Satisfies the L&S Breadth Requirement for Arts and Literature
Textbook: free, on-line hypertext with sound examples
Music Now (Music 29) is a one of a kind course currently in its third year in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley. The course requires no background in music, but anyone with music training will benefit.
Music Now focuses on teaching new listening strategies applied to all forms of current day musical experience. The course covers aspects of live performance, music composition, audio/digital culture, electronic music, psychoacoustics, and the physics of music. Inspired by composers, performers and audio engineers, participants are exposed to new ways of hearing and understanding music. We feature live performances in class and attend special shows at Cal Performances.
Students are exposed to new strategies and modes of listening using new software developed specifically for the course at the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. In the lab, we engage with the fundamentals of music, creating and composing sound to better understand the limits of musical expression. In the classroom, we compare how our piers are hearing things by building real-time statistical models of the listening experience.
Music Now attempts to provide a compass that allows listeners to navigate unknown musical territories with open ears. No formal musical knowledge is necessary to excel in Music Now (Music 29). Students currently enrolled in Music 20 will enjoy the class.
Assessment is based on attendance and a mid-term/final exam that test on the material presented in the lecture portion of the course.
Course Title
Music Now
Format
Two hours of lecture and one hour of laboratory per week.
