Course content

This course explores the history, culture, and aesthetics of music and technology as deployed in Western popular musics from the late nineteenth century to the present. Through lectures and readings, the following topics will be explored: audio recording and recording production, the recording studio, the history of popular music publishing, radio, and the uses of popular music in various forms of image-based media, from early film, to television, to the internet. The course will likewise explore the history of music-centered technology and how its limitations and new opportunities affected musical creativity from the Edison cylinder recorder, to the microphone and vacuum tube amplification, to the invention of new electro-mechanical and electronic instruments (e.g. the electric guitar, the Hammond organ, or the commercial synthesizer), to magnetic tape, and so forth up to the modern computer-based digital audio workstation. In studying the interrelations between popular music and technology, the course will likewise have secondary focuses on popular music history as well as historical issues in music industry development, marketing, and the protection of intellectual property.

Learning outcome

Knowledge:

A candidate who successfully completes MUSV3153 will

• Have an increased media and technology literacy in relation to popular music
• Have an increased historical appreciation for the creative processes in, and debates surrounding, the relationship between popular music and technology
• Have knowledge of both key issues in, as well as historical- and thematic-based knowledge of, the relationship that has existed between between popular music and technology
• Have specialized knowledge of the critical theory and discourses around the relationships between popular music and technology

Skills:

A candidate who successfully completes MUSV3153

• can formulate their knowledge in a compelling manner in both written and spoken forms
• can independently identify, assess, and develop understandings of relationships between popular music practice and technological mediation
• has gained specialized knowledge of record production studies, and mediation theories,and criticism related to popular music studies

Learning methods and activities

The course consists of combined lectures and seminars with compulsory attendance (at least 80%).

This class is structured as a seminar with discussion sessions and lectures being the central parts of each class. Weekly coursework includes: select readings; listening and viewing assignments related to readings; and in-class discussion of these assigned materials. 8 weekly short posts/assignments have to be submitted for approval.

NOTE: Because this is a discussion-oriented seminar, all weekly assigned readings MUST be dutifully read before each week's class, as in-class discussion participation is a vital part of the pedagogical methods of the course.

Compulsory assignments

• Satisfactory participation in compulsory instruction
• Approval of short posts/assignment

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

Basic knowledge of, and interest in, popular music history and repertory.

Credit reductions