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CS92PROD
Composing, Performing, and Listening to Experimental Music
MUSC 220
Fall 2010 not offered

This course in experimental music composition with a focus on computer music techniques. In Spring 2010, the course will be linked to COMP112(02), Introduction to Programming. Students who enroll in MUSC 220 must also enroll in COMP112(2) to be retained in the course. Both courses will use SuperCollider 3, an open-source computer music software environment, as their fundamental tool.

MUSC220 will introduce how SuperCollider is used to produce and modify sound, providing the necessary background in acoustics and psychoacoustics. As a first course in composition, it will also discuss how composers have used the physical and psychological understanding of sound to augment traditional musical structures and compositional techniques. COMP112 will introduce SuperCollider's programming language, emphasizing the basic approach of object-oriented programming and the abstractions needed to model graphics, sound, and music.

The larger goal of this initiative is to introduce those aspects of computational thinking that involve passages between aural, visual, temporal, and mathematical structure. Many contemporary artists and composers ranging from Sol Lewitt to Tom Johnson have navigated these passages. Ethnomathematics, the study of the interrelation of mathematics and culture, has provided an increasingly rich collection of examples of such passages from throughout the world, ranging from the asymmetric rhythms of central African music to theories of meter in Sanskrit poetry. The courses will draw on freely from this literature for motivating examples, rudimentary assignments in programming and sound design, and the creative term projects that are our ultimate goal.

Essential Capabilities: None
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA MUSC
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (MUSC)

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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