MU4504: ELECTROACOUSTIC COMPOSITION: THE VOICE AND THE MACHINE (2014-2015)

Practical, studio-based classes will provide a technical overview of software applications ProTools, Audiosculpt and Max/MSP, and of sound recording techniques and the microphone. Running concurrently, seminar-based classes will provide an historical overview of electroacoustic music that utilizes the voice as sound object. The theme of each seminar, focused each week around a different aspect of the voice and technology, will provide the theoretical, philosophical, and aesthetic basis for practical applications. Drawing from readings, close analysis and listening of key electro-vocal works from the twentieth-century and beyond, we will assess particular cultural and aesthetic issues that concern the mediated voice in recorded sound. The course will probe the role and influence of technology in compositions that involve the voice and technology, particluarly looking at the way the voice is rendered, represented or transposed through the electronic medium.

Topics include the microphone and recording technology, sound recording technology and its implications for voice recording, early vocal immortalizations onto the phonograph, the theremin, musique concréte, the looped voice, the mechanical voice, the synthesized voice, the fictional robotic voice, human beat-boxes, the interactive voice, sampling the voice and plunderphonics, the electroacoustic voice, and lastly the spoken narrative in contemporary music composition.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

View MU4504 Timetable

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt: Written journal (25%); in-class participation (10%); mid-term composition project (25%); final compositional project (40%).

There are no assessments for this course.

Oral feedback during studio work. Written feedback on compositions and journal using report forms.

None.