This week I begin another iteration of my NYU class, a music technology crash course for future music teachers. Given the vastness of the subject matter and the constraints of a one-semester course, the challenge is always to figure out what to put in and what to leave out. I continue to take a project-based …
Continue reading “NYU Music Education Technology Practicum syllabus”
People ask us a lot if there’s a way to record the output of the aQWERTYon. We might introduce recording functionality some day, but in the meantime, there are two methods for recording your aQW performances.
A student interviewed me for a class project on “the impact of music technology on the music industry.” Her questions and my answers follow. How did you get interested in music technology? I got interested in music technology the first time I touched an instrument. So did you! I don’t think we should even have …
You can put all recorded music techniques and gestures into three categories: realist, hyperrealist, and surrealist. These categories have soft boundaries that broadly overlap. Nevertheless, I find them to be a useful way to organize my thinking about sonic aesthetics.
Writing assignment for Ethnomusicology: History and Theory with David Samuels Louise Meintjes (2017) Dust of the Zulu: Ngoma Aesthetics After Apartheid. Durham: Duke University Press. Brian Larkin (2008) Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. The image of Zulu men dancing, singing and drumming carries heavy symbolic weight. …
Writing assignment for Ethnomusicology: History and Theory with David Samuels Deborah Kapchan, editor (2017) Theorizing Sound Writing. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. My doctoral advisor Alex Ruthmann, when evaluating some piece of technology used for music education or creation, asks: what does the technology conceal or reveal? Writing is what Foucault called a “technology of the self,” …
This is now out of date, see the current version I use variations on this project list for all of my courses. In Advanced Digital Audio Production at Montclair State University, students do all of these assignments. Students in Music Technology 101 do all of them except the ones marked Advanced. My syllabus for the …
Over on Quora, David Leigh complains that it doesn’t take much musical ability to be a popular singer these days, not like when Enrico Caruso sold a million records. People had taste back then. Kids today, amirite? Here’s my response:
I’m not a particular fan of U2, but I’ll make an exception for “With Or Without You,” their lushly beautiful ambient rock masterpiece.
Väkevä, L. (2010). “Garage band or GarageBand®? Remixing musical futures.” British Journal of Music Education, 27(01), 59. I believe that music education should engage with the music that’s meaningful to students. The field is coming to agree with me. School music programs have been gradually embracing rock, for example via Modern Band. Which is great! Unfortunately, rock stopped being …
