William Harper

This course is offered for those students interested in developing skills in the creation and application of digital audio. Using Apple's Logic software, students interested in exploring sound or music are introduced to audio manipulation techniques that allow them to create soundtracks, to record and produce songs or dance tracks, realize abstract sound pieces or manipulate sound for installations.
Techniques of sound manipulation are introduced, including audio recording and editing, looping, and sound destruction. MIDI, drum programming, the use of software synthesis and basic music and composition techniques are addressed according to the needs of individual students.
The class is structured to encourage the interaction of students with a wide range of technical ability in audio from beginners to advanced artists in the early stages of a professional practice.

This course introduces students to the fundamental materials of music composition, the structures used to shape these materials, and techniques and strategies students can use to create fully formed pieces of music. Referencing traditional and experimental practices from many cultures and histories, we examine the basic musical elements of rhythm, meter, tonal organization, harmony, and timbre. These are applied in a digital studio environment via sampling, sound synthesis, looping, and live recording using Apple's Logic digital audio workstation.
Musical works by artists from diverse backgrounds and identities are analyzed to understand how these materials and concepts are used to sculpt emotional expressions, narrative forms, abstract constructions, or conceptual statements. Students work with these references, elements, and materials to make their own work in genres of their own choice. No style of music is off limits.
Course work will vary but typically includes participation in weekly experiments and the presentation of self-devised projects at midterm and the end of the semester. Students work with the materials, structures, and techniques introduced to make their own work in genres of their own choice.

Alternative Image Capture investigates emerging imaging technology. AI image making and animation, 3D Camera, monitor and projection systems, action cameras, trail cams, IP equipped video, smart phone, infrared, thermal, and DSLR cameras will be used to collect primary images, video and audio material. Further exploration will include methods of processing and distribution of still and animated imagery. The ultimate shape of the course will be informed by breaking technology and the interests of the students in the class.

Selected issues in music and related areas are studied. Topics vary each semester and may include (but are not limited to): musical structure and form, aural literacy, opera studies, music and words, music and the visual arts, history of recorded music, history of the oral tradition, semiotics, communications theory, and others.

Often called the ultimate art form, the operatic spectacles of music, storytelling, and ritual were at the core of varying European cultures during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. As such, they influenced and generated many innovations in literature, fashion, visual arts, dance, and music. In this course, we will screen operas such as Mozart?s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute; the 'gesamtkunstwerk' operas of Wagner such as The Ring of the Nibelungen and Parsifal; examples of the French 'Opera Comique' such as Bizet's Carmen; the Italian opera of Verdi, La Traviata and Rigoletto; the 'verisimo' operas of Puccini, La Boheme, Il Trittico, and Madame Butterfly; and Strauss' radical, early 20th century operas Salome and Elektra. We will also encounter contemporary operas by Kaija Saariaho, Meredith Monk, Phillip Glass and John Adams. The primary resources for our studies are the operas themselves. We will screen operas during each class, review the social and historical contexts for the operas, and examine the compositional and scenographic techniques of the various productions. Course work will include a short paper on each of the works screened and a mid-term and final exam on selected arias from the operas.