Course of Study

• Week 1: New Experiments — How are musical artists currently working with web technologies in inspiring ways? What are the possibilities and challenges of working in this medium? In this class we will explore these questions and set up our programming environment.

• Week 2: Tone Poems, Synths and Effects — We will work together to investigate synthesis and signal processing through building FM / subtractive synthesizers, as well as integrating simple audio effects.

• Week 3: Field Recording, Sampling and Collage — In this week we will look at field recording and sampling techniques. We will use pre-recorded sounds, or collect some from our home and collage them on a web page.

• Week 4: Compositional Strategies — Arrangements and Timing: Sequencing and using timing and changes for the tools we have built.

• Week 5: Publishing — Wait, how does the web work? In this class we will learn to publish our websites to the web and learn about the history of the world wide web.

• Week 6: The Platform — In this week we will discuss popular music platforms for musical distribution and the support or problems they pose for musicians. We will envision our own smaller platforms and distributional methods.

• Week 7: Virtual and Web Based Performance — In this week we will discuss the work of performers and composers who have used the web (or some form of it in their work). We will use our own websites as tools for live performance.

• Week 8: Beyond the Library — Writing our own custom audio code using the AudioWorklet API. This will be a very basic example but will illustrate the workflow for making our own audio nodes (noise generator, Math.Random(), etc…).

• Week 9: Unknown Futures — How artists and collectives are using what have become known as Metaverse technologies and Web3, automated code generation and machine learning to imagine new distributional methods.

• Week 10: Final Presentations — In this class we will share final projects and present or perform our musical web works.

Expectations

We expect that participants attend with an open mind and are willing to try out new forms of working both collaboratively and independently.

We aim to set up an environment where participants feel empowered to ask questions, but understand that this can be challenging when people are working with new technologies or creative modalities for the first time.

Time & Workload

• There are weekly experiments and exercises, which appear to result in deliverables, but there is not a grading system in our coursework. We hope that these experiments provide a structure for you to grow and explore your own practice, with new tools, ideas or inspiration.

• There is a final presentation to share back what we learn together. This exercise does not need to include work from every module, it is there for you to work towards a goal of focus and have an opportunity to share your work. With consent, this will be featured on a public website for others to explore and learn from as well!

Technical Experience

No prior coding experience is necessary, just an excitement to explore new sonic territory through code and art. The course will be taught in p5.sound, Web Audio API and Max MSP.

Materials

• Mac or Windows computer (if you wish to use a ubuntu/Linux OS based computer let us know so we can plan accordingly)

• Sound recording device (can be a phone!)

Is this class for me?

This class may be for you if:

• You are an artist and want to expand your practice to include computer based forms of music making on the internet.

• You are a coder / designer and want to expand your practice to include composition and sound art.

• You want to spend 10 weeks thinking about form in a different way.

This class may NOT be for you if:

• You are looking for a coding bootcamp.