Undergrad Course Information

Summer Session 1 Courses: 

MUS 15. Popular Music: Japanese Anime and Transnational Desire

This course introduces the transnational aspect of the development of Japanese anime music starting from the end of the Second World War. Through learning about the complex sociopolitical background of Japanese anime music history, students will discuss the contemporary racialization and sexualization of “Japaneseness.” Furthermore, students will reflect on how transnational listeners, including themselves and their peers, contribute to the transnational development of anime music and sound.   

Instructor: Yu, Cheuk Ling (Section A00) 

MUS 15. Popular Music: Metal and Hardcore

This is an introductory course to two different but related genres of popular music: heavy metal and hardcore punk. The course is designed to welcome newcomers as well as veteran lovers of all things heavy to share in learning, sharing, and appreciation. In a mix of history, sociology, and psychology, students will learn about the cultural backgrounds of hardcore and metal, how it has developed since its inception in the late 20th century and how it manifests on the scene (and in the pits) today. Students will also be presented with musical concepts specific to metal (ex. what is a breakdown? What is a blast-beat? What is the difference between djent and thall?) to help increase the theoretical understanding behind the extremely rich vernacular. By the end of the course, students will have developed a comfort, familiarity, and appreciation with genres that popular culture are often misunderstood. 

Instructor: Jones, Michael (Section B00) 

MUS 80. Special Topics: Poetic Music of Languages

Instructor: Khorassani, Nasim (Section B00)

MUS 80. Special Topics: Electronic Music Production and Composition - Mastering your Music

This course aims to study professional practices used throughout the audio mastering process. Students will have the opportunity to gain a strong knowledge of digital audio to maintain the highest sound quality throughout the various stages of the production process. Students will be able to perfect their critical listening skills and processing techniques to produce professional masters for a range of formats (CD, Vinyl, Streaming) suitable for replication and distribution.

Throughout this course, we will further develop your skills in audio production to better understand how powerful effects such as EQ, Multi-Band compression, soft and brick wall Limiting, Mid/Side processing can affect a stereo mix. Each week we will take a deep dive into an FX and understand which is best suited for the task at hand. By the end of the course, you will be able to master your own work using audio FX within your DAW (Ableton Live) and plug-ins from manufacturers such as Universal Audio Waves, Izotope, FabFilter, and more. 

Instructor: Aguila, David (Section C00)

MUS 80. Special Topics: TBA 

Description TBA. 

(Section A00)

Summer Session 2 Courses: 

MUS 15. Popular Music: Latinx Feminist Aesthetics in Music, Sound, and Performance

This course evaluates popular culture through the lenses of Latinx Feminist and Aesthetic theory, focusing on the production of Latinidad in music, sound, and performance. Popular cultural aesthetics are treated as deeply imbricated by race and sex, requiring interpretive frameworks that take both into consideration as co-constitutive and inseparable. By invoking Latinx, we take no geographical, national, or diasporic privilege, instead relying on critical thought surrounding the production of Latin America within the Western Hemisphere and, more specifically, the cultural imaginary referred to as las Américas. This course emphasizes women of color, queer of color, trans of color, Black, and Indigenous feminist thought in engaging with Latinx popular aesthetic culture; although these political and intellectual feminist genealogies have not historically been consonant with one another, we will consider how coalitional and differential modes of thinking and being allow for political movidas that cross these borders. Engaging with music, sound, and performance, then, is one way into developing a critical understanding of Latin America, las Américas, and Latinidad in order to further our deconstruction of race and sex. Note: an understanding of Spanish and/or Portuguese is not required.

Instructor: Medina, Alejandrina (A00)

MUS 15. Popular Music: Independent Record Labels

How do record labels come about? How do they organize themselves? How does this affect the music they release, and the lives and musical possibilities of artists?

In this course we will examine a small selection of record labels from historical, artist-focused, and listener perspectives. We will consider how dynamics of race, nation, class, and gender play out in the organization, curation, contracts and labor concerns, publicity, and growth of record labels. We will see how the late 20th-century's technological and economic shifts related to popular music. We will listen to a wide variety of music genres. These will include hip-hop, industrial, techno, drum and bass, hardcore, indie rock, and others. We will be looking at labels in the 1990s primarily, but following them through a historical trajectory.

Instructor: Schwenkler, Kevin (Section B00) 

MUS 80. Special Topics: Artificial Intelligence and Music: From Creation to Consumption

MUS 80. Special Topics: Aesthetics and Creativity