⁃ This is not a mastering / post production studio course, and it is not about using protools, studio techniques or using multi-track recording consoles. People specifically interested in the recording engineering track should consider the 174 sequence.
⁃ There are no magic tricks or formulas. Learning to use and trust your ears are of primary importance, along with long lonely hours.
⁃ Regularly, students will be randomly selected to present on their assignments. All students are expected to participate.
⁃ In addition to these presentations, you will have listening assignments. This is a music class! Yay! You will respond to these assignments in an open online forum.
⁃ Everyone needs to use Ableton Live - some of it will be done on your own by reading the manual.
⁃ Options : get it on your computer, use the 30-day trial, use CPMC 204.
⁃ Attendance and participation are very important! More than 2 unexcused will affect your grade. If you expect to miss more than 4, please consider dropping the course (because you'll probably fail).
⁃ Please participate— if you don’t understand something, chances are I accidentally started speaking gibberish and nobody else understands either. Speak up!
⁃ PLEASE don’t be late. It is a very short class!
⁃ Assignments: 3 sound experiments, 3 listening/response assignments.
⁃ 1 final.
Grade breakdown:
Assignments: 35% (Total )
Attendance/Participation: 40%
Final project: 15%
Presentations: 10%

NOTE: ALL Assignments are due by 11:59pm of the indicated date.

Week 1 : Class Intro || Basics of Ableton Live/studio setup
Listening assignment 1 due Jan 16

Week 2 : Electronic/computer music history (1) || Basic sequencing/working with instruments
Sound experiment 1 due Jan 23

Week 3 : Presentations 1 || Additional sequencing/automation || Instruments
Listening assignment 2 due Jan 30

Week 4 : Electronic/computer music history (2) || Audio basics || Audio manipulation
Sound experiment 2 due Feb 6

Week 5 : Presentations 2 || DSP plugins
Assignment: Production

Week 6 :
Feb 14: NO CLASS
Feb 16: Listening :: Production 1

Week 7 : Listening::Production 2 || Reconstruction
Final Project Proposals due Feb 27

Week 8 : Max for Live
Finals work in progress due Mar 6

Week 9 : Finals Workshop
Finals DUE March 13

Week 10 : Finals

General Guidelines:
Your final project should be 3-5 minutes in length. Your presentation should be 10 minutes (including playing the piece). You will all work alone (no partners). You must use Ableton Live.

Option 1: Create a free composition, in any style.
You must fulfill the following requirements:
Use of some newly recorded material (either from the web or from a microphone).
Use of at least one software instrument and at least one audio or MIDI effect. You may use as many as you like.
Include a portion of your composition that you feel really challenges your aesthetic. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable, or you're not sure you like it, or it starts off as something you can't stand, but then maybe it becomes the most appealing part of your composition.
Your presentation on the project should include the following elements:
⁃ Pt 1: Discussion of form : This can be simple and standard- for example, A/B/A/B/C- or complicated and unique to your composition. Just be prepared to defend it.
⁃ Pt 2: Discuss the required elements.

Option 2: choose an existing Ableton track or stems from which to create a remix.
You must use some newly recorded audio, in addition to the included materials.
Include a portion of your remix that you feel really challenges your aesthetic, and maybe changes the aesthetic of the original song. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable, or you're not sure you like it, or it starts off as something you can't stand, but then maybe it becomes the most appealing part of your composition.
Your presentation on the project should include the following elements:
⁃ Pt 1: Discussion of approach to remix.
⁃ Pt 2: Discuss the required elements.

Please write one paragraph explaining your concept for your final project. This should include at least the following items:

Whether you are choosing option 1 or option 2, and if you have some general artistic goal for this project.

What sort of audio you will be recording (with a microphone, from a software or hardware instrument you've built, from the web, etc.)

Some ideas for the challenging element you will be incorporating.

1. Add a sample of (or record a) drone into your session.
2. Import a drum beat.
3. Use sidechain compression to pump the drone with the drum beat. Mute the input source.
4. Create a new audio track, and add a vocoder. Record yourself singing over the track and have your voice resynthesized with an oscillator.
5. Duplicate the drum track and add a beat repeat effect so that the first 1/32nd note is repeated 6 times, fades out, and descends in pitch.

Select a track that you think has high production value and upload the track to dropbox or include the link in your response.

Discuss the production, using whatever words you feel comfortable with-- you do not have to use fancy language. For example, you can say "the ambient sound of this track changes throughout" or you can say "there is a high degree of automation in the reverb's early reflections"-- they are both equally valid. Listen carefully to your track and try to tease out what it is that excites you, and what you might want to use in your own musical creations. Include this in your response. Questions are encouraged.

On the first, third, and fifth clips, use the follow action tool to randomly select between the clips.
On the second and fourth clips, choose a different follow action.

Create a second track with a different instrument and record a clip onto it.
Change the clip’s Launch Mode to ‘repeat.’
Make a second clip and change its launch mode to ‘gate.’

Create a third track and record a long, beautiful clip onto it. Do not loop the clip. (Turn looping off).

Draw a new clip envelope using the volume parameter on clip 1 of your first track. Adjust the clip envelope so that it is twice the length of the clip.
Draw a new clip envelope on clip 3 of your first track. You choose the parameter, but choose a parameter that is associated with the MIDI instrument (not the mixer or the MIDI control). Adjust the clip envelope so that it is 1/3 the length of the clip.

Add a Chord effect to the second track.
Add an Arpeggiator to the first track.
Add your favorite effect to the third track.

Record your creation into the arrangement and include some global automation.

Jetsun Mila eschews text in favor of a purely electronic treating of his storied life via nine passages that slowly and seamlessly flow into one another. Radigue is one of the most perceptually disorienting composers I've ever heard, her exploration of inaudible subharmonics and overtones has a way of physically changing the landscape of the room her music inhabits, and it becomes difficult to sort out what the reality is between what you're perceiving and actually hearing. Jetsun Mila is deeply meditative, with some passages conjuring the random patterns of bells blowing in the stark mountains and valleys of Tibet, while others have the sustained power and near violence of Tibetan ritual horns. Her genius is that she achieves those effects through allusion rather than mimicry, trusting in the listener's ability to pursue the truth just as Milarepa did with his inscrutable words of wisdom.
— Michael Klausman, Other Music

Eliane Radigue is a musical pioneer who has been creating her own brand of electroacoustic music since the 60s. Her music explores a slow and ever transforming state, where sounds seem to evolve on their own, taking the listener on an abstract journey. In 1957 and 1958 Radigue studied electroacoustic music techniques at the Studio D'Essai, RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française) under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Throughout most of her career, she chose to work with an ARP Synthesizer and medium recording tape. Like her music, her career has taken its time progressing over the decades, as Radigue's life was conducted with the same approach—taking the time out to savor important moments and never being afraid to slow things down.

In-class work 1:
Open Live Set 1.
⁃ Delete all but one scene, put it on track 1.
⁃ modify the clip in Drums “Kicks + Air” to be one bar long
⁃ turn looping off for “HighChatter”— this turns it into a “one-shot” clip
⁃ change the start time for “HighChatter” to start at Bar 2 and end at Bar 5.
⁃ change “shaker” to be 1/16th note long
⁃ there is a 5-note chord in “Epiano” that is 1.5 beats long. Change it to be 1/8th note long and duplicate it 5 times.
⁃ transpose each of the five chords.
⁃ Transpose the fifth chord up one octave.
⁃ Using your computer keyboard, record a new clip into “Bass”
In-class work 2
⁃ Open empty project
⁃ Make three new MIDI tracks. Put a horn sound on one, a drum sound on one, and your choice on the third.
⁃ Record or draw a MIDI clip onto one of these tracks. The clip should loop and be 2 bars long.
⁃ Export this MIDI file into your User Library—>Clips.
⁃ Use this same MIDI file on your other two tracks.
⁃ On one of the tracks, double the speed of the MIDI clip and remove three notes.
⁃ On the other track, halve the speed of the MIDI clip and transpose all the notes up four half steps. Turn looping off (making this a one-shot clip)
⁃ Create another scene (one more clip on each track). Edit the MIDI freely.
⁃ Record your creation into the Arrangement.
⁃ In the Arrangement, edit the clip on track 1 to be 1/4 the length.

Using only ONE of the provided MIDI files, create a composition that is 1-3 minutes long.
Rules:
The composition should be presented in two ways:
1. as a planned-out performance, executable in class
2. recorded into and played from the arrangement.
You may not add any notes by drawing or recording. All notes used must exist already in the MIDI file.
You may not use any audio files.
You may alter the pitches of the notes only if you alter all pitches simultaneously.
Your piece must include the following:
⁃ at least 4 tracks
⁃ at least 8 clips
⁃ some modifications to velocity within the clips
⁃ at least three different loop lengths

Almost as soon as the compact disc became a standardized media format, Yasunao Tone began mangling them in the name of experimental art. His first album, Solo for Wounded CD, was released in 1985, just 3 years after the first CD (as we know it) was pressed. This piece's sound material is derived from physically damaged CDs and reading those damaged CDs with a standard CD player. Early CD players did not have good error correction, and would therefore read and play back the damaged CDs with a good deal of chaos.

This is a piece included on a demo record of the RCA Mark II, the first programmable analog synthesizer.

Constructed in 1957, the room-sized synthesizer boasted 12 fixed-tone oscillators, a white noise generator, 4-note variable polyphony, and a number of filters and modulators. Compositions were created by inputing data through a paper tape reader- a long roll of paper with holes corresponding to specific instructions (such as which filters to use, what pitches to play), similar to a player piano. The resulting sound could then be recorded onto its shellac record lathe.

The RCA Mark II lives at Columbia University at its Computer Music Center. From the time it was acquired to the time it was vandalized in the 70s, it was an important instrument for the artistic development of composers such as Vladimir Ussachevsky, Milton Babbitt, and Charles Wuorinen. It is no longer functioning.

You can download the rest of the demo tape here : RCA Demo Tape