Recommended Viewing: Robert Ashley "Perfect Lives"

for your viewing pleasure, here's some of robert ashley's 1983 opera for television, "perfect lives".

he created this with pianist blue "gene" tyranny. i can't get enough of the early video synthesis and language play!

7/30 Listening List

On Tuesday, 7/30, we heard the following:

Paul Demarinis “Cincinatti 1830-1850” (1991)
Trevor Wishart “Vox 5” (1990)
Bjork “Where is the Line” (2004)
Maja Ratkje & Jaap Blonk “No Ecliptical Strainers” (2005)
Diamanda Galas “The Litanies of Satan” (1982)
Merzbow “Vanamali and Sharavan” (2011)
Yasunao Tone “Imperfection Theorem of Silence” (2006)
Alva Noto “U_06” (2008)
Alva Noto “Powerpoint” (2008)
Matmos “Lipostudio” (2001)
Ralp “Hydroider” (2009)
David Dunn “The sound of light in trees” (2011)
Alvin Lucier “Music for solo performer” (1965)
James Tenney “For Ann (Rising)” (1969)
Maryanne Amacher “Sound Characters” (1999)

Final Exam (Listening Portion) Study Guide

After much deliberation, I have narrowed the final listening pool down to these 10 pieces:

Laurie Anderson “O Superman” (1981)
Iannis Xenakis “Concret PH” (1958)
Morton Subotnick “Silver Apples of the Moon” (1967)
Eliane Radigue “Kyema (Intermediate States)” (1988)
Wendy Carlos “Two-Part Invention in D Minor” (Bach) (1968)
Robert Ashley “Automatic Writing” (1979)
Charles Dodge “He Destroyed Her Image” (1972)
Max Mathews “Daisy Bell” (1961)
Qubais Reed Ghazala “Silence the Tongues of Prophecy [exerpt]” (1996)
Laurie Spiegel “Appalachian Grove” (1974)

You should be able to recognize and comment on each of these pieces. As with the midterm, partial credit will be given to those who can provide relevant commentary on the pieces. There will only be three pieces selected for this portion of the exam.

Assignment 6

Three of five readings for this weekend, due Tuesday, 7/30 can be found here.
The other two can be found here and here.
For reference, they are:

Charles Dodge- On Speech Songs
Bob Ostertag- On Sooner or Later
Bob Ostertag- Why Computer Music Sucks
Milton Babbitt- Who Cares If You Listen
Kim Cascone- Glitch & the Aesthetics of Failure

7/25 Listening List

On Thursday, 7/25, we heard the following:

David Tudor “Untitled for Toshi Ichiyanagi” (1972)
David Tudor “Rainforest” (1973) 
Qubais Reed Ghazala “Silence the Tongues of Prophecy [exerpt]” (1996)
Steve Reich “Come Out” (1966)
Bob Ostertag “Sooner or Later” (1990)
Dj Rashad & Dj Spinn “XLR8R mix” (2010)
Alvin Lucier “I am Sitting in a Room” (1969)
Robert Ashley “Automatic Writing” (1979)
Robert Ashley “In Sarah Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women” (1973)
Charles Dodge “He Destroyed Her Image” (1972)
Laurie Anderson “O Superman” (1981)

Extra Credit Assignment

After some thought, I would like to propose an addendum to the grading rubric I published with the syllabus I sent out, if that's ok with you. Here's the original rubric:

Attendance / Reading: 20
Ear Journal: 15
Midterm: 15
Final: 25
Final Project: 25

 In addition to this, I propose the following optional assignment, worth 5% of the total raw score:

Watch Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris . Write a 3 page (double-spaced, 12-pt, standard margins) essay relating it to topics discussed in class. The topic is intentionally left open. You could talk about Artemyev's treatment of diegetic vs non-diegetic sound. You could talk about the sociopolitical context for the production of the film. You could compare / contrast it with another film. You could analyse its representations of the future.

Be sure to include specific references to scenes in the film (representing time in "hh:mm:ss" format, not frames or scene number). Depending on your thesis, you may need to include outside sources. If this is the case, please do not use Wikipedia. Notate your sources using either MLA or Chicago style, and include a Works Cited page, which does not count toward the 3-page minimum. You very well may not need any citations outside of references to the film itself.

 Your work will be graded in terms of originality of thesis, writing style, and clarity of argument.

Email me a pdf of your submission before 11:59 pm on Friday, 8/2/13.

7/23 Listening List

Today, we heard the following:

Eduard Artemyev “Station” (1972)
Daphne Oram “Look at Oramics” (1967)
Morton Subotnick “Silver Apples of the Moon” (1967)
Wendy Carlos “Two-Part Invention in D Minor” (Bach) (1968)
Isao Tomita “Mercury: the Winged Messenger” (Holst) (1976)
Delia Derbyshire & Ron Grainer “Doctor Who Theme” (1963)
Eliane Radigue “Kyema (Intermediate States)” (1988)
Christopher Strachey “God Save the Queen, Baa Baa Black Sheep, In the Mood” (1951)
Newman Guttman “Pitch Variations” (1957)
Max Mathews “Daisy Bell” (1961)
Laurie Spiegel “Appalachian Grove” (1974) 
Mike Post “Doogie Howser Main Theme” (1989)
Jean-Claude Risset “Mutations” (1969)
Iannis Xenakis “S.709” (1992)

Assignment 5

Assignment 5

The reading assignment for Thursday, 7/25 can be found here. Enjoy!

Note that this assignment is extremely short and painless. Please take this opportunity to listen completely through any pieces we may have only heard excerpts of in class.

At-Home Listening for 7/23

The at-home listening selection due Tuesday 7/23 is as follows:

Burial “Wounder” (2006)
Parliament Funkadelic “Mothership Connection” (1975) 
Donna Summer “Love to Love You Baby” (1975)
Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force “Renegades of Funk” (1982)
Dr. Octagon “Technical Difficulties” (1996)
Dr. Octagon “Intro” (1999)
Cybotron “Clear” (1983)

Assignment 4

Assignment 4

The reading for Tuesday, 7/23 may be found here.

Lloyd Bradley- Bass Culture (9 pages)
Nic Collins- Handmade Electronic Music (21 pages)
Ronald Kuivila- Open Sources (7 pages)
Peter Shapiro- Turn the Beat Around (14 pages)
Trevor Wishart- On Sonic Art (13 pages)

7/18 Listening List

On Thursday, 7/18, we heard the following (not including the midterm):

Louis and Bebe Barron “Ancient Krell Music” (1958)
Louis and Bebe Barron “A Shangri-La in the Desert-Garden with a Cuddly Tiger”(1958)
Gottfried Michael Koenig “Funktion Grau” (1969)
Zapp & Roger “It doesn't really matter” (1986)
Karlheinz Stockhausen “Kontakte” (1958)
Joji Yuasa “Projection Esemplastic for White Noise” (1964)

7/16 Listening List

On Tuesday, 7/16, we heard:

Clara Rockmore & Nadia Reisenberg: The Swan (Composed by Camille Saint-Saens)

Edgard Varese: Poeme Electronique (1958)

Iannis Xenakis: Concret PH (1958)

King Tubby: Ethiopian Version (1976)

Sun Ra Arkestra: Myth versus Reality, Angelic Proclamation, Out in Space (1970)

No reading assignment is due Thursday 7/18. Good luck on the midterm!

Assignment 3

Assignment 3:

The reading for Tuesday, 7/16 may be found here (PDF). 

Today we listened to: 
Christian Marclay: Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix (from "More Encores") (1989) 
John Cage: Imaginary Landscape no. 1 (1939), Williams Mix (1953) 
Pierre Henry / Nicolas Schoeffer: Spatiodynamisme II (1954)

Assignment 2

Assignment 2 (Due Thursday, 7/11th)

http://joemariglio.com/MUS6/Readings/02.tar.gz

John Cage: Experimental Music – 5 pgs (1958)

Nouritza Matossian: Xenakis – 10 pgs (w/ pictures!) (1986)

Siegfried Giedion: Mechanization Takes Command – 5 pgs (1948)

and...

http://www.detritus.net/contact/rumori/200211/0319.html

Mark Dery: Black to the Future – 7 pgs (with tight margins) (2002)

I will post the listenings we did in class after it happens. 

Assignment 1

Assignment 1 (Due Tuesday, July 9th)

Please email me the url to your blog where you will be posting reading / listening responses.

Readings (may be found here as a zip)-

Please read each of these documents and respond with 1 or 2 sentences on your blog. 

Walter Benjamin: The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction –15 pgs (WalterBenjaminTheWorkofArt.pdf)

Evelyne Gayou: The GRM – 7 pgs (Gayou_GRM.pdf)

Luigi Russolo: Art of Noises – 16 pgs (russolo_noise.pdf)

John Cage: Credo – 9 pgs (John Cage - The Future of Music_ Credo (1937)... .pdf)

Listenings-

The listenings we did in class were:

Halim El-Dabh: "The Expression of Zaar" (1944)

Pierre Schaeffer: "Etude Aux Chemins du Fer" (1948)

Les Paul: "Little Rock Getaway" & "Until I Hold You Again" (1950)

Further listenings will not be mandatory this week. I may send some interesting tracks your way, which you are not obligated to listen to or write up, unless you feel like it. Later on, at-home listenings will be required, though...

Happy 4th of July!

Welcome!

Welcome to MUS6: History of Electronic Music!

About the Instructor:

Joe Mariglio (pronounced mah REE lee oh)

Email: Joe.Mariglio@gmail.com

Office Hours: T/TH 3-4pm

Office Location: WLH 2123

Scope of the class:

In this class, we'll be looking at various traditions of music-making which involve electronics. In particular, we will focus on musical practices whose very existence depends on freshly emergent technology. This is to differentiate our field of study from music which merely enjoys the benefits of electronics-- which would include the majority of the music all of us encounter on a daily basis. I bet you could count the number of times you heard bona-fide live, unamplified, acoustic music today on one hand, and possibly one finger.

Initially, we will focus our efforts on early works, in search of the vanguard memes (and their creators) responsible for the current state of technologically-inspired music today. Many of these memes were first developed in settings that seem sheltered from popular music traditions, due to the field's prohibitive cost of entry. However, as objects such as transistors, op-amps, and eventually computers became cheaper, these tools found themselves in increasingly varied company. Perhaps now more than ever, the line in the sand between so-called "high" and "low" art has blurred into a murky gradient. Some results of this cross-pollination have deeply affected both sides of the skirmish. To place a piece of music accurately within this continuum, one should consider issues like institutional support, (sub)cultural background, and public reception. In light of these factors and innumerable others, it becomes clear that simple dichotomies between super- and sub- cultural intelligentsias are hopelessly insufficient.

Unlike previous versions of this course, I will not be progressing chronologically through the material. Instead, I'll use thematic elements to navigate though the music. I am less interested in you recalling names and dates than I am in you gaining an appreciation for the concepts attached to them. History is just a story, after all.

A few thoughts on classroom dynamics:

Not all experiments succeed. Some of this music will strike you as earth-shattering. Some of it will seem ear-shattering. You are not expected to enjoy all of it. Rather, you are expected to engage with all of it: the majority of your grades for this class involve listening to this music with an open mind, thinking critically about the related ideas, and participating in an ongoing collective dialog about all of it. Aesthetic assessments are perfectly valid so long as they are constructed with a sensitivity for the context of the work, and demonstrate a level of engagement beyond initial appearances. I am less interested in whether or not you liked a piece, than the many reasons why or why not.

In this class, you will be introduced to a variety of perspectives. Each of these perspectives, including my own, comes with an agenda. I will do my best to locate my perspective and make my agenda clear. Your job is not to agree with and regurgitate this agenda, but to engage with it. You are invited to –respectfully, of course-- disagree with me on any statements I make in class, as well as those presented in readings. You may even disagree with each other, but please be respectful.

Although I don't mind if you use your laptops to take notes while I talk, I will not permit the use of laptops when anyone else is talking. This means that when we listen to pieces of music, or when the floor has been opened for discussion, I expect you to close your laptops.

Class format:

This is subject to change. I will (attempt to) lecture for the first half of class, and provide musical examples which fit into the flow of the lecture. My lectures will probably ramble a bit and there will be many times I'll open the floor up for discussion.

You're expected to jot down your reactions and other notes w/r/t each listening example and post them on your blog after class. More on this below.

There will be a break in the middle of the barbarically long class period. At this time, I'd humbly like to propose a policy of collective snacking (outside the classroom). I'll start it off for the first day, but it would be amazing if other people stepped up and brought food / beverages to share.

I'd like to reserve the second half of class for more listening examples and less of me talking. I will bookend examples with commentary and we'll talk about them. We'll likely encounter longer pieces at this time.

Office Hours:

I will have office hours on class days from 3-4pm. My office is located in Warren Lecture Hall, room 2123. I will explain how to get there in person. I am also typically available via email.

Assessment:

Your final grade breaks down as follows:

Attendance: 15%

Blog Posts: 20%

Midterm: 15%

Final: 25%

Final Project: 25%

(5% prospectus, 20% project)

Attendance:

You are expected to show up on time to class every day it is held, and stick around for the duration of the class. If something comes up, tell me about it. If you know something will come up, tell me about it in advance.

Blog Posts:

You'll need to allocate to this course either a category of your current blog (should it exist) or an entirely new blog (should it not).

As mentioned above, I expect you to write down some notes while we listen to selections in class. I'm not expecting Shakespeare, just some first impressions. Please post these on your blog by midnight after the class in which we did the listenings.

You are expected to read, listen to, and watch the various pieces of digital media I assign to you. I recommend taking notes on this assigned media. All course materials will be made available through the internet. Please write these readings and listenings up on your blog. For the readings, try to summarize the main ideas. Be succinct and clear. The homework blog entries will be due by the beginning of the next class period.

Midterm and Final:

There will be a midterm on Thursday, July 18^th and a final on the last day of class, Thursday, August 1^st. These may involve listening to musical examples and writing about them in a short-answer format. There may also be a few prompts to get the ideas flowing.

Final Project:

You are expected to complete a final project of some kind, due on Thursday, August 1^st. This project can be either a paper or a creative work. Papers must be 5 pages double-spaced (no formatting trickery, please!) and written in an academically viable tone. You must use appropriately formatted citations to back up your work. Potentially anything from exposition to research is permitted, provided you check with me about your idea first.

You may also do a creative project. To qualify, the project must relate directly to the content of the course and a 3 page explanation of this relationship must accompany it. Again, please include citations. Potentially anything in any medium is permitted, provided you check with me about your idea first. You are expected to share your project with the class after the final on Thursday, August 1^st.

A final project prospectus will be due in class on Thursday, July 18^th. This is a brief description of your final project, which may change so long as you contact me about it. In addition to contributing to my own book keeping, this proposal will contribute 5 percentage points to your final grade.

For starters, check out this brief essay by Brian Eno, and this brief essay by Nathan Brewer. These are intended as a gentle introduction to the topic. No need to write these up.