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My name is Miguel and I’m a junior in the ILR School. I used to sing and play piano consistently when I was younger but now I enjoy focusing my efforts into producing music. I only recently started to explore music production as I have always been a fan of hip-hop. As I grew older however, my music taste diversified immensely and I now enjoy listening to house, electronic, indie rock, r&b, jazz, soul, and every subcategory in between. Being exposed to hip-hop all these years, I have always been more appreciative of the lyrical side of music, but as I grew to love all types of music, I have come to embrace every aspect of a musical art piece, from the drums and bass, to the effects, and to the instruments I never even used to notice. And I have always considered music to be my favorite art form, because it always resonated with me the most.

Having such a strong connection to music, it was only a natural step for me to start experimenting with making my own. Since my skills in computer music production and performance are only average at best, I hope that through this course, I can master the music software and performance tools necessary to make me a more creative musician. I want to familiarize myself with the music software as much as possible and learn to perform as such. I want to be able to produce a piece of music from any genre I feel like doing. In short, I want to translate all my creative musical ideas into reality. And the best way I can see myself doing that is through this course. Thank you for reading and I hope to learn as much from you guys as I will from this course!

Best,

Miguel

Here is the randomly generated order for this coming week’s in-class performances:

Hey all,

This is your TA Charlie. I’m just writing to let you know that I’m available every Thursday from 2-3pm in room 125 (Lincoln Hall) if you need assistance with class work. Don’t hesitate to stop by if you want some extra help.

Best, Charlie

Students of Music 2421: Our Thursday visitor will be composer Erin Gee. In preparation for her discussion of “New Uses of the Voice (the vocal cavity as human ‘space’)”, she suggests considering the following questions:

As you prepare for class, here are some questions to ponder, a few excerpts to listen to, and an exercise to practice:

George Aperghis
Recitations 1-14 for solo voice (1977-78) – excerpts, #12 and #13:

Brian Ferneyhough
Time and Motion Study III (1974) for 16 voices with percussion, electronic amplification (and optional loop-tape delay) –

Dieter Schnebel
Für Stimmen…missa est (1956/67-68) for three choir groups and tape ad lib.

Beginning:

Ending:

1. How is listening to vocal music without text (non-semantic vocal music) similar to or different from listening to vocal music with a text in a language we understand? How does the non-semantic use of the voice change our perception of the vocal performer?

a. What are the vocal sound-materials that are used? Where do they come from? What are the compositional techniques that are used?

2. How does a text help guide a composer’s compositional choices? When a text is no longer present or used by the composer for the vocal line, what compositional choices does a composer have to make then?

3. There are three parts of sound production in the vocal tract: the active articulator (tongue or lips), the place of articulation within the mouth, and the type of airflow (where the air comes from and how it moves through the system). Following is an exercise to practice awareness of some possibilities of articulation:

a. Pronounce the syllable “tɑ” (with “ɑ” as in “father”)

b. Notice where the tongue is placed on the roof of the mouth. This point is called the place of articulation.

c. Now move the tongue to different places of articulation in different parts while still trying to pronounce the syllable “tɑ”. At what points does the sound change and why? At what points are you no longer able to produce a recognizable “tɑ” syllable?

d. Write a list of observations about the vocal tract that you discovered from this exercise and a list of the sounds that you found most interesting as part of a journal entry on the voice. Notice in particular what the breath does to create the “t” syllable. What is necessary in the mouth for this to take place?

4. As possibly the only living expert on your own voice, what would you consider to be some of the limitations to the voice or vocal tract that you have come across? These could be specific to your own voice or more general to the vocal tract. And more importantly:

What would be some possible solutions to these limitations?

You could approach this question either from the standpoint of a theoretical “re-designing” of the vocal tract or designing additional systems/technology that could be used in tandem with the vocal tract.

My name is Ryan and I’m a sophomore studying biology in Arts & Sciences. I’ve been playing piano for 8 years and have recently been focusing on jazz. I mostly am interested in hip-hop/dance music like Odesza, Atmosphere, and Madeon. I have very limited experience in production and live performance, but hope to learn a lot this semester.

My name is Paul DeVito and I am a computer science major and music minor. I am fascinated by the intersection between music and the digital world, and have some experience creating songs using virtual instruments and making simple edits in Acoustica Mixcraft. I am a part of Cornell’s student composition club: Contrapunkt. We gather musicians to put on concerts each semester to allow students to have their work performed. If anyone here is interested just shoot Martin Mahoney an email (mjm676 AT cornell.edu).

I played viola, piano, and percussion in high school, though have only kept up with piano. I brought up my viola this semester with the hopes that something will give me inspiration to actually play it, but so far nope. I am currently writing a piano trio and looking for some musicians to record with me :). Plz lmk if interested.

Looking forward to making music with yall!

My name is Shining (Christina) Sun. I am a 4th year architecture student. I started playing piano when I was 5 years old and have been playing it for the past 15 years. Though my background is mostly in the visual field, I have become very interested in experimental and digital music after seeing Bill Viola’s video artworks. In his videos, sound is a powerful agent that is inseparable from the image. Two years ago, I composed a digital music piece in collaboration with a young musician for my art installation in Shanghai. This fun experience made me want to join the class and really learn more about digital production of music. I also wish to apply the knowledge learned in this class to my future installations.

Hi all,

I’m a senior majoring in Information Science. I started playing the violin when I was very young, and picked up guitar during my freshman year of college. I frequently performed in violin recitals and in my middle school orchestra’s concerts. Only recently I started to play around a bit with Garageband and Ableton, and I hope to learn a lot more about how to use all the different features DAWs have to offer. I haven’t played the violin since high school, but I’ve continued to play the guitar on occasion.

Some producers that got me interested in learning more about music production include Kanye West, Grimes, Ariel Rechtshaid, Max Martin, Flume, DJ Mustard and Daft Punk. As you can probably tell from the names I listed, I’m most interested in hip-hop/pop/dance music, and I hope to create some cool projects in these genres this semester.

Hello everyone, my name is Walter Simmons and I am a senior at the Hotel School. I have been interested in music since I was young and have played the piano and guitar for years. I haven’t been doing that as much lately, but now I have gotten more into music production on the computer. Lately, I’ve been using Ableton and Native Instruments programs and I look forward to learning a lot more about production and performance in class this semester.

Hi everyone,

I’m Thomas Torng. I like composing and arranging music, as well as developing games. None of these have anything to do with my major though :(. I’ve been playing the piano for a long time, and the vast majority of my arrangements are for piano (if you’ve gone to any Anything Goes shows in the past 4 years you will have heard my stuff). I played trumpet in concert band during middle/high school so I’m familiar with a lot of instruments. Finally, through unavoidable osmosis in a musical theatre environment, I recently started singing as well. I have posted piano/vocal covers online but I’m not ready to break out of the anonymous phase yet so I’m not giving any links :P.

By taking this class, I hope to become familiar with composition software to create my own music (Sibelius Sounds doesn’t quite cut it -_-) and make better covers. I also want to learn how to make and edit sound effects to be used in games.