awesome price.

Software

Pro Tools is the main music production software used on this course. This is not essential to have at home as it is on the computers in SEM. Should you wish to get Pro Tools, this can be done on an affordable student subscription basis, at the time of writing, this was £79 for the year.

Once you have a copy of this, as long as you have a computer (Mac or PC) with adequate system requirements, you should be able to use this to work with music at home as well as at SEM.

UK Students

Students from within the UK can enrol via the normal way, by clicking ‘Enrol Now’ on their chosen course.

EU and International Students

Our course pricing remains the same – we do not increase the course price for international students. 

Please view our international students page for further information regarding Britain’s exit from the EU, and VISA information. There are a few VISA options for EU and international students:

Standard visitor VISAs
If your main purpose to the UK is as a visitor ie. for leisure, and studying a course is something you wish to do in addition (and is not the main reason for your trip), you may be able to travel to the UK on a standard visitor VISA.

Short term study VISAs – for study up to 6 months
As this course is 6-months, it works well for a short-term study VISA for which the limit is 6 months. If you were looking at studying several courses with us totalling more than 6 months, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t study it with us.

We have several options in place where part of your training could be done online (eg this course could be), with other modules done during the 6 months in the UK. As our courses are modular, we can pack in a lot of training into the 6 months you are here in Manchester, with lots of the modules overlapping during this time to ensure you maximise your time.

Tier 4 Visas
We cannot issue Tier 4 VISAs, which are typically VISAs if you are wanting to study in the UK for longer than 6 months. However if you are a student already in the UK under a Tier 4 VISA (e.g. studying a university course) then you are able to study at SEM alongside, as long as it falls within the timeframe of your Tier 4 VISA allowance. 

Please book a call with a course advisor who can discuss what VISA options might be best for you.

Alternatively, we also offer a range of online courses that may be of interest to you. 

Student accommodation is not provided with the course.

Please see our accommodation page which has detailed information on both student halls, and private renting in and around Manchester.

It is advised that if you are moving to Manchester from abroad or a different city, the atmosphere of student halls might be better for you.

We can help you with other aspects of re-locating, such as advising you on the best transport links to find us, and where some of the best musical venues around Manchester are.

See our accommodation page for more information, and if you need any assistance in relocating please ring SEM office on 0161 833 4722 to speak with our Student Support Team.

Get more detail

We would recommend booking a call with a course advisor first, who can advise on what’s right for you. During this call we can also arrange a personal tour of SEM if you wish. Personal tours take approx. 1 hour, so we can get to know you, and you the school, in a lot more detail. 

See SEM in full flow 

We also hold Open Events are bustling events where you can get involved in lots of free music production and DJ workshops, and a range of industry seminars. All are welcome and it is a great way to see the school in full flow and meet lots of tutors, but as they are busier events you may not get the same level of information and detail that you would on a personal tour of SEM. You can see the next available Open Event dates and sign up for one here.

Try it for yourself

If you’re keen on music production and DJing and want to see what those areas are like, we would also recommend you come along for a Free Music Production Taster Course, or a DJ Taster Course. This is a great way to get a feel for the tuition style, and learn something new!