Description

A general historical survey of the cultural and technological developments in sound recording, music and sound for the cinema, radio and television. Avant-garde composition, electronic, digital and interactive music, and the recent influence of the internet on sound and culture will also be discussed.

“If we do not begin our discussions of the future of music by considering what music is for—and by extension, what culture is for—the answers will be decided for us.” – Jonathan Sterne, MP3: The Cultural Meaning of a Format1

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

  • Identify key figures, periods, and movements in the history of sound media.
  • Apply a critical framework regarding racial, gender-related, socioeconomic, environmental and ability justice toward historical and present-day sound media.
  • Form and express your own opinions about the influence of technological, social, and other factors in steering sonic culture.
  • Explain what “sound studies” means as an academic field and how it expands approaches to audio media.

Course structure

Our course is organized into five modules: culture vs. technology, the radio-record industry and its wake, sound and image, labor and automation, and sound affects. In a typical week, our Monday session will be discussion-centered while our Wednesday session will center on a lecture component.

Quizzes

Each of the five modules will culminate with an in-class quiz. These will vary in format, but you should expect to do some short-answer writing in response to a few questions that correspond to our learning objectives in the course.

Voice check-ins for reading/listening

For each reading (or podcast, etc.) I introduce on a Wednesday for you to complete before Monday’s class, you will leave a voice check-in about it by Friday at 5pm. We will use a Teams chat channel to gather these check-ins, which will be available to your classmates. Check-ins are specifically not reading “responses.” I will not expect you to have completed the entire reading before recording your check-in (though I will expect you to complete each reading by the time of our next class session), and I definitely do not expect (nor want) you to summarize the reading. What I want to know is: how’s it going with this reading? What’s tripping you up? What are you excited to talk about when we cover this in class?

I will grade voice check-ins pass/fail according to two criteria: 1) the check-in arrives before the deadline so others can benefit from hearing it, and 2) the check-in contributes something substantive toward our efforts to draw insights out of the reading/listening.

The main goal of this recurring assignment is to make your reading easier and more interesting—if you approach it in that spirit and let me know what’s working or not working, I’m confident we can meet that goal together.

Assessment and attendance

Your grade for this course will be determined 30% by class attendance, 30% by your weekly reading check-ins, 30% by the 5 quizzes, and 10% by an informal “show and tell” presentation to the class during our last two sessions.

Readings and assignments by week

Week 1: Introductions; culture vs. technology

  • Aug 25: introductions, syllabus overview
  • Aug 27: “A Manifesto for Music Technologists”
  • Read: Chapter 1, “Listening,” in Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Manchester University Press, 1985).

Week 2: Sound leads the way?

Week 3: Cultural origins

  • Sept 8: Thompson discussion
  • Sept 10: lecture – cultural origins of sound reproduction technologies
  • Read: excerpt from Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (University of California Press, 2010).

Week 4: Technological shakeups

  • Sept 15: Katz discussion
  • Sept 17: Module 1 quiz
  • Read: excerpt from Kyle Barnett, Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020).

Week 5: The radio-record industry and its wake

  • Sept 22: Barnett discussion
  • Sept 24: lecture – the radio-record industry
  • Read: Elena Razlogova, “The Past and Future of Music Listening: Between Freeform DJs and Recommendation Algorithms,” in Radio’s New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era, ed. Jason Loviglio and Michele Hilmes (Routledge, 2013).

Week 6: Radio past and future

  • Sept 29: Razlogova discussion
  • Oct 1: lecture – from transmitting to streaming
  • Read: Jeremy Wade Morris and Devon Powers, “Control, Curation and Musical Experience in Streaming Music Services,” Creative Industries Journal 8, no. 2 (2015): 106–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2015.1090222.

Week 7: Future listening

  • Oct 6: Module 2 quiz
  • Oct 8: Special Collections visit – meet in Walsh Library 2nd floor
  • Read: Chion, Michel. “The Three Listening Modes.” In Audio-Vision, translated by Claudia Gorbman, 25-34. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Week 8: Sound and vision

  • Oct 13: Fall break – no class
  • Oct 15: Class visit – Dr. Elena Razlogova
  • Listen: Mack Hagood, “R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021),” in Phantom Power, 2021. (Parts 1 and 2).

Week 9: Soundscape

  • Oct 20: Schafer discussion
  • Oct 22: lecture – listening and technology in the sonic avant-garde
  • Read excerpt from Jennifer Lynn Stoever, The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (New York University Press, 2016).

Week 10: Sound and anti-blackness

  • Oct 27: Stoever discussion
  • Oct 29: Module 3 quiz
  • Read: Marina Peterson, “Sound Work: Music as Labor and the 1940s Recording Bans of the American Federation of Musicians,” Anthropological Quarterly 86, no. 3 (2013): 791–823, https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2013.0040.

Week 11: Labor and automation

  • Nov 3: Peterson discussion
  • Nov 5: lecture – radio automation
  • Read: George E. Lewis, “Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity and Culture in Voyager,” Leonardo Music Journal - (December 2000): 33–39, https://doi.org/10.1162/096112100570585.

Week 12: Sound after performance

  • Nov 10: Lewis discussion
  • Nov 12: lecture – sonic AI
  • Read: Ravi Krishnaswami, “Music AI Research: Thoughts on Suno,” in Medium, 2024.

Week 13: Sound affects

  • Nov 17: Krishnaswami discussion, module 5 intro (class ends 2:50pm today)
  • Nov 19: Module 4 quiz
  • Read: Shannon Mattern, “Things That Beep: A Brief History of Product Sound Design,” Avant, October 2018.

Week 14: Technologized sound worlds

  • Nov 24: Mattern discussion
  • Nov 26: Thanksgiving break – no class
  • Listen: Jim McNulty and Dallas Taylor, “False Alarm: How the Emergency Alert System Went Wrong,” in Twenty Thousand Hertz, 2018.
  • Optionally, read: Andy Kelleher Stuhl, “Acoustic Infrastructure: The Sounds and Politics of Radio Tests in American Emergency Broadcasting,” Canadian Journal of Communication 46, no. 2 (2021): 271–90, https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2021v46n2a3783.

Week 15: Disruption

  • Dec 1: EAS discussion
  • Dec 3: lecture: noise, breakdown, recomposition
  • Read: excerpt from Kyle Devine, Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (The MIT Press, 2019).

Week 16 / finals week

  • Dec 8: Module 5 quiz
  • Dec 10: No class
  • Dec 11: Sound media artifact show-and-tell
    Note: class meets from 8am-10am this day!

  1. While syllabi don’t typically include dedication lines, this one is so heavily and happily indebted to the work of Jonathan Sterne—who passed away last spring—that it feels warranted. Jonathan was a once-in-a-generation thinker and mentor who helped inspire, hone, and advocate for many of the ideas we will encounter in this course. He was also someone who, with his partner Carrie Rentschler and other collaborators/bandmates, showed how a critical disposition toward sound, technology, and culture can (or, really, should) go hand-in-hand with a joyful creative practice in audio media. The world in which people make sound central to their examination of life is richer for his reverberating contributions.↩︎