TECH 203: Advanced Electroacoustic music (Spatial Audio)

Contemporary electroacoustic composers and computer musicians wear many hats: composer, performer, programmer, critic, theorist, researcher, cultural musicologist, etc. Tech 201—and later Tech 202—provide a solid foundation in many of these areas, particularly electroacoustic music history and studio hardware and software. Tech 203 explores more deeply the musical, technological, and scholarly tools currently available to electroacoustic composers. Some topics will be completely new to you, and others will be related to your previous study in TIMARA. While we will deal extensively with certain hardware* and software, the course is not “about” said tools. Rather, it is organized based on musical/scholarly practices and approaches, each of which will inevitably draw on a variety of tools. All topics will be approached through a combination of reading, listening, and creative work with the ultimate goal of expanding your compositional resources and scholarly vocabulary.

*This course will take advantage of the multi-channel sound diffusion environment available in the TIMARA studios, putting emphasis on the ability of spatial audio and more generally the design of immersive sonic environments to uniquely engage extra-musical disciplines: sculptural and installation arts, theater and drama studies, and the environmental sciences, to name but a few.