Thursday, January 9 – Music Becomes an Object: Recording Music

• T. Gracyk – “I’ll Be Your Mirror: Recording and Representing” from Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock”, Duke University Press, 1996.
• M. Chanan – “The Record and the Mix” from Repeated Takes, London: Verso Books, 1995.
• B. Eno – “The Studio as Compositional Tool” (1979)
• J.P. Sousa – “The Menace of Mechanical Music” (1906)

Thursday, January 16 – Authenticity and Live Performances

• P. Auslander – “Seeing is believing: live performance and the discourse of authenticity in rock culture”, Literature and Psychology, v. 44 no. 4 (1998) p. 1-26
• R. Dyer – “In Defence of Disco“, New Formations, Summer 2006, Issue 58, p101-108.

Tuesday, January 23 – Digitalization: File Formats and Sampling/Introducing Audacity

• J. Sterne – “The Death and Life of Digital Audio“, ISR: Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 2006, vol. 31, no4, pp. 338-348
• G. Hainge, “Of Glitch and Men: The Place of the Human in the Successful Integration of Failure and Noise in the Digital Realm”. Communication Theory 17:1 (2007), 26-42
• Audiography assignment Due.

Thursday, January 30 – Audacity Workshop: Editing workshop.

• In-class editing exercise #2 (due Tuesday February 4th)

Thursday, February 6 – Commodification and The Culture Industry

• T.W. Adorno – “On Popular Music“
• D. Reisman – “Listening To Popular Music”, American Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter, 1950, pp. 359-371 
• B. Miege – Foreward to The Capitalization of Cultural Production

Thursday, February 13 – The Changing Forms of Music Distribution

• Arditi, D. (2013). iTunes: Breaking Barriers and Building Walls. Popular Music and Society, (ahead-of-print), 1-17.
• Burkart, P. (2013). Music in the Cloud and the Digital Sublime. Popular Music and Society, (ahead-of-print), 1-15.
• Charles Ubaghs (2013). Why You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty for Using Spotify. The Quietus.
• Jobs, S. (2007). Thoughts on Music.
  Due Date for Audio Essay Proposal

Thursday, February 27 – Audio Essay Methods: Interviews and Scripts

• No readings.
• In class exercise: Audio essay treatment/outline #3 (due Tuesday, March 3rd.)

Thursday, March 6 – The Cultural Economy of the Musical Object, Film and Television

• Klein, B. (2008). The new radio’: music licensing as a response to industry woe. Media, Culture & Society, 30(4), 463-478.
• Meier, L. M. (2011) – Promotional Ubiquitous Musics: Recording Artists, Brands, and “Rendering Authenticity”. Popular Music and Society, 34(4), 399-415.

Thursday, March 13 – The Cultural Economy of the Musical Object, Video Games

• K. Miller – “Schizophonic Performance: Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Virtual Virtuosity”, Journal for the Society for American Music, Vol 3 (2009), No. 4, 395-429.
• K. Collins – “Game Audio Today” in Game sound: an introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008.
  

Thursday, March 20 – Audio Essay Workshop/ Project Meetings

Thursday, March 27 – Nostalgia and the Death of Popular Music

• Reynolds, S. “Total Recall: Music and Memory in the Time of YouTube”, Retromania.
• McKean, C. “Is Pop Culture Consuming Itself?” (Interview with Simon Reynolds). The Quietus.
• Fisher, M. Ghosts of My Life (extract). The Quietus.

Thursday, April 3 – Final Business

Podcast Due before class, 12 noon