Introduction to music, including notation, written and aural skills, and basic conceptual resources of music theory. Exploration of scale, mode, rhythm, meter, texture and form, with reference to a diverse range of musics.
This course is an introduction to basic skills in sight reading. Instruction includes reading rhythms in simple meter, solfege recitation, and sight-singing simple melodies.
Collegium Musicum is a performing group dedicated primarily to the study and performance of early music, broadly defined.
Prerequisites: Auditions are required. Sign up for an audition on the MPP website: www.mpp.music.columbia.edu or on the CUO website: http://cuo.music.columbia.edu/ Auditions are required. Sign up for an audition on the MPP website: www.mpp.music.columbia.edu or on the CUO website: http://cuo.music.columbia.edu/ Accepting NEW STUDENTS in FALL semester ONLY unless otherwise noted. All accepted MPP students must register for ensembles by the change-of-program deadline every semester in order to be allowed to participate. Petitioning students or students not able to register must notify MPP staff prior to this deadline. Contact Music Performance Program at mpp@columbia.edu Weekly meetings with ensemble and end-of-semester performance required.
Prerequisites: Auditions are required. Sign up for an audition on MPP website: www.mpp.music.columbia.edu Prerequisites: Audition Required: Sign up for an audition time on MPP website: www.mpp.music.columbia.edu Accepting NEW STUDENTS in FALL semester ONLY. All accepted MPP students must register for lessons and ensembles by the change-of-program deadline in order to be allowed to attend lessons that semester. Petitioning students must notify MPP staff prior to this deadline. Contact Music Performance Program at mpp@columbia.edu
Salsa Soca Reggae is an introduction to Caribbean popular music that surveys music from 1800 to the present. The course focuses on the cultural and social history of the music and traces its influence on global cultural and musical expression.
An introduction to the potential of digital sound synthesis and signal processing. Teaches proficiency in elementary and advanced digital audio techniques. This course aims to challenge some of the tacet assumptions about music that are built into the design of various user interfaces and hardware and fosters a creative approach to using digital audio workstation software and equipment. Permission of Instructor required to enroll. Music Majors have priority for enrollment.
This course will provide a critical survey of the development of electronic and computer music and sound from around the globe. From early experiments and precursors in the late 19th century through to modern-day experimental and popular music practices, this course aims to trace the development of technologies used in the production of electronic and computer derived sound and music alongside the economic, cultural, and social forces that contribute to the development of audiences. The course will focus intently on listening through a series of curated playlists in an effort to unpack style and genre distinctions. Readings and listening examples will be paired with small, hands-on assignments, that demonstrate the effect of music making tools on the process and structure of musical genres and styles ranging from the experimental practices of musique concrete, drone, and harsh noise to the mainstream practices of dub, techno, vaporwave, hyperpop, and hip hop and more.
This class offers insight through composing, analysis, and performance for the composer, singer/songwriter, and performance artist. Coupling specifics of rhythm, melody, and harmony with story telling, lyric writing and the voice itself, students will be encouraged to share their imagination in song regardless of style, genre, or aesthetic. Music ranging from Chant to Music Theatre, the German lied to international pop fusion will be included as models upon which to base discussion and creative endeavor. Improvisation and musicianship techniques will complement pedagogical presentations of tonal and non - tonal compositional practice. A required final project based on any combination of composition, analysis, and performance, and in any media will be due at the end of the semester. All levels of experience and all types of instruments are welcome. Notation software is recommended but not required.
Designed to improve the students basic skills in sight-singing, and rhythmic and melodic dictation with an introduction to four-part harmonic dictation.
Techniques of sight-singing and dictation of diatonic melodies in simple and compound meter with strong emphasis on harmonic dictation.
Elementary analysis and composition in a variety of modal and tonal idioms. A one-hour weekly lab is required, to be scheduled at the beginning of the term. Course to be taken in conjunction with the Ear-Training sequence, up through Ear-Training IV.
Elementary analysis and composition in a variety of tonal idioms. A one-hour weekly lab is required, to be scheduled at the beginning of the term. Course to be taken in conjunction with the Ear-Training sequence, up through Ear-Training IV.
Topics in Western music from the Classical era to the present day, focusing on the development of musical style and thought, and on analysis of selected works.
Composition in shorter forms. Students will compose new works for the cello, with a focus on diverse approaches to the instrument. Student pieces will be workshopped, rehearsed, and performed (and/or recorded).
Materials, styles, and techniques of 20th and 21st century music. Musical concepts and compositional techniques related to serialism and atonality, timbre, orchestration, indeterminacy, rhythm and temporality, electronic and electro-acoustic music, site-specific composition, graphic notation, recomposition, minimalism, and spectralism.
Sight-singing techniques of modulating diatonic melodies in simple, compound, or irregular meters that involve complex rhythmic patterns. Emphasis is placed on four-part harmonic dictation of modulating phrases.
Techniques of musicianship at the intermediate level, stressing the importance of musical nuances in sight-singing. Emphasis is placed on chromatically inflected four-part harmonic dictation.
A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.
Intermediate analysis and composition in a variety of tonal idioms. A one-hour weekly lab is required, to be scheduled at the beginning of the term. Course to be taken in conjunction with the Ear-Training sequence, up through Ear-Training IV.
Intermediate analysis and composition in a variety of tonal and extended tonal idioms. A one-hour weekly lab is required, to be scheduled at the beginning of the term. Course to be taken in conjunction with the Ear-Training sequence, up through Ear-Training IV.
This course seeks to approach the study of music and society by comparatively studying repertories from different parts of the world, how the history of ideas and methods of studying such repertoires shaped them, the practices that constitute them and the ways they are understood and used by different peoples. Central to this course is the interrelationship between the constitution of a repertoire and the history of the construction of knowledge about it.
Prerequisites: advanced music major and extensive contemporary music background. Analysis of the modern repertory of contemporary music with directional emphasis on actual conducting preparation, beating patterns, rhythmic notational problems, irregular meters, communication, and transference of musical ideas. Topics will include theoretical writing on 20th-century conducting, orchestration, and phrasing.
Prerequisites: The instructors permission. As music moves into the 21st century, we find ourselves surrounded by an ever-evolving landscape of technological capability. The world of music, and the music industry itself, is changing rapidly, and with that change comes the opening – and closing – of doorways of possibility. What does this shift mean for today’s practicing artist or composer? With big label recording studios signing and nurturing fewer and fewer artists, it seems certain that, today, musicians who want to record and distribute their music need to be able to do much of the recording and production work on their own. But where does one go to learn how to do this – to learn not only the “how to” part of music production, but the historical underpinnings and the development of the music production industry as well? How does one develop a comprehensive framework within which they can place their own artistic efforts? How does one learn to understand what they hear, re-create what they like and develop their own style? This class, “Recorded Sound,” aims to be the answer. It’s goal is to teach artists how to listen critically to music from across history and genres in order to identify the production techniques that they hear, and reproduce those elements using modern technology so they can be incorporated into the artist’s own musical works.
This course will address hands-on making through creative projects reinforced with critical and historical readings to contextualize work. Coursework will explore fabrication, gears and motors, homemade instruments, 3d printing, amplifiers and transducers, circuit bending, and getting comfortable soldering and reading circuits. The course engages creative uses of audio technology within and beyond the concert hall, instrumental acoustics and organology, and movement, gesture, and space as elements of structuring sound work. Fluency, troubleshooting,
and self-reliance regarding basic audio hardware, signal flow, and technical requirements for supporting the addition of amplification, fixed media, or interactive electronics to sound work will be a focus throughout. We’ll explore instrument building and modification, installation
design and construction, and physical interfaces to software instruments through hands-on projects supported by readings and repertoire and will culminate in a creative project of your own design.
Overview of current work in Music Theory, an analysis, perception, and philosophy. Major areas of research and methodological challenges.
Prerequisites: W4525 (Instrumentation) and Orchestration and recommendation of Orchestration instructor for undergraduates. Graduate students (other than composition graduate students) must obtain the instructors permission. The Advanced Orchestration class explores orchestrational techniques under the light of our current knowledge of acoustics and sound analysis. It will focus on the late romantic era and on the 20th and 21st centuries. The most recent techniques (micro-tonality, extended instrumental techniques, electronics) will also be studied.
Introduction to Ethnomusicology: the history of the discipline and the evolution of theories and methods. G6412, Proseminar in Ethnomusicology II: Contemporary Ethnography is offered Fall 2012.
This course explores the creative visualization and sonification of data. Humans produce enormous amounts of data representing complex phenomena (including but not limited to our own activities), but we there is a deficit in our ability to perceive and understand the patterns in the data. The auditory and visual perceptual systems are optimized for a wide range of spatial and temporal patterns that we process simultaneously to understand our immediate surroundings. How can we use these capabilities to better understand processes that are beyond the range of our direct perception, but we can measure indirectly with a vast range of sensors? This course addresses ways of generating both sonic and visual animations of the same data, from which we will construct videos. Questions of how to design and tune these representations to bring out patterns in the data, based on the nature of human perception and also aesthetic choices, will be discussed throughout. How might these questions of pattern perception vary (or not) for scientific and artistic intents? Students will select datasets they are interested in early in the course, and will develop and build these projects over the semester. While the course is taught using Python and RTcmix, and prior experience in Python is encouraged, students may use other sonic/visual coding environments such as Unity, Max/MSP, or Pure Data for their projects. Hardware for VR/AR and spatialized sound will be available for class use at the Computer Music Center.
This class explores advanced topics relating to the production of music by computer. Although programming experience is not a prerequisite, various programming techniques are enlisted to investigate interface design, algorithmic composition, computer analysis and processing of digital audio, and the use of computer music in contexts such as VR/AR applications. Check with the instructor for the particular focus of the class in an upcoming semester. Note: this class is not necessarily a continuation of Sound: Advanced Topics I/GR6610. Some familiarity with computer music hardware/software is expected. Permission of instructor is required to enroll.
This course explores both analogue and digital tools for the sound reinforcement of concerts in all formats. Through hands-on experience, the course addresses the impact and potential of contemporary tools on the aesthetic choices of musical projects. The course supports artists (performers, composers, improvisers, sounds artists, etc.) by providing a solid foundation and a working knowledge of live sound concepts in order to improve the realization of their creative audio work. A significant feature of the course is direct experience producing live concerts in order to fully understand the implications of the transition between the pre-concert studio preparation and live concert execution. Under the supervision of the instructor, students are expected to oversee the audio-related technical aspects of two to three music department events, including the doctoral composition work of the Columbia Composers concert series. Topics include the practice and theory behind analog and digital mixing, live sound processing, concert diffusion, spatial audio, sound reinforcement, mixed music techniques, concert recording, and efficient equipment set-up and tear-down. Please note that students must be available for two whole-day Saturday events whose dates will be determined and distributed by the instructor at the start of the semester.
Individual projects in composition.
The course presents tools, techniques, methodologies, and concepts for composing original music for dance (both acoustic and electronic). Composers will develop a work for dance, culminating in a showing at the end of the semester (most likely digital for 2021). Weekly meetings will be used to discuss the unique challenges (both practical and aesthetic) that this type of interdisciplinary collaboration raises, and to troubleshoot potential solutions. Students will examine case studies of collaborative composer/choreographer pairs (especially from the last 75 years), as potential models for working via the study of artist statements, interviews, articles, videos, and classroom discussions with invited guests. No prior experience writing for dance is necessary. Basic familiarity with a digital audio workspace (such as Logic Pro) is preferable. Non-composer music graduate students may also register (pending permission from the instructor), with a written research project in lieu of creative collaboration as their final assignment.
Prerequisites: MUSI G8412. A study of the theoretical and practical aspects of ethnomusicological field work, using the New York area as a setting for exercises and individual projects.