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Your final project is an analysis of a TV, film, or video game score of your choosing. The purpose of the project is for you to apply the skills you’ve learned in class to something that you enjoy and want to share with the rest of the class. Due dates are as follows: Recommended reading… Continue reading Weeks 14–15: Final Project

Nov 14: Harmony Let’s round out this theory course with a quick discussion of harmony! Reading (due Wednesday before class) Lehman 2013 Lehman 2018 Writing due Saturday at noon Complete the worksheet for your final project. Lehman, Frank. 2013. “Hollywood Cadences: Music and the Structure of Cinematic Expectation.” Music Theory Online 19 (4). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.4/mto.13.19.4.lehman.html. ———. 2018. Hollywood Harmony:… Continue reading Week 13: Harmony

Oct 31: Game audio technology One of the ways in which game audio is notably different from film audio is that in its early days, game audio was highly restricted by technological limitations of the consoles’ sound chips. This impacts how we analyze this music. Reading (due Wednesday before class) Guest expert: Kevin R. Burke… Continue reading Weeks 11–12: Game Audio Technology

Oct 24: Pre-existing Music We mainly think of “soundtracks” as music that is composed specifically for a piece of media, but many soundtracks include or are made up of pre-existing pieces of music. These soundtracks require different analytical approaches than newly-composed soundtracks. Reading (due Wednesday before class) Visiting expert: Táhirih Motazedian (Assistant Professor of Music,… Continue reading Week 10: Pre-existing Music

Oct 10: Leitmotif in film Leitmotif can mean a lot of things in common parlance, but our readings in this class try to nail down a specific, academic definition of the term as opposed to theme, motive, etc. Reading (due Wednesday before class) Chapter 9 of Bribitzer-Stull (2015) Lehman (2018) Writing due Saturday at noon… Continue reading Weeks 8–9: Leitmotif

Identity issues come to the fore in narrative media, where characters and settings need to be established in a limited amount of time. Sep 26: Race and ethnicity As we’ve seen, soundtrack composers rely on topics to quickly communicate elements of characterization and setting with the listener, but sometimes these usages veer into tokenization and… Continue reading Weeks 6–7: Identity

Sep 5: Topics in Classical music Topic theory was originally developed as a methodology for the analysis of Classical music. Most music-and-media literature builds on topics in a Classical context. Plus, this will be useful for those of you interested in Classical music. Reading (due Wednesday before class) Chapter 2 of Agawu (1991) Chapter 3… Continue reading Weeks 3–5: Topic Theory

Before we can get into music theoretical concepts, we need to establish some concepts fundamental to all study of music and media. Aug 22: Introduction This week, we’ll have meta-discussion about the course in general and sign up for discussion leading on various topics. Due Wednesday before class Find a YouTube clip (or whatever platform)… Continue reading Weeks 1–2: Foundations