Music 620: Electroacoustic Techniques, Fall 2007

Kevin Ernste, Professor
kme32@cornell.edu
Office: B27 and 108 Lincoln Hall
Office Hours: Wed. 10 – 2, others by appointment
(607) 255-5795

Course website: http://digital.music.cornell.edu
  - please visit the website and register a username

Music 620 is an exploration of classical and state-of-the-art tools for making music with computers.  A substantial portion of our time will be spent working with software directly, although “learning software” is not our explicit goal.  Instead we will engage several software metaphors – generalized categories of functionality – working toward developing individualized composer toolkits suitable for creative work.  In developing our facility with basic techniques, we will examine a body of pieces from the classical repertoire.

In addition to commercially available software, students will be exposed to a number of excellent free software tools, many with unique designs and functionality.  All tools are available for download on the course website.

Course requirements include: two one-on-one oral tests, one in-class presentation on a composer or piece of your choosing, one mid-semester piece/study, and a larger final composition to be presented in a semester's end concert.  In addition, there will be weekly or bi-weekly assignments to be carried out on the student's own time.

Grading for the semester is as follows:

    20% Class participation
    20% Mid-semester one-on-one test
    15% Mid-semester project
    15% Public lecture/presentation
    30% Final project and concert participation

Facilities:  B27 will be our primary studios with an overflow workstation in B25A.  In addition, there is a mobile rig usable for performances and remote recording.  To inquire about availability, consult studio faculty or staff.

Selected Listening List:

    Reich, Come Out
    Schindler, Breath of Life
    Berio, Visage
    Varese, Poem Electronique
    Lansky, Idle Chatter
    Stockhausen, Kontakte
    Stockhausen, Hymnen
    Subotnick, Silver Apples on the Moon
    Mel Powell, Strand settings: darker
    Davidovsky, Synchonisms #6
    Risset, Sud
    Chowning, Stria
    Chowning, Phone
    Babbitt, Philomel
    Xenakis, Orient-Occident
    Cage, Imaginary landscape no. 1

Semester Schedule

< Week 1 August 23th
    Course introduction, Unix fundamentals, remote access

< Week 2 August 30th
    Fundamentals of digital audio, basic recording techniques

< Week 3  September 6th
    Audio editing, mixing, soundfile libraries

< Week 4  September 13th
    Introduction to Csound and the Score11 event preprocessor

< Week 5  September 20th
    Csound/Score11 continued, sampling and granular synthesis

< Week 6  September 27th
    Advanced Score11, Csound Orchestras, Cecilia

< Week 7 October 4th
    Test 1; (test and mid-semester project discussion)
     Introduction to PD and Max

< Week 8 October 11th
    PD/Max continued, subpatches, externals, abstractions;

< Week 9 October 18th
    Advanced PD/Max topics: "best practices" in engine and interface design

< Week 10 October 25th
    Advanced PD/Max topics: interactivity, networks and OSC

< Week 11 November 1st
    Analysis and re-synthesis techniques, FFT, Phase vocoder, spectral modeling     and editing
    Mid-semester projects due, Concert is November 8th, Midday Music
 
< Week 12  November 8th
    Concert Performance, Midday Music

< Week 13  November 15th
    Supercollider and JACK

< Week 14  November 22nd
    SuperCollider; spatialization techniques, methods and formats

< Week 15  November 29th
    Final concert preparations

Final Concert Date: TBA