Daniel Warner

Recent and Upcoming Courses

• Computer Music: MAX/MSP/MAX4LIVE

  This course will focus on a wide range of topics in sound synthesis and music composition using the MAX/MSP and Max4Live program. Students will undertake projects in interactive MIDI composition, algorithmic composition, additive and subtractive synthesis, waveshaping, AM/FM synthesis, and sampling. Other topics to be covered include SYSEX programming, sound analysis, theories of timbre, and concepts of musical time. (keywords: computer music, electronic music, sound)

• Media and Technology: The Sound of Life: Observation, Art and Ecology

  A soundscape is an environment of sounds with emphasis on the way it is perceived, understood, and inhabited by individuals, groups, societies, or non-humans. This course invites participants from diverse disciplines to investigate their sonic environments as artist-as-scientist or scientist-as-artist, sensing, surveying and responding to a range of mediums. This course will explore bridges between sound, art, and ecology. Drawing from the fields of sound art, eco-musicology, acoustic and soundscape ecology, physics, and environmental art, students are encouraged to consistently experiment through small, prompt driven projects, and collectively directed rambles. How is the landscape organized and transformed by sound? How is noise pollution impacting ecosystems, organisms, and human health and communities? In what ways do observation, deep listening and critical listening enhance our understanding of the world? Students will be given a wide range of possibilities for course projects such as conservation, ecology and environmental studies, cultural perspectives, art-making, music-making and sound composition. This course requires walking in variable terrain and weather. (keywords: sound, art, ecology, science)

• Future Sounds: Exploring Electronica

  This course introduces students to key concepts in the study of electronica. The course will teach students to think critically about electronica's social, historical, ideological and technological dimensions. Introductory lectures will examine the musics and establish introduce critical terminology, musical features, timelines, and analytical frameworks. Specific subgenres such as hiphop, house, techno, dub, ambient, trance, dubstep, jungle, and drum 'n' bass will be covered through readings, lectures, documentaries, and listening sessions. Students will be expected to complete weekly reading and listening assignments, in-class presentations, and undertake a small research/writing project. (keywords: electronica, electronic dance music, EDM, electronic music)

• Electroacoustic Music

  This is a composition course that will also survey the history, theory, and practice of electro-acoustic music. The course will introduce the musical, technical, and theoretical issues of electro-acoustic music, broadly construed to include the Classical avant-garde, Electronica, DJ culture, Re-mixes, Ambient, etc. Digital recording, editing, and mixing will be covered using the Audacity, Logic, or ProTools programs. Students will also work with sampling and looping techniques using Ableton Live. Other topics to be covered include basic acoustics and synthesis techniques. Students will be expected to complete three composition projects during the course of the semester. Formal knowledge of music is helpful, but not required. (keywords: music, electronic music, sound)

• Sound Cultures: Unpacking Music and Musical Practices

  This course explores and critically examines what constitutes "music" and its manifold practices. Presented from transdisciplinary and multicultural points of view, the course consists of several thematic modules, in each of which two instructors will lead the unpacking of specific subjects, such as the nature of sound, listening, sonic realization of time, musical space, and embodiment. By using different kinds of expertise and methodologies drawn from music theory, sound studies, ethnomusicology, etc., the music we analyze will represent diverse traditions around the world as well as contemporary sound practices representing various global styles. No previous training in music theory is necessary, but the required coursework includes weekly listening, creative transcription, various analysis assignments, and hands-on performative activities. Through these exercises, selected readings, and class discussion, students are invited to open their ears, senses, and minds to unique cultural values, sensibilities, and practices, and rigorously question their conception of "music" and musical discourses.

• Audio Culture: Theories and Practices in Music Now

  This course will explore a range of experimental musical practices and various approaches to thinking theoretically and critically about them. We will consider musical forms such as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrete, free improvisation, turntablism, and electronica, and examine these via texts by theorists, composers, and musicians. Investigating different modes of listening to and talking about contemporary music, we will ask such questions as: What are the relationships between music, noise, sound, and silence? What are the effects of recording and sampling on contemporary musical life? Can music have a political or critical function? How is sound inflected by gender and race?

• Electroacoustic Music I

  This is a composition course that will also engage the history, theory, and practice of electro-acoustic music. The course will introduce the musical, technical, and aesthetic issues of electro-acoustic music, broadly construed to include the Classical avant-garde, Electronica, DJ culture, Ambient, etc. Digital recording, editing, and mixing will be covered using the Audacity, Logic, or ProTools programs. Students will also work with sampling and looping techniques using Ableton Live. Other topics to be covered include basic acoustics and synthesis techniques. Students will be expected to complete three composition projects during the course of the semester. Formal knowledge of music is helpful, but not required.