This class explores sound and what can be done with it. Sources are recorded from students’ surroundings - sampled and electronically generated (both analog and digital). Assignments include composing with the sampled sounds, feedback, and noise, using digital signal processing (DSP), convolution, algorithms, and simple mixing. The class focuses on sonic and compositional aspects rather than technology, math, or acoustics, though these are examined in varying detail. Students complete weekly composition and listening assignments; material for the latter is drawn from sound art, experimental electronica, conventional and non-conventional classical electronic works, popular music, and previous students’ compositions.

Through a progressive series of composition projects, students investigate the sonic organization of musical works and performances, focusing on fundamental questions of unity and variety. Aesthetic issues are considered in the pragmatic context of the instructions that composers provide to achieve a desired musical result, whether these instructions are notated in prose, as graphic images, or in symbolic notation. No formal training is required. Weekly listening, reading, and composition assignments draw on a broad range of musical styles and intellectual traditions, from various cultures and historical periods.

This subject covers a specific branch of music history: Western concert music of first sixty years of the twentieth century. Although we will be listening to and studying many pieces (most of the highest caliber) the goal of the course is not solely to build up a repertory of works in our memory (though that is indeed a goal). We will be most concerned with larger questions of continuity and change in music. We will also consider questions of reception, or historiography - that is, the creation of history and our perception of it. Why do we perceive much of this music, so much closer in time to us than Mozart or Beethoven, to be so foreign? Is this music aloof and separate from popular music of the twentieth century or is there a real connection (perhaps hidden)? The subject will continue to follow some topics of central interest to music before 1960, such as serialism and aleatory, beyond the 1960 cutoff. Conversely a few topics which get their start just before 1960 but which flourish later (minimalism, computer music) will be covered only in 21M.263.

This course features directed composition of larger forms of original writing involving voices and/or instruments. It includes a weekly seminar in composition for the presentation and discussion of work in progress. Students are expected to produce at least one substantive work, performed in public, by the end of the term. Contemporary compositions and major works from 20th-century music literature are studied.

In this activity students will view a few Chinese music videos from different genres. After viewing the videos, students will use information provided about each artist to do a mini research presentation in Chinese about the artist they chose.

This course begins with the premise that the 1960s mark a great dividing point in the history of 20th century Western musical culture, and explores the ways in which various social and artistic concerns of composers, performers, and listeners have evolved since that decade. It focuses on works by classical composers from around the world. Topics include the impact of rock, as it developed during the 1960s - 70s; the concurrent emergence of post serial, neotonal, minimalist, and new age styles; the globalization of Western musical traditions; the impact of new technologies; and the significance of music video, video games, and other versions of multimedia. The course interweaves discussion of these topics with close study of seminal musical works, evenly distributed across the four decades since 1960; works by MIT composers are included.

This course examines the history, techniques, and aesthetics of mechanical and computer-aided approaches to algorithmic music composition and generative music systems. Through creative hands-on projects, readings, listening assignments, and lectures, students will explore a variety of historical and contemporary approaches. Diverse tools and systems will be employed, including applications in Python, MIDI, Csound, SuperCollider, and Pure Data.

This course is an investigation into the history and aesthetics of music and technology as deployed in experimental and popular musics from the 19th century to the present. Through original research, creative hands-on projects, readings, and lectures, the following topics will be explored. The history of radio, audio recording, and the recording studio, as well as the development of musique concrète and early electronic instruments. The creation and extension of musical interfaces by composers such as Harry Partch, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, and others. The exploration of electromagnetic technologies in pickups, and the development of dub, hip-hop, and turntablism. The history and application of the analog synthesizer, from the Moog modular to the Roland TR-808. The history of computer music, including music synthesis and representation languages. Contemporary practices in circuit bending, live electronics, and electro-acoustic music, as well as issues in copyright and intellectual property, will also be examined. No prerequisites.

This course is a creative, hands-on exploration of contemporary and historical approaches to live electronics performance and improvisation, including basic analog instrument design, computer synthesis programming, and hardware and software interface design.