Music

This course provides a firm foundation in aural skills for the 21st Century musician in the globalized Singapore context, drawing in particular on Western Classical music, popular music/jazz, and music from diverse cultures (e.g., Chinese, Malay, Indian). The course introduces to key listening skills to develop a critical ear, aural awareness, and cross-cultural sensitivity to music across different traditions, styles, and genres. Throughout the course, students develop foundational aural skills (e.g., sight-singing/solfege-singing (including using cipher notation), dictation/aural transcription skills, and abilities to identify harmonies, timbres, other musical and stylistic features through a spiral approach. This course requires an audition.

This course examines the history and practice of electronic music from the early twentieth century to the present. It will explore a wide range of genres—from experimental forms like musique concrète and drone composition to popular traditions like rock and various forms of electronic dance music (EDM)—as well as the evolution of instruments, techniques, and lines of influence. Through the course students will develop a broad perspective of the history of the field and an understanding of musical techniques that will meaningfully inform their own listening and creative practices. The primary goal of the course is to establish an understanding of the development of electronic music, including prominent composers, musicians, technologies, instruments, aesthetic ideas, and genres. A secondary goal is linked to the methods and organization of the course as they set out these points of orientation. The course will introduce a wide and representative sampling of different sources for the study of electronic music: in addition to recordings of musical works and performances, these sources include artists’ statements, historical surveys, documentary film, science fiction, specialized musicological study, music criticism, writings on aesthetics and the philosophy of art, and virtual software for modeling analogue synthesis.

This course explores how scholars and practitioners use musical data, both in audio and notated formats. Students are given the opportunity to develop skills in encoding, analyzing, categorizing, and curating music recordings and notated music. These skills are developed by encouraging an intimate understanding of the nature of different musical formats, an appreciation of their uses, and approaches to computational analyses of their electronic manifestations.

This course examines the intersection of music, AI, and creativity, drawing from the rapidly expanding critical scholarship on AI. While the class prioritizes musicological, sociocultural, and philosophical approaches to critiquing AI, it will also engage with other genres of writings from media studies, music information retrieval (MIR), computational creativity, and from within the music industry. 

This course introduces students to a rich variety of often unfamiliar sonic expressions, musics, and contextualized musical case studies that highlight (or question the limits of) music’s relationship with particular physical (or natural) environments. It also introduces students to, and encourage critical engagement with, music specific and interdisciplinary literature relating to the environment, place, landscape, acoustic ecology, and indigeneity.

This course introduces students to the socio-cultural contexts, functions, philosophies, techniques, and organizing principles of a variety of musics of the world; musics from at least three continents are studied. These musical traditions are approached from both theoretical and practical perspectives, also giving a variety of opportunities for hands-on experience. Course content varies from year to year according to staff interests, availability of musicians to provide workshops, and to ensure freshness of approach. A typical curriculum might cover the following regions and theoretical themes: World Music - Introduction (culture, contact & concepts) South America: Andes to Amazon (exchange) Africa: Jaliya and Mbira (the musician) Indonesia: Sundanese Gamelan (temporal organization) North India: The Classical Tradition (improvisation) Papua New Guinea: The Kaluli (music and ecology) Iran: The Persian Classical Tradition (music & religion).

This course is for private lessons of the qanun instrument. It involves twelve one-hour lessons in the semester. Students are expected to practice a minimum of one hour every day. Students perform before a jury of teachers for the final examination. Students may register for more than one section of MUSC 1800 in the same semester. 

This course examines popular musical culture with an emphasis on musicological, sociological, and anthropological aspects. Other topics include: comparative folklore; how and why popular music should be studied; the songbooks and folklore missions in Spain; methods and procedures in ethnomusicological research; anthropology of music-- music in culture; reformulation of folklore; processes of transit and cultural contact. Pre-requisites: Musicology students with prior musical knowledge

This course is for private lessons in Arab Voice. It involves twelve one-hour lessons in the semester. Students are expected to practice a minimum of one hour every day. Students perform before a jury of teachers for the final examination. Students may register for more than one section of MUSC 1800 in the same semester. 
 

This course introduces the knowledge and tools to record and arrange popular music. Using one of the most ubiquitous music-making tools in the market, GarageBand, this practical based course allows students the opportunities to explore recording and editing of melodies, harmonies, and basic bass & drum patterns using software instruments. Students explore the use of Apple Loops to enhance arrangement ideas. In addition, students learn about the specific musical terms and concepts to better understand and describe music arrangements. This course deepens technological content knowledge and improves self-efficacy in the development of students' musical abilities. No audition is required.