Looking at Light is an introductory text for theatre lighting designers. It is an appropriate resource for students at the college or university level who are interested in learning about lighting design at a fundamental level.

While the resource is designed as an introductory lighting design program for University students, it may also be useful to high school students who are interested in technical theatre, adults who are involved in community theatres, high school teachers who find themselves being responsible for lighting (even though they have little training in the area), or professionals and amateur theatre and dance practitioners from non-lighting areas.

This is a design-based course, and while there is some effort to explain the technology involved with theatrical lighting, it is not meant to be a resource to learn how to be an electrician or programmer.

This course explores the ways in which humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. It examines how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally. It describes the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Students address questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing. There is a particular focus on how the sound/noise boundary is imagined, created and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples will be provided. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. At MIT, this course is limited to 20 students.

With Blues, Jazz, and Soul Music as a foundational backdrop, Memphis has made many other significant contributions to music.  Artists such as Maurice White, (leader/founder of the 70s/80s supergroup Earth, Wind, and Fire), Big Star, and even the most recent Band Camino all call Memphis Home.  These artists along with others continue to push the creative envelope and discover new avenues of expression for Memphis Music.     

Blues and Soul music intersect in Memphis Tennessee.  Southern Soul as it is usually called, originated in Memphis and was greatly influenced by the blues of the city and the Mississippi Delta.  

A Look at Memphis Jazz Piano before James Williams, Donald Brown, and Mulgrew Miller made their significant contributions.  In addition to the great Phineas Newborn jr., Charles Thomas and Harold Mabern also made a tremendous impact.  Live music at local venues provided informal educational opportunities for students of all ages.   

This is a look at some of the more successful jazz pianists from Memphis Tennessee.  Each artist has experienced national and international acclaim as both a pianist and composer.  What's more, they are all comtemporaries having attended the University of Memphis (then Memphis State University)at the same time.  

This web app is a complete critical edition of MND, which can be viewed as plain text or in a mode with glosses appropriate to students just getting familiar with the play. It has a second mode for more advanced students with textual notes and explorations of mythology and classical allusions. A final mode for performers/experiential learners displays the text showing typographical indications of scansion and rhetoric. The app also includes an interactive mode for memorization drills. The text from all modes is fully printable.

The text is accompanied by a full set of features, including:
a full cast list and doubling chart,
a textual history,
a performance history,
an essay on performance challenges and opportunities,
a guide to practical scansion principles,
a resources guide connecting readers to facsimiles and study aides,
and a special section covering all the music and dance cues in the show with suggestions and examples.

This course analyzes major modern plays featuring works by Shaw, Pirandello, Beckett, Brecht, Williams, Soyinka, Hwang, Churchill, Wilson, Frayn, Stoppard, Deveare Smith, and Kushner. The class particularly considers performance, sociopolitical and aesthetic contexts, and the role of theater in the world of modern multimedia.

This subject covers a specific branch of music history: Western concert music of first sixty years of the twentieth century. Although we will be listening to and studying many pieces (most of the highest caliber) the goal of the course is not solely to build up a repertory of works in our memory (though that is indeed a goal). We will be most concerned with larger questions of continuity and change in music. We will also consider questions of reception, or historiography - that is, the creation of history and our perception of it. Why do we perceive much of this music, so much closer in time to us than Mozart or Beethoven, to be so foreign? Is this music aloof and separate from popular music of the twentieth century or is there a real connection (perhaps hidden)? The subject will continue to follow some topics of central interest to music before 1960, such as serialism and aleatory, beyond the 1960 cutoff. Conversely a few topics which get their start just before 1960 but which flourish later (minimalism, computer music) will be covered only in 21M.263.

This course surveys seven Baroque and Classical genres: opera, oratorio, cantata, sonata, concerto, quartet, symphony, and includes work by composers Bach, Handel, Haydn, Monteverdi, Mozart, Purcell, Schütz and Vivaldi. Course work is based on live performances as well as listening and reading assignments.

Multimodal Musicianship is an open educational resource for learning music theory and ear training. The content engages concepts related to tonal harmony, suitable for a two- or three-semester music theory and ear training curriculum in a liberal arts college or other higher education setting. This collection of materials offers multiple modes of engaging content—with text, musical examples, audio examples, video content, application activities, and links to supplemental content—designed for users to learn and reinforce their knowledge according to their learning styles and needs.

This course is designed to teach not only historical facts about music but also to encourage deeper listening to music from a variety of sources. The course is a guided journey of listening, reading, and discussion (oral and written) of music, with corresponding recommended listening and assignments for deeper understanding. An emphasis of this design is to place music within the framework of how music is experienced instead of in a chronological sequence. To that end, the modules include a unit on the music of the Civil Rights movement, with optional material on music for social justice in contemporary America, and the musical contributions of musicians from Alabama. Instructors are encouraged to modify the materials to serve the needs of the students or audience they are serving.

This text covers basic elements and vocabulary of music; appreciation and understanding of diverse styles of music past and present; developing listening skills. Includes opportunities for experiencing music (recorded and/or live).
I. Music Fundamentals
II. History of Western Music before 1600
III. History of Western Music after 1600
IV. Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries
V. Listening to Genres
VI. Music of Louisiana, the Americas, and the World

This course features directed composition of larger forms of original writing involving voices and/or instruments. It includes a weekly seminar in composition for the presentation and discussion of work in progress. Students are expected to produce at least one substantive work, performed in public, by the end of the term. Contemporary compositions and major works from 20th-century music literature are studied.

This course begins with the premise that the 1960s mark a great dividing point in the history of 20th century Western musical culture, and explores the ways in which various social and artistic concerns of composers, performers, and listeners have evolved since that decade. It focuses on works by classical composers from around the world. Topics include the impact of rock, as it developed during the 1960s - 70s; the concurrent emergence of post serial, neotonal, minimalist, and new age styles; the globalization of Western musical traditions; the impact of new technologies; and the significance of music video, video games, and other versions of multimedia. The course interweaves discussion of these topics with close study of seminal musical works, evenly distributed across the four decades since 1960; works by MIT composers are included.

Music Theory for the 21st–Century Classroom is an openly–licensed online four–semester college music theory textbook. This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. Also, in traditional music theory textbooks, there is little emphasis on motivic analysis and analysis of melodic units smaller than the phrase. In my opinion, this led to students having difficulty with creating melodies, since the training they are given is typically to write a “melody” in quarter notes in the soprano voice of part writing exercises. When the assignments in those texts ask students to do more than this, the majority of the students struggle to create a melody with continuity and with appropriate placement of harmonies within a phrase because the text had not prepared them to do so.

This class is an introduction to the analysis of tonal music. Students develop analytical techniques based upon concepts learned in 21M.301-21M.302. Students study rhythm and form, harmony, line and motivic relationships at local and large scale levels of musical structure. Three papers (totaling 20 pages, one to be revised) and one oral presentation are required.

In this course, students study concepts and practice techniques of improvisation in solo and ensemble contexts. The course examines relationships between improvisation, composition, and performance based in traditional and experimental approaches. Hands-on music making will be complemented by discussion of the aesthetics of improvisation. Weekly lab sessions support work on musical technique. Guest artist / lecturers will engage students through mini-residencies in jazz with film, Indian music, electronic music, and blending improvisation with classic music; and an accompanying concert series will feature these artists in performance. Open by audition to instrumental or vocal performers.

This course examines the history, techniques, and aesthetics of mechanical and computer-aided approaches to algorithmic music composition and generative music systems. Through creative hands-on projects, readings, listening assignments, and lectures, students will explore a variety of historical and contemporary approaches. Diverse tools and systems will be employed, including applications in Python, MIDI, Csound, SuperCollider, and Pure Data.