Every semester, I have my music technology students do a project using found sound. They record environmental sounds with their phones, and then they create tracks that incorporate those sounds somehow. The only rule is that they have to use at least one found sound–it doesn’t have to be their own. Otherwise, they can use …
Tag Archives: Montclair State
My music technology syllabus
This is now out of date, see the current version I use variations on this project list for all of my courses.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 …
Prepping my rap and rock class at Montclair State
This summer, I’m teaching Cultural Significance of Rap and Rock at Montclair State University. It’s my first time teaching it, and it’s also the first time anyone has taught it completely online. The course is cross-listed under music and African-American studies. Here’s a draft of my syllabus, omitting details of the grading and such. I welcome your questions, comments …
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Teaching reflections
Here’s what happened in my life as an educator this past semester, and what I have planned for the coming semester. Montclair State University Intro To Music Technology I wonder how much longer “music technology” is going to exist as a subject. They don’t teach “piano technology” or “violin technology.” It makes sense to teach …
Pedagogical remixing with Splice
My newest music student is a gentleman named Rob Precht. As is increasingly the case with people I teach privately, Rob lives many time zones away, and he and I have never met face to face. Instead, we’ve been conducting lessons via a combination of Skype and Splice. It’s the first really practical remote music …
A history of pop production in three tracks
Earlier this spring, I subbed for Adam Bell‘s Music Technology 101 class at Montclair State. His sections were populated more exclusively with classical conservatory kids than mine, so for my one-shot lesson, I figured I’d talk them through some items from my illicit collection of multitrack stems, and give them a sense of the history …
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Musical shares
Recently we had some guys from Splice.com visit NYU to show off their intriguing new product. (It’s basically GitHub for musicians.) The Splice guys demonstrated the power of networked collaboration with an exercise they call “musical shares.” Everybody starts a track in some DAW (we used GarageBand.) You work on your track for ten minutes. …
The poetics of rock
I’m teaching at Montclair State University because of Adam Bell, a fellow self-taught rock and pop musician turned academic. Adam loves to quote The Poetics of Rock by Albin Zak, and rightly so. Zak’s major point is that rock is an art form about making records, and that the creativity in making records is only …
First day of music tech class
I recently began my second semester of teaching Music Technology 101 at Montclair State University. In a perfect world, I’d follow Mike Medvinsky’s lead and dive straight into creative music-making on day one. However, there are logistical reasons to save that for day two. Instead, I started the class with a listening party, a kind …
How should we be teaching music technology?
This semester, I had the pleasure of leading an independent study for two music students at Montclair State University. One was Matt Skouras, a grad student who wants to become the music tech teacher in a high school. First of all, let me just say that if you’re hiring for such a position in New …
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