The Media Center and Makery will be at the October 2nd Music Walk/Discover Downtown First Friday. Using Media Center equipment to DJ music and showing you how to use circuits to make your own music. Stop by and say hi to MC Assistants Greg, Purti, and Kerin.
Greg is tinkering with Little Bits to create custom instruments to play with when we are at Carlisle’s First Friday Music Walk downtown October 2nd.
Podcast, Music, and technology, the latest reply all podcast is a combination of things we like. Reply all is a podcast all about the internet and this week they highlighted Song Exploder a podcast the examines the technical aspects of how music is created and the artist’s process.
Also,look for us at the October 2nd First Friday Music Walk where we will be DJing and showing you how to make your own music.
We wrote a post encouraging people to attend the Third Coast Percussion performance of John Cage’s work a few weeks ago and we hope some of you got to see the amazing spectacle that night. The performance was great, but our eyes were especially focused on the four student produced videos that accompanied each piece.
Professor Amy Wlodarski tasked the students of her First Year Seminar to create short, documentary style videos that would help the audience understand the context around the following performances. Each had a specific topic it focused on and the groups took different paths in how they styled the segments. We have seen a lot of student produced videos but we were especially impressed with these. Professor Wlodarski gave them an important project and the students understood that their audience wasn’t only their professor, but a real audience of over 200 people watching it live. They took the assignment seriously and created entertaining and engaging videos that blended perfectly into the evening performance.
You don’t have to take our word for it, you can watch them yourself.
Whatcha doin’ this Saturday?
There is a fun performance going on in the newly renovated Rubendall Recital Hall by guest artists Third Coast Percussion. The evening will include a showcase of video productions created by students in Professor Amy Wlodarski’s First Year Seminar. (Amy’s previous classes have worked on digital productions relating to Cage’s works as well.)
The four videos will focus on different aspects of John Cage and his work. I have been able to catch a sneak peak of them and they are looking really good so far. The students have been working hard over the last two weeks to create them and it would be great if you could come out to see them, as well as the performance by Third Coast Percussion. See you on Saturday!
That whole “If you build it, they will come” thing certainly rang true with the podcast rooms we created last summer. We built them initially to support the growing need for recording booths for podcast projects but realized there was a void on campus when it came to music recording. Our idea was to offer a space that students (or any college employee really) could fine a space to make & record music easily and not have to worry (too much) about bothering their neighbors.
We have a mics & stands available for check out and a mini mixer, midi keyboard & Imac outfitted in both rooms. Students have really enjoyed using the spaces and it’s always appreciated when they share the music with us so we can then share it with you. Learn more from the great video our student employee Eli created and the soundtrack is provided by Mike Dempsey who recorded this tune in our podcast room!
We had the pleasure of working with Professor Amy Wlodarski again this semester and her class will be showcasing their work during an electronic performance open to the public. Sounds like a hoot and we hope a lot of people show up to enjoy the show!
On Thursday, April 28th, Music 102 will present their annual performances of John Cage’s composition, Circus On: A Means for Translating a Book into a Performance Without Actors, a Performance which is both Literary and Musical or One or the Other (1979). The students, in compositional teams of major and non-majors, have each selected a book to translate into a chance-determined musical soundscape (complete with original poetry) according to Cage’s meticulous score.
The four compositions will last ten minutes each and will be preceded by a short preface. They are electronic compositions, so please do not expect live performances. In some cases, the outcomes are dramatic and lively. In others, the outcomes are subdued and sparse. Laughter, outrage, dismissal, and fun are all appropriate responses. As Cage once famously said, “I would rather people laugh at my pieces than cry.”
The students have worked hard for three weeks to execute these compositions, including studying Cage’s writings and authoring a manifesto explaining all of their creative and aesthetic decisions. As such, the compositions are not random but highly-controlled sound spaces in which space is translated into time and events in the book into creative sonic forms according to objective or chance-determined criteria.
The performances will be held in Weiss 235 and will begin promptly at 1:30pm. Should you join us later, please slip in the back door of the classroom.
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