Composing, Performing, and Listening to Experimental Music
MUSC 220
Fall 2026
| Section:
01
|
This is a first course in the composition of music that does not does not treat pitch relations as primary but, instead, finds approaches that can engage with all forms of sound whether pitched, unpitched, contextually specific, or abstract. Pieces from the last 100 years that have developed this approach will be presented and the ideas underlying their making (as likely to be drawn from acoustics, psychoacoustics, acoustical ecology, and sound engineering as music theory or history) will be discussed.
Weekly course work will focus on short compositional studies that respond to the pieces discussed and explore different digital and analog compositional techniques (tape manipulation, sound sampling, granular synthesis, frequency modulation, feedback, etc). Two larger creative projects will be completed, one at the eighth week of the semester and the other as an end-of-semester term project.
There will also be one primarily technological assignment. This will be to design a "plug-in" that could add a useful capability to your working environment (most likely Audacity, Reaper or Ableton Live). You will also attempt to build this plug-in using an AI tool, such as ChatGPT or Claude, capable of performing the coding on the basis of verbal prompts. (Ideally, this will yield a tool that facilitates your term project, but its role as an assignment is simply to demonstrate your ability to clearly communicate compositional and technological ideas.) |
|
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA MUSC |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
|
Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
|
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
|
|
|