---
# System prepended metadata

title: Music Pedagogy Planning Doc

---

# Music Pedagogy Planning Doc

![alt text](https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T0HTW3H0V-F036JP21M3K/image_from_ios.jpg?pub_secret=59fb93b1a9)

## the plan

### framing:

* in the week since we saw you we've been so inspired by your essays and by the Music Dept's special relationship with multimodal academic work.
* like, check out this Abbate essay--it yearns to be something more than text
    * what's cool about it is that it's at the intersection of multiple different media (*intermediality, transmedia* as keyterms but don't lay it on too thick)
    * and in three ways: 
        * the data it's analyzing  
        * the mode of analysis
        * the mode of display
    * so this inspired us to create a set of activities that are also located at the intersection of art (music) and technology, and between multiple media

### activity 1: capture
* so let's imagine that you are in a classroom---perhaps a classroom of the future studying the history of 20th and 21st century recording techniques, perhaps in a classroom right now performing a "history of the present"
* we're going to look at 3 very different microphones associated with 3 very different modes of music/sound production . . . 
* as we do this, we'll be learning the technical skills a SOUND and IMAGE capture:
    * we'll perform a little experiment in which we test the microphones and analyze what we hear, learning about the different capabilities of microphones
        * talk about proximity, frequency response, polar patterns
    * and, at the same time, we'll learn a bit about cameras by video-recording the mic-testing activity
        * talk about aperture, framing, lens length, composition
    * ideas applicable to both:
        * signal-to-noise, foreground and background, texture, point-of-view, controlled environment (mise en scene) vs uncontrollable environment (but doing one's best to control capture)

### activity 2: organize, analyze and construct

Once we have all the footage and sounds (and perhaps objects like instruments and tools, historical ephemera, etc) we need to organize them and analyze them, to arrange them in multiple configurations to try to discover what we want to say and how we want to say it. Let's look at some of these tools.

* lookbooks and moodboards (for organizing your thoughts on style, form, aesthetics)
    * grids
    * logic
    * canva
* databases (for organizing the data--they do what it says on the tin!)
    * what is the data model for sounds?
    * relational DBs (sounds link to mics, and probably much more)
* editing tools (for both assembly and analysis)
    * fcpx
    * logic
* after this overview, let's make something!
    * supercut in fcpx (find the mics in films!)
        * what would you learn from this (hint at ways it improves upon recognition and analysis of recurrent tropes in visual works)
    * or grid of delightful sounds in logic
    * an edit of our activity 1 footage that says something interesting about the microphones

### activity 3: showtime!
* ways of displaying results:
    * arguments
    * stories
    * maps
    * presentations
hop on stage and we'll play some of the videos with backing tracks . . . 


## Theory / Ideas

* Analogues between mics and cameras
    * shallow depth of field // dynamic mic
    * condenser mic // wide shot or head-on camera?
        * studio needs to be super controlled in these cases
* What are the properties of sound (thinking about databases as a form of analysis)
* isolation and presence as concepts to use as framing





## Resources

History of the Shure SM58: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHSmgNb5hs

Roger Daltrey swinging his mic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY_hJCYuZ90

* Films mentioned in Carolyn Abbate article:
    * [The Informer (1935)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wg9sv_fjAg)
    * [The Old Dark House (1932)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QON5i4GQ7ho): timestamp for clip: 1:01:12 - 1:01:34


Musicians with mics:
Billie Holiday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcRNe02N2bY
Bob Dylan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr88SQ
Freddie Mercury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbvyNnw8Qjg
Jimi Hendrix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUPifXX0foU
Nina Simone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJzr1Wcy_s


Films with mics:
Good Morning, Vietnam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIikfdNIHQE
Sunset Boulevard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvajGqWodvM
The King's Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHY2UzOonig
Singing in the Rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTFCctdiS04
Good Night, and Good Luck
Walk the Line
O Brother Where Art Thou
Selena
Citizen Kane
Snowpiercer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRopPio3IyQ
Lost in Translation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaqbcYGTfLg


Historical footage with mics:
HUAC hearings (feat. Ronald Reagan!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdLuNtbSAck

[Chrome Music Spectrogram](https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/spectrogram/)
