Unit name | Composing Live Electronics |
---|---|
Unit code | MUSI20126 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Professor. Farwell |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
normally: MUSI10059 Composition |
Co-requisites |
none |
School/department | Department of Music |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Electronic sound has enriched the possibilities for what composers can imagine and, with today’s affordable technologies, composers can now achieve more than ever before. This unit builds conceptual understanding and practical skills, for students who wish to add electronics to extend their acoustic composition practice, and for students who plan to do more extensive electroacoustic work.
We look at strategies for combining instruments, voices and recorded sound, from conceiving the desired sonic qualities and crafting the sounds, through to issues of synchronisation in performance and what to show in a notated score. We will investigate multiple approaches to real-time sound transformation and its musical control. ‘Flipping’ the agenda, to put live sound into the recorded medium, we go outside the studio to record material in the urban and natural world. Finally we extend our thinking about interactivity and ‘being live’ with experiments in extended- and meta-instruments and sound installation.
The unit will draw on a wide musical repertoire including current research. Students will make use both of ‘off the shelf’ tools, and discover ‘custom’ approaches through an introduction to Max software. Students will support each other, as performers and technical assistants, learning from the practical realisation of each other’s work.
The unit prepares composers for independent composition with electronics and further work in later units. Beyond composing, the techniques have application from game design to live theatre to computing.
Aims
This unit aims to equip students with skills and understanding across a range of contemporary techniques and concepts for the use of live electronics in art-music. The coverage is intended to be of value both to ‘mainly acoustic’ and ‘mainly studio’ composers, and also to creative performers who want to extend their palette.
At the end of the unit, a successful student will be able to:
Teaching will be delivered through a combination of synchronous and asynchronous sessions, including lectures and self-directed exercises.
Four pieces of coursework, ILOs 1-6. All four must be submitted for credit. The best three marks contribute to the unit mark (33.3% each).
Emmerson, Simon (ed.): The Language of Electroacoustic Music – Macmillan, London, 1986.
Emmerson, Simon: Living Electronic Music – Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007
Huber, David Miles: Modern Recording Techniques – Taylor and Francis, London, 2017
Rumsey, Francis, McCormick, Tim: Sound and Recording: An Introduction, Focal Press, Oxford, 2002
Schafer, R. Murray: The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Destiny Books, Rochester Vt., 1994
Winkler, Todd: Composing Interactive Music – MIT Press, London, 1999