Sound: Courses

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course presents an in-depth study of traditional and experimental studio recording techniques and strategies. It is rooted in a thorough investigation of microphones and their use with acoustic instruments, voice, and objects, including microphone selection and placement, multiple-microphone recording, and preamplifiers; techniques for studio monitoring and overdubbing; re-amplification and other studio-based signal processing techniques. The course will include workshops and critiques with local recording engineers noted for their expertise in a range of studio situations, and visits to their studios. In addition to production projects and assignments, the course will also include listening sessions and readings regarding the theoretical, aesthetic, and technical aspects of sound recording, microphony, and sonic representation.

ALOUD is an experimental creative writing workshop exploring the process of writing as the performance of reading, or the process of talking as the performance of writing, or in other words talking aloud. ALOUD concerns itself primarily with works derived from speaking or works composed for speaking. The course will examine what it is to write aloud and read aloud, mining the possibilities of writing for your own voice, or writing for another person's voice, in such possible vocal endeavors as radio plays, improvisational novels, spontaneous poetry, and compositions derived from vocal improvisation. We will address questions such as: What happens when we speak extemporaneously? What mysteries of connection happen in the flow of speech in the moment? What do so called mistakes and slips of the tongue reveal about thought and language, and should they remain in a completed work? What if the mistake is an integral part of writing process and a component of speech that should not be removed? What needs to be edited in a work and what needs to remain? We will examine the works of artists including: Caroline Bergvall, Kenneth Goldsmith, David Antin, Erik Belgum, and others. Open to all genres.

Sound and image is an interdisciplinary introduction to the basic methods, theories and processes used to create relationships between sound and image. This course will include such topics as: sound-space; artists' collaboration; synchrony vs. asynchrony; visual/sonic motif; synaesthesia; and language/spoken text. Students will complete practical exercises and assignments utilizing particular strategies related to their own work. Techniques related to sound recording and mixing using analog and digital equipment and current software will be taught.

This course considers the building blocks of modular analog synthesis- oscillators, amplifiers, and filters, using vintage and modern analog equipment. The course also considers various frequency and amplitude modulation techniques, including ring modulation and frequency shifting. These techniques are contextualized in a brief survey of the history of `classical' analog synthesis music, both European and American, with some analysis of classical studio technique in the work of composers such as Stockhausen, Berio, Koenig, Subotnik, Oliveros, Babbit, etc. Weekly compositional projects emphasize particular technical and aesthetic problems.

Students will learn sufficient practical electronic skills to be able to modify existing electronic devices and build simple analog and digital circuits for the purposes of hearing, making and transforming sound. Strategies for re-purposing a wide variety of consumer technology will be explored, including a review of work by various musicians and artists who have used these techniques. The emphasis is on sound, but visual hacking is covered as well (video and LCD circuitry.)

This course explores the use of radio, light and sound as media through which an artist can create a public voice. This course takes a hands-on, do-it-yourself approach to these media, providing a basic background in electronics theory and practice, as well as in programming and use of microcontrollers. Topics covered in this course include, but are not limited to, low-power radio, locative media, hactivism and culture-jamming. Some examples of activities include the construction of AM/FM radio transmitters and receivers, laser projectors, persistence-of-vision displays and mobile audio rigs. A survey of the artistic significance of these media will be conducted throughout the course. Students are expected to research and present their findings in class, as well as to produce a personal or collaborative final project that augments their own practices.

This course covers the fundamentals of programming computers to control and generate music and sound compositions. It offers a general overview of specific programming strategies for the generation of sequences of events, and for generating and manipulating temporal information. Generative techniques based on approaches utilizing stochastic and other indeterminate approaches, as well as deterministic models are covered. Historical and theoretic approaches to the use of 'automatic' generative systems for composition are reviewed. Special emphasis is placed upon the use of programs for live performance, the interfacing of alternate controllers via MIDI, and hybrid physical/computational systems. All programming will be done in Max/MSP and Supercollider II.

This course explores programmatic approaches to sound creation using softwares such as PureData, SuperCollider, Processing, and more, as well as looking at sound libraries in programming languages such as Python. While intended primarily for sound artists looking to go beyond programs like Max/MSP it is also appropriate for anyone interested in code based sound, including web design, game creation, glitch artists, etc.

This course is an in-depth introduction to the technical and aesthetic concepts of digital recording. Focusing primarily on Digidesign?s Pro-Tools, students learn the fundamentals of recording, editing, and mixing in a digital environment, as well as being introduced to more advanced topics such as plug-ins and digital audio routing. The class also examines the history and mechanics of digital sound, interface design and metaphor, and the historical and contemporary aesthetics of computer based audio.

Sound and image is an interdisciplinary introduction to the basic methods, theories and processes used to create relationships between sound and image. This course will include such topics as: sound-space; artists' collaboration; synchrony vs. asynchrony; visual/sonic motif; synaesthesia; and language/spoken text. Students will complete practical exercises and assignments utilizing particular strategies related to their own work. Techniques related to sound recording and mixing using analog and digital equipment and current software will be taught.

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.

This course is aimed at exploring and understanding the richness and diversity of our sound environment - the sounds that are present, how they constantly change in time, how they can be mapped, their impact socially and individually, how they can be recorded and, especially creative approaches to such recordings. Basic recording skills will be learned using portable digital recorders with a variety of microphones, including binaural recording, contact microphones and ways of revealing underwater sound. Listening skills are central to the course. Research conducted through recording will serve as a basis for discussion of acoustic ecology. This will cover fundamental ideas such as keysounds and soundmarks, ways in which sound can be specifically related to places and the people who live in them, contemporary issues such as noise and the soundscape in creative arts and music.

This course examines the two sides of process-based composition. One half of the course is an introduction to the technical means and tools available to the composer, through generative systems such as randomness, chance operation, complexity theory, etc. which students will in turn apply, through studio practice, to their compositional methods. The other half of the course examines the aesthetic successes and failures of such methods and strategies and tools for constraining, screening, limiting, and otherwise coaxing generative systems towards a desired end.

Building on foundational concepts like beat, pulse, tempo, accent, meter, and metrical hierarchy, this course deals with the organization of patterns of musical events in time. Using concepts from cognitive psychology, a model of how people use events in music to organize their perception of rhythm will be developed. Also introduced will be ideas about how small changes in timing inflect rhythms with different emotional qualities. All of these concepts will be developed with examples chosen to represent a broad range of cultures. After a consideration of metrical organization in Western music, consideration will be given to the 'long' meters of Eastern Europe and India; to the Polyrhythms of West Africa and the Caribbean; and to non-metrical rhythms in various kinds of notated and improvised music. Students will utilize the concepts introduced to realize exercises dealing with particular types of rhythmic patterns.

This course investigates the artistic potentials of language in recording, performance, and transmission. Both the acoustic and the semantic properties of language will be explored, as well as the collision and symbiosis of the two. Topics to be considered include: presence (the voicing body) and absence (the disembodied voice); voices of authority; uses of text -- communication, propaganda, seduction, translation, misinformation, poeticization, interruption, etc.; language as a malleable material; simulacra and appropriation; scales of transmission (broadcast and narrowcast); non-radio forms of transmission -- telephone, playing telephone, 'public speaking', etc.

This course introduces basic musical skills while nourishing creative expression. Each class builds upon the previous in terms of technical concepts, historical background, and aural and written musical examples spanning a variety of musical styles and periods. Subjects covered include notation, listening skills, dictation and basic theory, all with the goal of helping each student to write their own music. Students are expected to use skills covered in each class in a composition assignment for the subsequent class.

This course will provide an introduction to programming for sound synthesis and real-time performance using the Max/MSP and Supercollider II languages. Students will learn the basic structures, strategies, concepts, and vocabularies of these two languages in order to prepare them for using these techniques within other sound department courses.

Through lectures, presentations, listening, and construction this course surveys traditional and folk instruments of many cultures-mostly non-Western ones. In addition, some theory of how sound propagates from materials and shapes is explored. Students build instruments initially from readily available materials of the instructor's choosing-bamboo flutes, percussion instruments, wind chimes, etc. The form final projects take is chosen by students and may include performing instruments, sound sculptures, simple electro-acoustic devices, etc. Instrument craftspeople may visit the class. Students may be required to make field trips to material suppliers and instrument factories and schools to inspire their individual projects.