EMDM Curriculum for Undergraduates

BA in EMDM | Portfolio | Digital Media Minor | EMDM Courses

At LSU, the Experimental Music & Digital Media (EM|DM) program prepares students to integrate technology with music.  This encompasses a wide variety of technology and music skills: traditional musical training in theory, history, and performance; recording, sound design, and music production; composition and performance of experimental music; computer science and engineering skills in programming for digital media, embedded electronics, human-computer interaction, and audio signal processing.  Further experience and cross-disciplinary team-based projects come within the digital media minor.

By design, the undergraduate curriculum offers a broad survey of the avenues that technology and music interact.  It exposes the students to these avenues and provides them ample opportunities to integrate them into their own techno-musical practice.  Projects, performances, and media artifacts can be tailored towards the employment interests of the student post degree.  This provides a portfolio of exceptional work that offers a leg up on the competition.  Besides the possibility of going into academic or research fields, possible employment includes: composer, sound designer for video games and/or film, tech-centric performer, stage/show designer, audio plugin creator, museum or trade show exhibition designer, UI/UX designer, electronic instrument designer, recording engineer, live show production, app-designer, audio forensics, and so on.  These types of jobs, and most of the developing audio world, requires knowledge of sound, music, and technology and this degree delivers on all three.

Potential Employment Opportunities

For more information on the EMDM philosophy and approach, please see the other projects and events on this website as well as the presentation Creating the future of music — today

 

There are three main avenues for undergraduates at LSU to be involved in the EMDM program depending on their degree and career aspirations.

1. The EMDM Degree – Bachelor of Arts in Music with a concentration in Experimental Music & Digital Media
2. Digital Media Minor – Any major across campus taking EMDM classes as part of the Digital Media Minor
3. Courses a la carte! – If you’re interested and we have space, we would love to have you in class.

BA Music | EMDM

Undergraduates applying to the Bachelor of Arts in Music Degree with a concentration in Experimental Music & Digital Media.  This is essentially a BA in Music in parallel with the Digital Media Arts Minor – DMART.

Students following this track will be prepared to be composers, performers, music researchers, or music technologists whose work explores music technology, digital media and/or experimentation in either professional or academic settings.

This track potentially opens up many career possibilities following graduation. To earn a living, many music students plan to produce, perform, and teach music. However, students following this track will also be qualified to engage in programming or creation of musical or audio content to earn a living. This is an interdisciplinary track.

The example 8-semester path for the degree can be found in the LSU Catalog and the degree plan downloadable here EMDM Course Flowchart.

Portfolio

Instead of auditioning for a musical instrument studio, applicants should instead prepare a portfolio of pertinent work to submit to the Experimental Music & Digital Media (EM|DM) studio. (If applicants intend to additionally pursue an instrument, they should also set up an audition through the School of Music.)  The EMDM portfolio can take the form of a physical artifact of CD/DVD/documents, or preferably, a link to an e-portfolio consisting of examples of work that have been created within the Computer Music, Experimental Music, Music Technology, or Digital Media sphere.  As the program focuses on teaching computer music technology and aesthetics, composition, programming and/or engineering in a musical context (e.g. instrument design), and performance with technology, anything that touches on sound and technology would be good to showcase.

Previous applications have consisted of: recordings, performances, pieces they’ve produced or mastered, animations, graphic design, video art, sonic art, compositions, scores, websites, program code examples, Arduino hardware, or instruments they’ve made, and so on.  The portfolio is used as an admission mechanism and more importantly, to gauge where/how the student would fit into the program.

Example recent undergraduate work from MUS 2745 – Intro to Computer Music.  These final projects were composed in any style that students wanted from experimenting with sound art to more popular styles and any mixture in between. This course is part of the Freshman curriculum and kicks off your integration of technology and music.

Digital Media Minor

Undergraduates from all disciplines are recommended to consider pursuing the Digital Media Arts Minor in parallel with their degree.

Students in this minor will have the opportunity to take Digital Media courses from across all disciplines. They will have training in the areas that interest them and work on various digital media projects culminating in a collaborative semester long capstone project.  These courses provide the kinds of experience and impressive projects that make portfolios jump out at potential employers.

By choosing this minor, students can take many of the EMDM courses including the computer music series (MUS 2745 Intro to Computer Music, MUS4745 Computer Music, and MUS 4270 EMDM Ensemble).  If students have successfully completed MUS4745, they can request to join in our more advanced offerings including Digital Musical Instruments, Mobile Music, Physical Modeling, and so forth.

EMDM a la Carte

Depending on availability, our courses are open to qualified students from the music department and beyond. Many students who are interested in music, sound processing and production take our popular courses: MUS 2745 Intro to Computer Music and MUS 4745 Computer Music

Sample EMDM Course Offerings

• MUS 2700 Intro to Music Technology (Introduction to contemporary technologies for music composition, performance, and publishing.)
• MUS 2745 Intro to Computer Music (Recording/Editing, Sound Design, and Sonic Art Composition)
• MUS 4745 Computer Music (Programming for sound, Digital Signal Processing, and Interactivity)
• MUS 4270 EMDM Ensemble (Performing with Technology, Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana, Louisiana Mobile App Orchestra, etc.)
• MUS 4744 Mobile Music
• MUS 4746 Seminar in Computer Music and Digital Media
• MUS 4748 Digital Musical Instruments
• MUS 4901 Basic Techniques of Audio Recording

Digital Media Minor Courses

• CSC 2463 Programming Digital Media (Developed and taught in conjunction with Digital Art and Computer Science – Coding for graphics in P5.js, Web Audio in Tone.js, and Physical Computing with Arduino)
• ART 4059/EE 4859 Digital Media Capstone (Developed and taught in conjunction with Digital Art and Engineering – Group based intermedia project proposal, development, and exhibition)
• and many more courses at the DMART site (make sure to look through all the tabs: Art, Art Hist, MassComm, Music, English, Computer Science, Engineering and Honors)

Applied Lessons & Focused Research

• MUS 3153 Applied Electroacoustic Music (Composing and performing by electric/electronic means)
• MUS 3151 Applied Composition
• MUS 3997 Directed Studies in Music
• MUS 4051 Senior Project
• MUS 4798 Senior Composition Recital

For more information about admission into the School of Music, please visit:  https://www.lsu.edu/cmda/music/admissions/index.php

For more information, please contact Dr. Jesse Allison