MUSIC 207
Final Project
Due December 15

You need to upload your videos to Brightspace by December 15, and brief writeups and critiques in the dropbox by December 18th.
This project is worth 25% of your final grade. For this assignment, you can work alone or in small groups (up to 3 people).

Maximum duration of 10 minutes please!

In all cases I expect written documentation of your work, which is due on Dec 18th, along with the critique of two of your classmates' videos of your choice -- something you found particularly interesting or noteworthy. Please add this to your writeup.

Please make the title of your video descriptive, so people can decide if it's something they're interested in watching without having to watch it first.

In the Final Project, you will do research into issues of computers, technology and music or art. You can expand on a topic touched on in class, in the book, from the web, or something you came across in your first paper. This means you have a very wide choice of topics. Since you have so much freedom with respect to the topic, take advantage of the opportunity, and pursue something you're really interested in. The idea is that videos are not only for me to see -- they are for the entire class to see.

WRITEUP

Your brief writeup should discuss your video -- nothing complicated; just tell me about the process: what was easy, what was difficult, what would you do if you had more time, etc) and it should include your all your references (references don't need to be in the video itself).

You must have a bibliography section in your brief writeup (NOT part of the video). I expect to see the same kind of bibliography that you would use for a term paper. Each citation in your bibliography should include author(s), year of publication, title of article or book. If you use a journal articles you must also state which journal, which volume and the page numbers. If your video is about writing code, consider including it (or a link to it) in your writeup. Not required, but useful.

Journal example:
Estrada, A. and Peterson, J.D. 1980. A case of adoption in a captive group of Mexican spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). Primates 21:128-129.

Book chapter example:
Jolly, A., 1984. The puzzle of female feeding priority. In: Female primates: Studies by women primatologists. M.F. Small (ed.). Liss, New York. pp. 197-215.

RUBRIC FOR VIDEOS:

25% Effectiveness: How well have you addressed your chosen topic?
25% Creativity: Does this video show originality and creativity somehow?
10% Background Research: Have you done background research to see what other people have done with regard to this topic? How is this different?
10% Pedagogy: Does your video provide information that could be useful to someone who knows nothing about this topic?
10% Integration: How well have you integrated visual and audio information?
10% Writeup:Does your writeup include references and other relevant information?
10% Critiques : Did you write a thoughtful critique on two other videos?

Suggestions:

Some aspect of acoustics or psychoacoustics, from the book, or from some other acoustics or psychoacoustics source in the library. Auditory illusions, harmonic singing (can you learn to do it in a few weeks?), a computer program that you wrote to produce specific waveforms, a circuit you made, like a distortion pedal for your guitar, a Theremin, a comparison of different audio compression techniques (mp3 for example). More topics: tuning systems, reverberation, chaos theory in music, fractals, algorithmic composition, aliasing, neural nets and music, synaesthesia, visualization of music, sonification, etc. More ideas: History of electronic/computer music, synthesis/synthesizers, DAFX, DAW's, Max/MSP, bioacoustics (animal communication), tuning and temperament, visual music, digital audio, or any other topic that fits within the context of this course.

One way to find ideas for this project is to look over the bibliography or sources of illustrations in the textbook. There are many references, covering all sorts of topics in the area of computer music and acoustics; you should be able to find something that piques your interest. Or if you prefer, there are hundreds of books and thousands of articles that have been published since this book came out. All are fair game.

Look here for a few ideas to chew on:

 

 

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