50823 Sound Project
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Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.
Credit points: 8 cp
Result type: Grade and marks
Requisite(s): 56 credit points of completed study in spk(s): MAJ10062 80cp Music and Sound Design Major OR 56 credit points of completed study in spk(s): MAJ10063 80cp Music and Sound Design Major OR 40 credit points of completed study in spk(s): MAJ10025 Music and Sound Design Major BMusSoundDes
Anti-requisite(s): 50842 Electro-acoustic Composition
Description
In this subject students specialising in music and sound composition develop and complete a major original project through all stages. This directed project allows the composer/sound designer to demonstrate their technical skills and creative expertise in computer/electronic, electroacoustic, art music composition and performance, multimedia or interactive sonic performance, with a view to establishing their graduation portfolio and professional dissemination. The subject caters to different creative approaches and projects may be individually or collaboratively produced, but should build on previous learning completed in the major. Students are guided in project management, collaboration processes, research techniques, critical reflection and documentation, and the technical, aesthetic and structural development of the work. Style, genre and medium are intentionally extremely flexible to promote experimentation, creative thinking, innovative mixed-modality, and a scope of performative or interactive works. In addition to producing a substantive creative work, students hone their presentation and professional delivery skills through work-in-progress showings and a final public outcome.
Subject learning objectives (SLOs)
| a. | Reflect critically on major formative genres and trends in music/sound composition |
|---|---|
| b. | Incorporate a variety of media and technology in creative production process |
| c. | Theorise from critical, technical, technological, cultural and theoretical musical knowledges |
| d. | Apply theory and context to creative practice in their own work |
| e. | Apply accrued technical fluency and structure creative ideas in their creative work |
| f. | Relate detailed written literature, listening/viewing and score material to inform creative practice |
| g. | Creative project management through all stages of production, as an individual artist or within a team |
Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)
This subject engages with the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), which are tailored to the Graduate Attributes set for all graduates of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences:
- Graduates possess a well-developed awareness of culture and professional practice of music and sound in the context of the technological and creative industries (1.1)
- Graduates are able to present, explain and evaluate their own and others' work in independent and collaborative contexts (1.2)
- Graduates are reflexive critical thinkers and creative practitioners who are intellectually curious, imaginative and innovative (2.1)
- Graduates possess the awareness and skills to behave ethically in personal and professional contexts (5.1)
- Graduates are innovative agents for change in the creative industries of their local and wider communities (5.2)
- Graduates possess reflective and analytical skills enabling them to synthesise ideas from a diverse range of sources and communicate effectively to different audiences using appropriate media and modes (6.1)
- Graduates possess the technical and creative skills to express themselves in multi-platform contexts (6.2)
Teaching and learning strategies
Face-to-face classes will incorporate a range of teaching and learning strategies including interactive lectures, presentations, analysis of readings and audiovisual material, student-led discussion, workshops, project-based learning, peer collaboration and feedback on work in progress, individual feedback, scaffolding towards project completion, case studies and student group work. These will be complemented by independent student reading/listening, flipped learning tasks, and student collaboration outside seminars. Except where impracticable all assessments are submitted online.
Content (topics)
Topics include project management (development, planning and implementation), alternate scoring techniques and visual music forms, installation and interactivity, music/sound design for video games and VR, collaborative techniques for team-based creativity, compositional recycling (recomposition, remixes, collage, found sound), performativity (concert music, live mixing, popular music, improvisation), acousmatic music, studio-generated music (advanced recording and production techniques), and immersive sound.
Assessment
Assessment task 1: Project Proposal
| Objective(s): | a, b, c, d, e, f and g | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight: | 20% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length: | 1000 words | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Criteria linkages: |
SLOs: subject learning objectives CILOs: course intended learning outcomes |
Assessment task 2: Project Development Presentation
| Objective(s): | a, d, e, f and g | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight: | 30% | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Length: | 15 minutes (5 minute presentation with 10 minute Q&A) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Criteria linkages: |
SLOs: subject learning objectives CILOs: course intended learning outcomes |
Assessment task 3: Major Production Assignment
| Objective(s): | b, d, e, f and g | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight: | 50% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Length: | Sound work: Maximum 6 minutes / Paper: 1200 words | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Criteria linkages: |
SLOs: subject learning objectives CILOs: course intended learning outcomes |
Minimum requirements
In this subject assessment tasks are cumulative so that each task builds understanding and/or skills, informed by formative feedback. Consequently, all assessments must be submitted in order for you to receive feedback. Students who do not submit all assessments will not pass the subject.
Recommended texts
There are no required texts for this subject. Recommended readings will be available via UTS Library and UTS Online.
References
Alves, B. (2012). 'Consonance and Dissonance in Visual Music,' Organised Sound 17(2) 114-119.
Bailey, D. (1992). Improvisation-Its Nature and Practice in Music. Da Capo Press, USA.
Bates, E. (2012). ‘The Social Life of Musical Instruments’, in Ethnomusicology, Vol. 56, no. 3.
Beeching, A.M. (2010). Beyond Talent (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press, UK.
Blackburn, M. (2009). Composing from Spectro-morphological Vocabulary: Proposed Application, Pedagogy and Metadata, Electroacoustic Music Studies.
Blackburn, M. (2011). ‘The Visual Sound-Shapes of Spectromorphology: an illustrative guide to composition,’ Organised sound, Vol.16 (1), p.5-13.
Brovig-Hanssen, R. and Danielsen, A. (2016). Digital Signatures-The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Clarke, M., Dufeu, F., & Manning, P. (2020). Inside computer music. Oxford University Press.
Clinton, K. (2010). Agile Game Development With Scrum. Pierson, Addison, Wesley.
Collins, N. (2009). Handmade Electronic Music : The Art of Hardware Hacking. New York : Routledge.
Cope, D. 1997. Techniques of the contemporary composer. New York: Schirmer Books.
Cox, C. and Warner, D. (2017). Audio culture : readings in modern music. New York : Bloomsbury Academic. Groth, S. K., & Schulze, H. (2020). The Bloomsbury handbook of sound art. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501338823
Eno, B. (1996). A year with swollen appendices. London: Faber and Faber.
Feist, J. (2013). Project management for musicians: recordings, concerts, tours, studios, and more. Berklee Press, Boston.
Groth, S. K., & Schulze, H. (2020). The Bloomsbury handbook of sound art. Bloomsbury
Hope, C. and Ryan, J. (2014). Digital Arts. Bloomsbury Academic Press.
Kamp, M., Summers, T. and Sweeney, M. (2016). Ludomusicology-Approaches to Video Game Music. Sheffield, UK Bristol, CT: Equinox Publishing.
Lubart T. (ed.) (2019). The creative process: perspectives from multiple domains. Berlin: Springer.
Lucier, A. (2012). Music 109 : Notes on Experimental Music. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
Lucier, A. (2005). Reflections : Interviews, Scores, Writings 1965-1994. Köln: MusikTexte.
Manning, P. (2004). Electronic and Computer Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Medina-Gray, E. (2016). "Modularity in Video Game Music," in Ludomusicology, (ed. Kamp, Summers and Sweeney). Equinox, UK, pp. 53-72.
Miller, P.D. (2008). Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Cambridge, MIT Press.
Nichols, P. (2017). 'Found sound: noise as art', M Magazine PRS for music. Available at: https://www.prsformusic.com/m-magazine/features/found-sound-noise-art/
Phillips, W. 2014. A composer's guide to game music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press
Schulze, H., Krause, J., & Maier, C. J. (2019). Sound works?: a cultural theory of sound design. Bloomsbury Academic.
Smalley, D. (1997)."Spectromorphology: explaining sound-shapes," in Organised Sound, Vol. 2 Issue 2, pp.107-126.
Sonnenschein, D. (2001). Sound design: the expressive power of music, voice, and sound effects in cinema. Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City
Toop, D. (2001). Ocean of Sound, 5th edn. London: Serpent's Tail.
Roads, C. (1996). The Computer Music Tutorial. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Roads, C. (2002). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wang, J. (2021). Half sound, half philosophy aesthetics, politics, and history of China’s sound art. Bloomsbury Academic.
Wilcox, F. 2021. “The Passion That We Don’t Understand:” An Interview with Lisa Gerrard. Music and the Moving Image. Vol. 14, No 1 (Spring 2021) University of Illinois Press. https://doi.org/10.5406/musimoviimag.14.1.0046
Wilcox, F. 2019. The Maestro of Multiple Voices: The 'Absolute Music' of Ennio Morricone. In Wierzbicki, J. (ed), Double Lives: Film Composers in the Concert Hall, Routledge: London and New York, pp. 117-132.