Study today’s music business; learn practical steps for building multiple revenue streams within the music industry. Investigate the current job market as a live and studio performing musician, composer and arranger, songwriter, teacher, producer, recording engineer, manager, and more. Topics on brand-building, building an audience, marketing, social media, and press-kits will be covered. Develop an understanding of music copyrights, royalties, and sync licensing. Explore aspects of the recording industry, from the inception of a song idea, all the way through recording, production, and distribution, using digital, physical, and cryptocurrency medias.

This course covers the origins and evolution of Modernism in European art and music from its roots in the later 19th century up until World War II. Modernism, an avant-garde movement in the arts, represented a radical rupture with the past, a rejection of traditional and accepted artistic standards and a search for new forms of expression. In an era characterized by industrialization, the dominance of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and psychology (e.g., Freudian theory), progressive thinkers and artists felt a mounting alienation from Victorian morality, optimism, and conventional truths of the earlier 19th Century. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory sparked a new radicalism in the arts. We will explore this exciting period of experimentation where revolutionary developments in music and the visual arts often coincided with one another. In the visual arts we will consider movements ranging from Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism to Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and “Primitivism.” In music we will investigate parallel developments including the new use of popular (jazz), exotic (African) and nationalistic (Russian and American) styles, along with more radical trends including atonality and electronic sound sources. Among the visual artists we will study are Monet, Matisse and Picasso in Paris, Klimt and Schiele in Vienna, Kandinsky in Munich, while musicians will include Debussy, Satie and Russian expatriates Scriabin and Stravinsky in Paris, Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg in Vienna, and a few jazz musicians in the United States. No prior studies or experience in art or music is required.

How do people use sound and music to access alternate states of consciousness and otherworldly realms? This course explores the connection between music, sacred soundscapes, and spiritual perception across a range of musical practices and belief systems. Through a number of different case studies from around the world, we will investigate the essential role of sound and melody in conjuring mystical and extrasensory states of being across social and regional contexts. Our study will include environmentally-based sound explorations, where we explore techniques involving deep listening and sound painting. We will contextualize sacred and spiritual soundscapes within religious and cultural frameworks: exploring trance, possession, and intoxication from a musical perspective. Various sensorial exercises will heighten our awareness of sound and space – including breath, silence, and movement. By illuminating how sound moves within and across human bodies, we will explore how music enables transcendent experiences of ecstatic and otherworldly realms. 1 unit – Carrizo

How do we create meaning and understanding from music? And what do we do with that information in our everyday lives? This course invites students to think actively and critically about the ways the world around them is constructed through sound. We will explore modes of listening across a wide variety of musical genres and traditions, past and present, considering the ways people hear music individually and together. Students will develop newfound ways to discuss music meaningfully in a broad range of contexts and to translate what they hear into what they feel and why that matters to our collective experience. This course is open to any interested student and welcomes a diversity of backgrounds and levels of experience.

Tener un enemigo y defenderte de él te hace functional el bocho (“to have an enemy, and to have to defend yourself from him, makes your head work”) —Charly García Since Spanish America’s independence from Spain, its countries have been characterized by political instability and military dictatorships. In particular, the 1960s and 1970s marked a nadir in Latin American democracy. This period marked the height of the Cold War between the US and the USSR, and Latin America became one of the conflict’s main focal points. As the superpowers vied for control over the region, instituting sympathetic, authoritarian regimes in different countries became commonplace. The result was, more often than not, a government that declared war on its own people, holding on to political power through intimidation, coercion, corruption, and violence. Yet these circumstances also resulted in a wealth of creative musical activity across the continent. Musicians and songwriters, responding to repression, censorship, and injustice across the continent, experienced an explosion of creative output that is unmatched in the region’s history. Over the course of this class, we will examine the history of music and social protest in Latin America through a number of test cases: the long Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic; Argentina’s rock nacional vs. the National Reorganization Process; Brazil, MPB, and Tropicalia; and the Castro government’s appropriation of Cuban folk music. We will also briefly cover a few musicians and test cases in Central America. This course will be taught in English. However, much of the course will deal with interpreting lyrics and reading primary sources in Spanish. For this reason, fluency in Spanish is highly recommended (and some degree of Spanish literacy is required)

This course is designed to explore the relationship between sound, music, and place, as well as various aspects of how we experience and engage with our sonic environment. The course is first and foremost experiential. Students will learn through making field recordings in multiple locations, creating sound art from their soundscape documentation, collaborating on site-specific group performances, mapping sounds, engaging in soundwalks, and deep listening. This work will be informed by an interdisciplinary discussion of the intersections between sound and the environment, as well as the role of listening within the context of environmental change. Dr. Tyler Cornelius from CC’s Environmental Program will visit the class multiple times to engage and support this interdisciplinary discussion. In addition, students will critically explore and discuss musical works that interact with sonic landscapes and the environment. No previous experience, musical or otherwise, required.

Salsa music can be readily identifiable by American audiences as a type of pan-Latin music, which indeed it is: it is an amalgam of rhythms, lyric structures, and harmonic patterns derived from across the Caribbean area. Yet Salsa was truly forged in the heart of New York City, a musical form that emerged as a response to the socio-economic plight of both Latin America as a whole and the Spanish-speaking communities that made up Spanish Harlem. This can be observed most clearly in its lyrical content; Salsa songs, especially in the genre’s early days, often tell gritty stories of city life; meditate on Latin America’s authoritarian politics; and even dwell on societal crises like the AIDS pandemic and issues of gender. Through this course, we will explore the History of Salsa Music, viewed through the prisms of politics: What were the elements that came to make up Salsa, and how did they come to make up what we now know as Salsa? How did Salsa reflect the issues of its time? What about Salsa’s rhythms and characteristics—its claves—make it so popular and communicative to Latin American audiences? What was its impact? Who were its major players, both on the creative and the corporate side? And what were the socio-economic forces that came to target Salsa? This course will be taught in English. However, much of the course will deal with interpreting lyrics and reading primary sources in Spanish. For this reason, fluency in Spanish is highly recommended (and some degree of Spanish literacy is required)

In this introductory course to musics of the world, we will survey a number of rich and dynamic performance and cultural practices from around the globe. Through ethnographic case studies as well as hands-on musical performance and body movement classes, we will approach the study of music and cultural meaning across various historical and social contexts. Our exploration will uncover the many and varied meanings inherent in musical expression, and how music forms an essential means through which people understand themselves and their world. Our study will include investigations of popular music styles, sacred and spiritual soundscapes, musical traditions rooted in historical practices, as well as sound practices of rituals, dance, and rites of passage. No musical experience is required to participate fully in this course. This class will teach you how to listen to, analyze, participate in, identify, discuss, and perform a selection of basic music-making styles from around the world.

Study today’s music business; learn practical steps for building multiple revenue streams within the music industry. Investigate the current job market as a live and studio performing musician, composer and arranger, songwriter, teacher, producer, recording engineer, manager, and more. Topics on brand-building, building an audience, marketing, social media, and press-kits will be covered. Develop an understanding of music copyrights, royalties, and sync licensing. Explore aspects of the recording industry, from the inception of a song idea, all the way through recording, production, and distribution, using digital, physical, and cryptocurrency medias.

The Beatles hold a special location in the history of popular music, seemingly unrivaled in both their day and the decades since they disbanded. John, Paul, George, and Ringo long ago became icons and their songs live on in the cultural imagination of the world. This course looks behind the legendary status of the band and its music, delving into the historical, social, technological, and commercial factors that contributed to their success in the past and maintain their standing in the present. We will consider individual songs, entire albums, films and even their foray into the realm of video games. No previous experience with music necessary.

In this class we study both the figurative and the literal museumification of music. We investigate the work concept’s power to ossify certain musical monuments, and how shifting reception histories and issues of performance practice can shape that process. We consider new ideas in critical organology dealing with the agency of musical instruments and the complex networks of which they are a part. Touching on museum ethics, we discuss the opportunities and challenges that curators face when dealing with musical instruments as museum-objects (e.g. How should they be displayed, and what story does it tell? To play or not to play?). The concept of “authenticity” serves as a through-line in this course, continuously bringing our discussions back to the question of what it means for something (a piece of music, an instrument) to be an “original.” Open to all students. 1 unit - Chang

Our voices are our original instruments. It’s the one music-maker we use every day, in a variety of contexts, and in a variety of ways: for speaking, singing, making noises, onomatopoeia, whispering and shouting, etc. Yet despite the wide availability of trained and untrained voices, and the many musical possibilities they present, most music composition/arranging courses are geared towards instrumental ensembles. In this course, we will harness our innate vocal music and noise-making capacities. We will work with and study the human voice over the course of the block, creating a number of compositions or arrangements for mixed small vocal ensembles — a cappella groups — with a variety of sizes and vocal groupings depending on the course’s enrollment. We will work with several professional singers and choral conductors in order to develop our capacity to both write for voices and lead rehearsals efficiently. We will also study a wide range of vocal music in a variety of styles and traditions: Renaissance polyphonic vocal writing, barbershop quartets, doo wop groups, Georgian microtonal choral music, overtone singing, etc. The class will conclude with a public performance of student-created and student-performed choral works. Prerequisites: musicians and singers of all backgrounds and experiences are welcome. Instructor permission is required; “Music Fundamentals” (MU199) is recommended, but not required. 1 unit – A. Carrizo

This class is designed to facilitate creative collaborations and to develop meaningful bridges between students and members of the Colorado Springs community, with an emphasis on persons from marginalized and underserved groups. Students in this course will collaborate with Colorado-based community organizations addressing social justice issues such as incarceration, homelessness, and climate change. With a multilayered network of support and mentorship, the students will take part in the creation of collaborative projects designed to resonate with their community partners. This multilayered network will include The Reminders, an internationally revered Springs-based hip-hop duo: Brussels-born emcee Big Samir and Queens-born emcee/vocalist Aja Black. The course is geared towards students drawn to community engagement, musical creativity, and collaboration. 1 unit - Aharony

This class is intended for students who wish to focus on music performance and creativity within chamber group settings. Instrumentalists, vocalists, and composers will explore together some of the most treasured musical repertoire, while acquiring practical experience in rehearsal techniques. In addition, students will learn to identify musical forms and develop understanding for harmonic progressions through a variety of analytical methods. In addition to learning the traditional repertoire, the creativity and performance of original music will also be encouraged and supported. The course will culminate in a final live concert to include the repertoire covered throughout the block. 1 Unit - Ben-Amots, S. Grace

This course examines the reception history and performance practices of BWV 244 and BWV 245, focusing particular attention on: the liturgical and cultural origins of the Passion plays, the longstanding (and ongoing) controversy surrounding performance practices of the Passions, and the complex reception history of these works, which have been accused (the St. John Passion in particular) of perpetuating anti-Semitic rhetoric. We consider the ways in which the modern notion of “universality” in Bach’s music, and the historical performance movement have influenced recent productions of these works, and investigate their perceived secular value in the modern concert hall. Open to all students. 1 unit - Chang