WORK

sounds:

Each class, please come prepared with a sound (something brief, definitely less than a minute) for us to listen to and briefly discussed, ideally a sound you've recorded. Categorize your sound as noise, speech or music, however you've understood those terms. I will only have us listen to one or two sounds per class, however, so I will call on a student at random or take a volunteer. Happily, almost everyone carries a digital sound recording device in their pocket at all times today. Every iPhone user can download Apple's Music Memos app for free, which couldn't be simpler; there's is only one button, and it's the button to start and stop recording. If you are interested in learning more about more sophisticated recording, come and talk to me, since recording a voice is very different from recording a musical instrument (and each instrument has its own unique recording needs), and both of these are quite different from recording ambient sounds. But sophisticated recording isn't at all needed for this.

presentation:

In a maximum of 15 minutes, with or without PowerPoint or its equivalent, present one of the assigned readings or address directly (but theoretically) the audio-visual work assigned. You may wish to write out your presentation in advance (a typical conference presentation is approximately 7-8 pages, double spaced, 12 point font, which will usually give you about 15 minutes), and read that in a communicative and pedagogically effective way. If you are including film clips or sound samples, then your presentation should be less than 8 pages. Clips take up time.

We will have at least 12 presentations, and we only have 11 meetings, so we will need to begin almost immediately, starting on 2/6. As a result, there is no expectation that the presentation is a "preview" of your final paper — you just may find it interesting in itself, or worth arguing with.

A word on PowerPoint, since it is a pet peeve of mine. PowerPoint exists in order to provide a visual counterpoint to your spoken presentation. PowerPoint is not there to repeat your presentation, or worse still, to put up large blocks of text that people are supposed to read while you talk about something else. You might as well ask your audience to practice basketball while you talk. Some quick guidelines (these apply equally to Keynote, Prezi, etc.):

• Use only one template for the entire presentation.

• Use the least obtrusive and flamboyant tenplate possible

• Avoid templates that leave very little space for text or image

• Use a maximum of two fonts (one for headers, one for text).

• Use simple, legible fonts—something assertive for headers, and a plain serif for text.

• You provide the words; PowerPoint should provide an image.

• Never put a block of text on the screen unless it is a passage you will analyze.

• If that passage is too long, break it into multiple slides.

• If text doesn't fit, don't make it smaller—make it shorter.

• Every animation and visual "trick" you use will distract your audience from what you are saying.

• Approximately one slide per paragraph (more is okay, less is not so good).

seminar paper:

Seminar papers should be 15-25 pages in length, and should demonstrate good writing, and a serious engagement with the primary material and the scholarship on it. When you write a seminar paper, you are practicing to write an article—they rarely get to the stage where they are actually ready to be submitted to a journal at the end of the semester, but you want to move them in that direction. That means you should have an important issue in the scholarship that you think you have an interesting or worthwhile take on, and you should have read a selection of the scholarship on the specific text or texts you will be writing on. Make it sound like you know a part of the field; spend a little time on Google; get an impression of the kind of work that people are doing. Your paper should deal directly with the material from the class, engaging with the notions of the voice, sound and the environment, phenomenology, the Adornian critique of music, and so on. I love close readings, I love theory, but ultimately, you want a seminar paper to build up your archive, your internal bibliography of texts and authors you're familiar with, and to build a repertoire of possible articles.