Courses: Spring 2025
A Hands-on History of Electronic Music
SOUND-2008
Alex Chechile (Spring 2025), Tuesdays 1:10-6:10pm
In A Hands-on History of Electronic Music, we will study the development of electronic music from a tactile approach using historical studio techniques. While learning about pioneering and underrepresented artists within the genre, students will use reel-to-reel tape machines, tube signal generators, modular synthesizers, and early computer music concepts to recreate key compositions within the field. Critical listening and analysis skills will be cultivated through guided exercises and projects. The hands-on approach this course takes will support a foundational understanding of electronic music history through methodologies as they evolved into current practice.Sound Synthesis: Analog / Digital Hybrids
SOUND-2043
Mark Cetilia (Spring 2025), Mondays 1:10-6:10pm
Throughout the past century, electronically generated sound has challenged the aesthetic and conceptual boundaries of art and music. In this intensive studio course, students will focus on the creation of experimental sound works utilizing hybrid analog / digital systems. We will investigate synthesis techniques using the SuperCollider programming language / environment in conjunction with the Serge modular synthesizer. Students will leverage the strengths of these tools towards uniquely personal production platforms that are more than the sum of their parts, and utilize them in the creation of fixed media, generative compositions, and improvised performances. The course will include discussion of historical works / texts, hands-on demonstrations, in-class projects, and critical engagement with new works by class members, culminating in a final project that incorporates knowledge gained throughout the semester. Sonic Practices
SOUND-3104
Mark Cetilia (Spring 2025), Wednesdays 9:00am-12:00pm
Sonic Practices is a graduate-level research group focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception. Participants explore audio culture and technology while developing experimental approaches to composition, performance, recording, and/or listening. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: audio programming languages, embedded/mobile computing for sound and music, spatial audio, sound synthesis, audio electronics, sonification and auditory display, electroacoustic music composition and improvisation, field recording and soundscape studies, sound installation and performance, and sonic interaction design. Each semester, course content changes in response to a new unifying theme upon which students base individual and team-based research projects. Meetings consist of discussions, workshops, critiques, and collaborations that support students' individual inquiries, the exchange of ideas, and the exploration of research methodologies.
Of Sound and Vision
SOUND-2007
Maralie Armstrong-Rial (Spring 2025), Wednesdays 11:20am-4:20pm
This intensive studio course investigates computational approaches to generating sound and image in real time. Precedents from experimental film and video, as well as sound installation and performance art will be examined in relationship both to human perception and the students' artistic practice. The course will include discussion of key historical works and texts, hands-on demonstrations and in-class projects, as well as critical engagement with new works by class members. Students will use programming environments such as Max and its object libraries for sound and video, MSP and Jitter to explore the creative and expressive potentials of an intermedia production practice culminating in the development of a larger work that incorporates knowledge gained throughout the course.
Courses: Wintersession 2025
Sound Design: Spaces
SOUND-2003
Will Johnson (Wintersession 2025), Schedule A
This course offers an in-depth exploration of sound as a medium for designing and conceptualizing real, irreal and hyperreal spaces. Through critical listening, readings, and discussions, students will investigate the possibilities and constraints of sound in shaping environments. Using RISD’s 25.4 spatial audio array, participants will engage in a hands-on technical exploration of spatial audio, while developing individual interpretations of what constitutes "the real" as a threshold. This evolving concept will be examined through creative practice, inviting students to challenge and expand their understanding of space through sound. Class time will focus on creating, reflecting, and sharing work, with a strong emphasis on sound design and spatial audio programming using Ableton Live. Prior experience with Ableton is not required.Environmental Sound: Using Built and Natural Settings in Music Composition
SOUND-2040
Chris Mayes-Wright (Wintersession 2025), Schedule B
"Environmental Sound" challenges the principles of studio-based music composition by using natural and built settings as stimuli for multi-channel sound creations. The course encourages students to explore the foundations of conventional composition, such as rhythm, harmony and melody, and investigate the concepts of space as it relates to sound. Students apply these concepts to their own compositions using recordings captured during the session, to create immersive audio experiences that reference and compliment the world around them. Students explore the concept of aleatoric sound, and are prompted to listen to, and capture, the ‘silence’ around them using mobile recording devices. Individual and group activities will include critical listening and evaluation of conventional and abstract audio sources, with the intention to build and diversify the shared vocabulary for expressing their emotive responses to sound. Taught using a modular, scalable, roving multi-channel audio playback system, students learn technical setup, multi-channel digital composition, plus audio recording, processing and sequencing. The course will be taught using digital audio workstation (DAW) software Reaper and Ableton Live. No music theory or composition experience is needed.
Courses: Fall 2024
Spatial Audio
SOUND-2006
Shawn Greenlee (Fall 2024), Fridays 1:10-6:10pm
Spatial Audio focuses on the creation of immersive 3-D sound experiences. In this course, students analyze and explore how the sensation of space is activated in the listener by making works using spatial audio techniques. These methods include high order ambisonics, vector-based amplitude panning, multichannel surround, and binaural audio, among others. Throughout the semester, a series of exercises addressing technical and theoretical issues provide students with the necessary experience to produce midterm and final projects. Coursework involves computational approaches to sound design and composition with instruction in the audio programming language Max and digital audio workstation Reaper. Students have recurring access to a 25-channel loudspeaker array for the development of works. Readings from psychology, philosophy, the arts, and sound studies support class discussions and critiques.Sonic Practices
SOUND-3104
Mark Cetilia (Fall 2024), Wednesdays 9:00am-12:00pm
Sonic Practices is a graduate-level research group focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception. Participants explore audio culture and technology while developing experimental approaches to composition, performance, recording, and/or listening. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: audio programming languages, embedded/mobile computing for sound and music, spatial audio, sound synthesis, audio electronics, sonification and auditory display, electroacoustic music composition and improvisation, field recording and soundscape studies, sound installation and performance, and sonic interaction design. Each semester, course content changes in response to a new unifying theme upon which students base individual and team-based research projects. Meetings consist of discussions, workshops, critiques, and collaborations that support students' individual inquiries, the exchange of ideas, and the exploration of research methodologies.
Sonic Mapping: Narratives, Soundscapes, and Archives
SOUND-2002
Michael Demps (Fall 2024), Mondays 1:10-6:10pm
The "Sonic Mapping: Narratives, Soundscapes, and Archives" course is an educational journey into the fusion of soundscapes, location, and narrative creation. It offers an in-depth exploration into the process of gathering field recordings, developing a thematic sound collection, and leveraging this collection as a cornerstone for storytelling and musical creation. Centered around the concept of "Sonic Mapping of Locations," this course challenges students to engage in active listening, effective recording, and imaginative composing, transforming fleeting sounds from varied environments into engaging auditory narratives and sonic compositions.Courses: Spring 2024
Programming Sound: Performance Systems
SOUND-2001
Shawn Greenlee (Spring 2024), Fridays 1:10-6:10pm
Programming Sound: Performance Systems focuses on programming and designing computer-based systems for sound art and music performance. Centered on the dataflow programming language, Max, the course will be of substantial benefit to students who desire a rigorous and fast-moving foundation in algorithmic approaches to sound design. The course simultaneously facilitates explorations in sound synthesis, audio signal processing, electronics, gesture-based human computer interaction, and instrument building with microcontrollers and sensors. Coursework involves weekly homework in the form of online lectures and exercises with class sessions reserved for demonstrations, workshops, and project assistance. The course emphasizes modularity and reuse of code. Students will present their work in a public concert during the last week of the semester.Modular Synthesis Studio
SOUND-2010
Alex Chechile (Spring 2024), Mondays 1:10-6:10pm
Modular synthesizers offer a tactile approach to sound production that is consistently inventive by design. Emerging from the 1960s counterculture, they are a product of expansive thinking that challenged conventions in both instrument design and creative practice. Six decades later, the limits of possibility only increased. In Modular Synthesis Studio, we will learn and apply concepts of voltage controlled synthesizers to creative coding and embedded computing platforms. Imbued with the spirit of community, together we will design and build a one-of-a-kind RISD modular synthesizer by semester end, while also creating new sound-based works with the system.
SOUND-3104
Sonic Practices is a graduate-level research group focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception. Participants explore audio culture and technology while developing experimental approaches to composition, performance, recording, and/or listening. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: audio programming languages, embedded/mobile computing for sound and music, spatial audio, sound synthesis, audio electronics, sonification and auditory display, electroacoustic music composition and improvisation, field recording and soundscape studies, sound installation and performance, and sonic interaction design.
Each semester, course content changes in response to a new unifying theme upon which students base individual and team-based research projects. Meetings consist of discussions, workshops, critiques, and collaborations that support students' individual inquiries, the exchange of ideas, and the exploration of research methodologies.
Sonic Practices
SOUND-3104
Michael Demps (Spring 2024), Wednesdays 11:20am-4:20pm
Sonic Practices is a graduate-level research group focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception. Participants explore audio culture and technology while developing experimental approaches to composition, performance, recording, and/or listening. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: audio programming languages, embedded/mobile computing for sound and music, spatial audio, sound synthesis, audio electronics, sonification and auditory display, electroacoustic music composition and improvisation, field recording and soundscape studies, sound installation and performance, and sonic interaction design. Each semester, course content changes in response to a new unifying theme upon which students base individual and team-based research projects. Meetings consist of discussions, workshops, critiques, and collaborations that support students' individual inquiries, the exchange of ideas, and the exploration of research methodologies.