Audio Art: In the World Today
MUSIC-UA 9001, Section 001
Instructor: Jaime Oliver
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
5/23/22 - 7/6/22 (6 weeks, Summer 1)
Course Description: This course is about three interconnected elements: (1) an art practice using digital audio (which we might call music or sound art), that (2) exists in a specific context (the world around each of us), and that (3) happens today, right now. To do this we will review theoretical and historical material from the last 70 years or so, to learn about the theories and ideas that have become foundational to audio art made today; listening, reading and reacting to get a sense of the huge variety of music and sound art today. The aim of the course is that you make various audio artwork projects and a final project, meeting in groups and individually to talk about our projects and dealing with the technical requirements of working in the recording studio and around the city.
The main aim and final project of this course is to MAKE a new work of music or sound art using audio that takes into consideration its context. The first part of the course will focus more heavily on understanding how sonic and musical practices have responded to cultural and epistemic changes and thus explore the ways in which these practices respond to their times and context. We will embark in an exploration of how music and sound art may differ and coexist as we pay special attention to musical practices that were traditionally considered less important or too experimental or even elitist, like street performances, musique concrete, soundscape composition, site-specific installations and performances, telematic performances, acousmatic music, soundwalks, audiowalks, and many others. As we move forward we will draw from both historical examples seen through today’s lens and from current examples of people adapting to make music in the covid era. The second part of the course will focus more heavily on developing your final project over individual meetings and group critiques. A big part of this course will involve you working independently and taking your work very seriously.
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Music of New York
MUSIC-UA 100, Section 001
Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 11:00 AM - 1:05 PM
7/7/22 - 8/17/22 (6 weeks, Summer 2)
Instructor: Sofya Yuditskaya
Course Description: Explore the experimental and underground art music of New York City. We will look at the robust history of NYC musicians making their own instruments and music scenes. Rooted deep in Punk, DIY, Folk, and Hacker Culture, and the spaces that facilitate that—this class mixes listening techniques including Deep Listening, Psychoacoustics, and listening informed by Electronic Audio Technology, paying close attention to Aural Diversity as we go along.
This class approaches music from the Noise end of the spectrum as a counterpoint to Western Music Theory. We will examine the technology, environment, and social structures that lead to the creation of a long running Noise scene in NYC. We will make some Noise ourselves by using of the shelf web-based generators, open source software and open-ended acoustic principles in a sound art context, attend long standing all-ages events such as NYC’s Warper Party*, and visit spaces such as NYC Resistor*. We will investigate Noise’s origins in Dada, its connection to Free Jazz, Bebop, Avant-Garde music, Fluxus, Punk, Dance Music, various EDMs and everything else NY underground.
NYU PRECOLLEGE STUDENTS MUST REGISTER FOR SECTION 060
Music of New York
MUSIC-UA 100, Section 002
Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 11:00 AM - 1:05 PM
7/7/22 - 8/17/22 (6 weeks, Summer 2)
Instructor: Brian Fairley
Course Description: What does it mean to talk about a city’s music? New York, without a doubt, has been home to some of the most important and influential performers, venues, industries, and movements in modern music history. Yet it can be easy to forget the individual lives that lie at the root of this history, the countless moments of struggle, resistance, joy, and transcendence that fill the streets with sound. In a recent essay in the New York Times Magazine, Carina del Valle Schorske shows one way to approach this question. In poetic, perceptive language, she shows how life in New York City—depicted in the brief window of summer 2021, after widespread vaccination but before the Delta wave—can be observed and experienced through dance, with the rhythms, timbres, and lyrics of different songs leading the way.
In this six-week course, we will attend to a wide range of musical practices from the past and present, focusing especially on music as a lived, embodied experience. We will explore different modes of writing about music—journalism, personal essays, formal analyses, historical portraits—while also thinking creatively about audiovisual methods of documentation and storytelling. Short, weekly writing and listening assignments will culminate in a final presentation based on the observation of musical events happening in the city today. While readings and in-class discussions will cover prominent musical traditions from New York’s history—vaudeville and minstrelsy, Caribbean social dance styles, experimental jazz and composition, folk music from myriad immigrant communities—the final presentation can look at any musical genre or scene of the student’s choosing. We will also venture out into the city: attending performances, visiting libraries and archives, and meeting performers and writers. At a time of heightened awareness of physical space, social distance, and interpersonal interdependence, this course proposes music and movement as a lens through which to understand urban life as it is lived, both yesterday and today.
NYU PRECOLLEGE STUDENTS MUST REGISTER FOR SECTION 061