Online piano class, music technology and more await you this summer at the College of Music.
It may still look like winter out there, but the College of Music has its lineup set for a summer of fun and enlightening music courses. Whether you鈥檙e into heavy metal, jazz, or music history, odds are you can find your musical cup of tea.
Piano Class I: Online
For the sixth time, Professor of Piano Pedagogy Alejandro Cremaschi will be teaching Piano Class I online during B Session. While the idea of learning piano at a distance might seem hard to imagine, Cremaschi says he鈥檚 worked with students to make the system work better every year.
鈥淪ome of the people online are not in Boulder, they鈥檙e at home somewhere in the country, so they can learn from where they are. It鈥檚 also helpful for me to be able to teach anywhere. This year I鈥檒l be in Brussels for a conference during part of the class.鈥�
The class is taught asynchronously, meaning there are no video meetings. However, Cremaschi says technological advances have made digital learning easier.
鈥淲e use Canvas as the main repository of materials, including videos I have created for each unit, which explain the pieces students are learning and model the technique. We also use Piano Marvel, which contains all the pieces they learn in sequential order and gives students instant feedback, telling them when they鈥檙e playing wrong notes or rhythms, and giving them a score.鈥�
Cremaschi, himself a long-time programmer, also developed his own app for the class: MusicU. It鈥檚 a web-based app that allows students to use their phone or computer to create and share audio and MIDI recordings from digital keyboards for their assignments.
鈥淚t also allows them to join specific groups of students and share their videos so they can give each other feedback. It creates a community, even though everyone is very far apart.鈥�
The class piano instructors at the College of Music also use of the app to allow their students to share video recordings throughout the year, helping grow this digital community further.
鈥淭hey do a Recording of the Week, which allows us to monitor their progress and provide feedback,鈥� he explains.
Cremaschi adds, this format could be the way of the future for music pedagogy.
鈥淥nline offerings have been growing exponentially in the last 10 years. It鈥檚 convenient for students because they can work at their own pace and be away from campus.鈥�
The target audience for the summer online piano class is beginners, who Cremaschi says can learn more easily through digital methods. In-person Piano Class I is still taught during the A and B sessions.
Topics in Music Technology: Digital Music and Video
A different kind of technology comes into focus during the Maymester course Topics in Music Technology: Digital Music and Video, taught by Instructor of Composition and Music Technology John Drumheller.
鈥淚t鈥檚 basically a film scoring class. We talk about how to synchronize video and sound and we learn different applications like Logic Pro, Reason 10 and other apps you can use to compose music or create sound design.鈥�
Drumheller, who now directs Music Technology at the College of Music and helped launched the program when he was a doctoral student here, says he started from scratch with not much more than an abiding interest in the discipline.
鈥淲hen I first started doing electronic music, it was all analog with tape in the 80s. Then when I was the music tech TA here in the 90s, the technology was digital and MIDI was the next big thing. Computers weren鈥檛 as powerful and synthesizers connected to the computer controlled the sound then. The technology has come a long way since.鈥�
In this summer class, which Drumheller says is popular among both Certificate in Music Technology students and non-music students, he focuses on sound design in films rather than a high-level introduction to music technology.
鈥淲e actually watch a couple of films and take them apart, focusing on the music and the sound design. One is 鈥楾he Red Violin,鈥� which most of the students have never seen.鈥�
Drumheller says the class is meant to be fun and informative for anyone with an interest in music鈥攊ncluding graduate and undergraduate students. Contact Drumheller about prerequisite requirements by emailing him at drumhell@colorado.edu.
Introduction to Audio Recording
If you鈥檙e one of the many non-music students clamouring to learn a thing or two about audio recording from the College of Music鈥檚 expert engineer, then the Maymester crash course in Introduction to Audio Recording is for you.
鈥淲hen they opened the Music Technology certificate to non-majors, there was a huge demand from outside the college, but that became a huge bottleneck because this class almost always fills up with majors during fall and spring. So this summer class is an opportunity for non-majors to get in.鈥�
Kevin Harbison has taught audio recording in the summer for the better part of a decade, and he says while the course content has evolved with the times, the real evolution has been in the knowledge of the students he teaches.
鈥淲hen we started, there might have been a few people familiar with GarageBand or Logic Pro or those workstations, but there would also be people who had never touched a computer for anything except Word. Now it鈥檚 not unusual for one or two people to have their own recording software and be well versed in systems like Ableton.鈥�
Harbison, who has done audio engineering and recording in concert halls for most of his career, says he learns something new every year from his Summer Session students, who are more likely to have created recordings in home studios than Grusin Music Hall-like venues. That鈥檚 why he formats this summer course a little differently.
鈥淢y background is almost exclusively working in concert halls with acoustic instruments, primarily classical. But about halfway into the course, we turn the classroom into a home recording studio for our final projects.
鈥淭he approach is totally different. In a concert hall, my job is to capture a recording that is as accurate and realistic as possible. The studio engineer鈥檚 job is to create a sound that鈥檚 almost the opposite of reality. This is really the only time during the year that I get to do things like mic up a drum set. So it鈥檚 fun to try these new things.鈥�
Harbison says while the summer class likely won鈥檛 change too much once the College of Music gets its brand new, state-of-the-art recording studio in Fall 2020, he is thrilled for the potential for his students to grow in their skills when the time comes.
鈥淭he new control room will be big enough to hold 12 students at a time, so the classes I teach during the academic year will meet in that space. We鈥檒l probably use the new studio for demonstrations during the summer, to show students a well-designed control room.鈥�
For a full list of College of Music Summer Session offerings, visit the .
