Soundscapes

One of my main goals while teaching MUS2640 – Sensing Sound and Music last semester was the integration of perspectives from musicology, psychology, and technology. The main point is to introduce the basics of music psychology and music technology, two disciplines that are quite distinct in most places, but which we at the University of Oslo have a tradition of combining. In this post, I explain the rationale. Three “logies” One of my main arguments is that we should consider the three “logies” involved in this course: ...

I am teaching the course MUS2640 – Sensing Sound and Music again this semester. It is the second time I’ve run the course, and I can build on the experience I gained last year. One of the course’s aims is to encourage students to listen attentively and develop the capacity to discuss what they hear systematically. Last year, it worked very well to have students record a (any!) soundscape and reflect on the experience. More precisely, they were tasked to (1) listen to a sound(scape), (2) record it with any device available, (3) share it on Freesound, and (4) reflect on the difference between what they heard and the recorded sound. It is a simple task, but it has many layers that can contribute to the learning process. ...