Minor in Music Technology
Beyond clean audio editing and using off-the-shelf products in conventional ways, the minor in music technology guides students in exploring novel approaches to musical expression through technology-based live performance, fixed media art, installation art and interdisciplinary creative work.
Required courses provide a broad range of experiences in composing with sound, digital audio editing and signal processing, recording techniques, and merging music with other disciplines in novel and thought-provoking ways. Electives leverage our faculty’s particular strengths and areas of research toward helping students discover and develop their own unique approaches to making technology-based music. Such topics include analog circuitry, analog equipment, digital and hybrid musical instrument building, making music by programming a computer, artificial intelligence, synthesis techniques, musical structures, interactivity, generative (or algorithmic) music, feedback systems, live coding and more than a century of historical developments.
Throughout the minor, students will build a portfolio of creative work demonstrating their experience and unique voices as 21st century musicians ready to make the most creative use of emerging technologies. With this focus on thinking about music and sound in new ways, students will gain skills that apply to conventional work in audio editing, recording, live sound reinforcement and sound design, but will be able to approach these activities with the artistic sensibility of a musician.
Curriculum
2 Required Courses; 6 Credit Hours
| Course | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| MSTC 101 | Introduction to Performance Technology | 3 |
| MSTC 221 | Fixed Media Composition | 3 |
Elective Courses, Typically 4; Totaling 12 Credit Hours
| Course | Title | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| MSTC 150 | History of Electronic Music (Creative Arts credit in the University Core Curriculum) | 3 |
| MSTC 223 | Recording and the Producer | 3 |
| MSTC 224 | Composing Commercial Music | 3 |
| MSTC 311 | Technology-Based Performance | 1-3 |
| MSTC 341 | Programming for Composers | 3 |
| MSTC 352 | Electronic Music Literature through Practice | 3 |
| MSTC 354 | The Recording Medium | 3 |
| MSTC 417 | Intermedia Performance | 3 |
| MSTC 489 | Special Topics In … (rotating topics, including composing music with artificial intelligence, musical instrument design and physical computing) | 1-4 |
6 hours must be selected from 300-400 level.
Students must make a grade of C or better in all courses.
Apply
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