August 5th - September 13th
Fall term starts- Monday, September 23rd
Allocation of space for my practice
Is it possible to have a studio or an office space to work in?
Is it possible to do some of my student teaching in the art department?
Full topic- instrument making books
History of books on how to build various musical instruments
build a timeline of homemade instrument books & the ones meant for kids
Find concise language of what to call these books, children's engagement books?
craft books/ activity books/ engagement books?
My estimate is it starts post WWI and becomes a staple after WWII
Guide to composing for the ocarina
Build a basic history of the ocarina
Looking specifically for the earliest examples in Europe
Transition between clay flutes/whistles and the ocarina as we know it now
Breakdown of clay flutes/whistles and the locations/time periods where they are discovered
Define clay musical instruments and their histories
How to make an ocarina guide, comparing methodology across time
Looking at the earliest craft books on how to make ocarinas/clay flutes
Full topic- dog whistle
There seems to be no real evidence that a silent dog thistle exists.
The most dominate whistle is the ACME style short linear flute whistle that plays very high pitched but for the most part not above the human hearing range (it seems to be closer to 13000hertz)
Dog whistles have more references in popular culture then actual use, things like loony tunes and other mid century cartoons instilled a sense that the instruments are truly silent, and this constructed a mythology (similar to the effect loony tunes had on the word Nimrod)
The dog whistle needs a definition, with the widest definitions including scientific instruments that truly do go above the human hearing range, but the common and practical use instruments clearly being oversold on their capabilities.
I would like to deconstruct this mythos and create a history of its creation-
when was the first reference made to them being silent?
Was the original joke intended to be ironic in a manner we dont recognize today?
When did the cultural shift happen from referencing the whistle itself to referencing the silent-ness of the whistle?
What effects did this shift have on the whistles themselves?
What about on their use and popularity?
Full topic- Furry Music
List of Furry Musicians Furry Music Makers
Define what the genre is and its relationship to identity, queerness, and contemporary music culture.
exploring the contexts that furry music inhabits, finding common elements to the genre (and surprising elements that are not in common), and using unique criteria to construct a unified genre.
Things that can easily be called furry music-
Music made by furries for furries
Furry dance music
Furry themed music
Outside genre music that is adopted by furries (video game music)
relationships these music sources have to-
Autism
Queerness
Furry Identities
Full topic- Car culture
What are the various elements of car sound culture. This is the appreciation, knowledge, and obsession with the ways that cars 'engines' sound. Largely this manifests itself with the ways that people create loud engines and the ways they show the off to one another.
Why are loud engines so well liked amongst car enthusiasts? what aesthetic values are taken into consideration? what degree of knowledge do people have in this culture about engines? How accurately can they tell information about the engines simply from hearing them? what do the various elements of engine sound communicate/connotate in the culture? In which ways are these engine sounds associated with status? What is the history of this culture? Has it changed over time and where is it heading? Is this culture different across the United States? is this element of car culture present in other parts of the world?
Full topic- new music terminology
New terminology for the evaluation of contemporary and experimental music
Discuss things like the sarawanji effect and new tools for the ways that we can describe what is happening in music outside of the tonal and harmonic language of traditional music evaluation