BFA: Experimental Pop & Electronic Music Production
The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts
Experimental Pop Showcase at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, 2024.
Sonic Innovation
As a student of Experimental Pop & Electronic Music Production, you’ll join a community of experimentally minded composers, performers, and producers who use the recording studio as an instrument to generate new work. You will be asked to take creative risks: to create disruptive sounds, use technology “incorrectly,” and incorporate improvisation and error into your artistic process. You’ll receive one-on-one studio-based instruction with program faculty, who are all active producers in the Los Angeles area—to help you develop your individual approach to creative sound production.
Experimental Pop showcase at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, 2024.
Creative production
BFA Experimental Pop & Electronic Music Production
In an era of accelerating change across the spectrum of music, the Experimental Pop & Electronic Music Production program actively embraces our students’ individual interests and practices, encouraging you to fashion your own musical path as a performer-composer-producer dedicated to making new work and fully engaging as a musical artist within the broader context of an art school setting.
It’s a sure bet you’ll see a lot of CalArtians on the list when the Recording Academy announces the Grammy nominees each year, and 2024 was no exception.
When you join our community of artists, you’ll benefit from the program’s unique location within the only accredited arts college in the United States that gathers the full range of visual and performing arts under one roof. You’ll have opportunities to pursue interests in performing and visual arts and film/video production and to apply your creative production skills to collaborative sound design projects with peers and faculty across the Institute.
Although the primary focus of the four-year BFA curriculum is on sonic innovation, you’ll also be encouraged to explore experimental pop and electronic music as inherently audio-visual forms (manifest in promo videos and visual albums, record artwork, performance style and costume) within a curriculum that encompasses music video production, sound design for the moving image, audiovisual performance, and composition for film, television and video games.
As most contemporary Experimental Pop and Electronic Music artists operate within a do-it-yourself and release-it-yourself milieu, you’ll be encouraged to cultivate professional connections with contemporary artists, recording studios, and DIY entities beyond the CalArts campus—for example, by collaborating in remote production ensembles with musical artists from Uganda, Egypt, Japan, and Colombia, or pursuing mentor-supported internships with cooperatively run performance spaces, recording studios or independent record labels in the Los Angeles area.
All BFA programs in The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts offer a broad and rigorous general musical education alongside highly individualized lesson instruction and mentoring. All undergraduate students engage in intensive shared training in musical techniques and concepts spanning classical, jazz, popular, electronic, and experimental styles, and both Western and non-Western musical cultures. You will graduate with experience in creating original work, ensemble performance, music notation and theory, professional development, and artistic métiers outside of music.
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Experimental Pop
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Electronic Music Production
Meet the faculty
At CalArts, faculty and students are collaborators, teaching, learning, and working together as members of our community of artists.
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School of Music;
Director, Experimental Pop and Electronic Music Production;
Larry Levine Chair in Contemporary MusicImage
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School of Music;
Interim Dean;
Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in MusicImage
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School of Music;
Faculty, Composition and Experimental Sound PracticesImage
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School of Music;
Faculty, Experimental Pop and Electronic Music ProductionEmail address: ericketts@calarts.eduPhone number: (661) 253-7740Image
Gallery
Faculty Playlist: The Sound of Ex-Pop
The musicians defining creative production at CalArts.
Check out this playlist, which showcases the cutting-edge creative work produced, performed, and written by the faculty of Experimental Pop and Creative Production. It’s a tour through the diverse sounds of our instructors, featuring everyone from electronic innovators like Laurel Halo and John Tejada to boundary-pushing producers like Jake Viator and Emily Evans.
John Baffa in the recording studio.
Julia Holter Embraces the Corporeal
Alumni Stories
Ever-shifting orchestration envelops shards of meditative lyrical fragments in Something in the Room She Moves, the sixth studio album by composer, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and CalArts alum Julia Holter.
School of Music Events
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Performance School of Music
The 2026 Experiments in Electronic Sound offers a platform for musicians and artists whose works…Thu, Sep 24 / 8:00 PM - Sat, Sep 26 / 9:30 PM
CalArts Campus
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Performance School of Music
Aria for the Elements is a visual score woven from a pareidolic experience of browsing…Sun, Sep 27 / 12:00 PM - Sat, Oct 3 / 8:00 PM
CalArts Campus
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Lecture / Reading School of Music
Visiting Artist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson joins for the Jazz forum class!Mon, Sep 28 / 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
CalArts Campus
Want to learn more?
We got you. Our Admissions team is all about providing the information you need to decide if CalArts is right for you. We’re excited to connect with you for a tour of our legendary campus, a virtual info session, or at one of our admissions events across the country or around the world. Take the next step—we’re here to help.