From early amorphous blobs of computer generated sounds, to the pulsating beats of contemporary hip hop, we are experiencing electronic music in both conscious and unconscious ways. This course will explore the impact that electronics have had on music since its beginnings in the late 19th century. Special attention, using a variety of genres, will be given to the advent of sound in film as well as to new language/vocabularies in music, new sounds as the result of newly designed instruments and synthesis techniques, digital vs analogue applications and, the computer.
This course will offer participants the unique opportunity to observe, analyze, experiment, and even create music with electronics.
Problems concerning the enduring question of invention as progress (or not) and wrestling with finding value in the unfamiliar will be at the heart of this course. Determining how these new technologies have shaped listening, musical creativity, responses, expectations and culture, will be examined through multiple lenses and disciplines where the intersection of art, science, technology and society meet at a sometimes surprising but undeniable crossroads.