MUS 209B: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts
STC 209 examines ‘transformations’ within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.
MUS 209A: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts
STC 209 examines ‘transformations’ within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.
MUS 329: The Composer/Performer
MUS 329 explores connections between composition and performance in group and solo contexts. Student will find his/her optimal and personal balance among concerns including but not limited to: abstract compositional technique and practical performance values; organization and spontaneity, surface and structure, strengths and obligations, material and effect, aural and visual. Class activities include analysis, study of compositional techniques, performing, improvisation, collaboration. All musical styles/genres, notated and non-notated are welcome.
MUS 319: Composition and Improvisation
In this class we will consider a variety of strategies for combining improvisation and notated music, drawing on both contemporary concert music and jazz. We will look at the works of musicians such as Lutoslawski, Shostakovich, Coltrane, Stockhausen, and others, and will consider how technology might allow us to expand our musical possibilities (e.g. using iPads to facilitate harmonic coordination). The ultimate goal will be to imagine hybrid musics drawing on both classical and jazz traditions.
MUS 316: Computer and Electronic Music Composition
A composition workshop class, in the context of the traditional sound studio. Emphasis will be on the student’s creative work, composing both “fixed media” works and live electronic/laptop music..
MUS 312: Jazz Theory through Improvisation and Composition II
This course intends to expose the student to the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic concepts of the modal jazz approach in an effort to formulate a basis for self-expression as improvisers and composers. The course includes analysis of representative works by various jazz masters and will place a strong emphasis on student projects in composition. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: 105 or instructor’s permission.
MUS 248: Music Cognition
Music can get your feet tapping, trigger a cascade of memories, mire you in nostalgia, or leave you with an earworm. What happens when tools and ideas drawn from cognitive science are applied to understanding these experiences? What can music tell us about the human mind, and what can psychology and neuroscience tell us about music? MUS 248 provides an introduction to music cognition, paying special attention to potential and challenges that characterize work at the intersection of science, humanities, and the arts. Students gain experience posing their own questions at this intersection, and identifying appropriate methods to answer them.
MUS 210: Beginning Workshop in Musical Composition
A workshop that fosters individual students’ composing within a community of peers. We’ll consider familiar musical styles, and we will open our ears as well to non-traditional instruments, collaborative and improvisatory approaches, and technological opportunities. The focus is not on music theory “rules” but on each student’s musical imagination, explored through the tools available to us, whether in person or online. Several short projects during the semester, final composition at the end of the semester.
MUS 106: Music Theory through Performance and Composition
A continuation of Music 105, with an emphasis on the harmonic and formal principles of classical music. MUS 106 casts its net wider than MUS 105, also considering the various guises of tonality and modality in Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern and Minimalist music.
MUS 345: Songs and Songwriting
This class will explore the art, craft, mystery and magic of writing songs. We will focus primarily on musical aspects of song writing including the marriage of words and music. We will seek insights from a wide selection of music ranging from popular songs to opera arias to unclassifiable outliers. We will establish a regular working rhythm and mutual interdependence of listening, analyzing, and creating with the ultimate goal being to write better songs.
MUS 340: Advanced Concepts in Jazz Improvisation: Creating Fresh Vocabulary
This course will help students to develop new approaches as an improviser via transcribing solos of various jazz icons and analyzing their melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content. We will also implement analytical tools from modern classical music (not typical used in jazz) and discuss how these techniques can be reverse-engineered to create fresh ideas and new modalities in how we organize improvisational scenarios. We will also be engaged by classroom visits of contemporary jazz luminaries who will discuss their unique approaches to improvisation.
MUS 314: Computer and Electronic Music through Programming, Performance, and Composition
An introduction to the fundamentals of computer and electronic music. The music and sound programming language ChucK, developed here at Princeton, will be used in conjunction with Max/MSP, another digital audio language, to study procedural programming, digital signal processing and synthesis, networking, and human-computer interfacing.
MUS 105: Music Theory through Performance and Composition
MUS 105 is an introduction to music theory concentrating on harmony but also examining rhythm, melody and timbre. Though its focus will principally be on functional tonality, as it manifests itself in the common-practice period of classical music, we will also examine modal music and tonal/modal harmony in other musics such as rock and folk, and there will be a unit on African Rhythm. After a review of the rudiments, we will proceed to examining harmonic function, voice-leading, form and model composition. The course is designed to help you develop your understanding of music, analyze existing musical works, and compose your own.
MUS 209B: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts
STC 209 examines ‘transformations’ within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.
MUS 209A: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts
STC 209 examines ‘transformations’ within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.
MUS 316: Computer and Electronic Music Composition
A composition workshop class, in the context of the traditional sound studio. Emphasis will be on the student’s creative work, composing both “fixed media” works and live electronic/laptop music.
MUS 308: Contemporary Music through Composition and Performance
Student composers and performers create new works. We will cover a broad range of performance techniques and compositional approaches through analysis of 20th and 21st works. Focus points will include ways of approaching non-conventional notation, organizing principles based on timbre and gesture, and the role of interpretation and improvisation. Guests will visit throughout the semester to lead demonstrations on extended techniques and idiomatic writing for different families of instruments. Final concert of new works by students.
MUS 210: Beginning Workshop in Musical Composition
A workshop that fosters individual students’ composing within a community of peers. We’ll consider familiar musical styles, and we will open our ears as well to non-traditional instruments, collaborative and improvisatory approaches, and technological opportunities. The focus is not on music theory “rules” but on each student’s musical imagination, explored through the tools available to us, individually and collectively. Several short projects during the semester, final composition at the end of the semester.
MUS 106: Music Theory through Performance and Composition
A continuation of Music 105, with an emphasis on the harmonic and formal principles of classical music. MUS 106 casts its net wider than MUS 105, also considering the various guises of tonality and modality in Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern and Minimalist music.
MUS 560: Music Cognition Lab
Under the direction of a faculty member, and in collaboration with an interdisciplinary group of students, visitors, and postdocs, the student carries out a one-semester research project chosen jointly by the student and the faculty. Open to any graduate student in Music, this course provides a hands-on opportunity to learn the tools, skills, methods, and perspectives of music cognition research.
MUS 204: Musical Instruments, Sound, Perception, and Creativity
Musical instruments reside at the intersection of varied topics: sound, perception, embodiment, music theory, social values, and more; how has their design influenced the development of music and how might they be reinvented to spur new ideas? We will explore these questions through readings, listening, analysis, labs, and composition. Specific topics include: harmony and the keyboard; tuning and temperament; preparing the piano, digital and analog. More generally, we will consider the productive tension between qualitative and quantitative understandings of musical concepts.
MUS 537: Points of Focus in 20th-Century Music
The seminar title is Audio Production for Composers. A hands-on, workshop class aimed at developing a rich and multifaceted approach to audio production for a diverse range of aesthetic practices. Topics include: recording strategies and microphones; home studio setup; DAWs; mixing and production techniques (including mixing, equalization, compression, reverb, and distortion); production as part of the “home studio” creative process; working with professional engineers/studios and planning recording sessions; and more. Weekly dives into ear-training with audio tools and personal projects/practices. Possible studio visits and engineer guests.
MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: Current Topics in Empirical Musicology
This seminar engages students with current tools, questions, debates, and methods in empirical musicology. The course is designed so that, no matter what the student’s primary research interest in musicology, they come away from the class with ideas about how empirical approaches do or could interface with their material.
MUS 351: Music and the Moving Image
Composers and film-makers explore the role of music within Film and moving image work. A look at historic examples, scoring styles and techniques, and the choices that directors and composers make, focusing particularly on films from the silent era, films without dialogue, documentaries, experimental (animation) films and finally narrative films. Composers will be encouraged to respond creatively by composing the score for a short film, or composing one to three cues (around five minutes of music) to a given score. Non-composers will be encouraged to write about a music cue or score that they find especially interesting.