This FIG provides an introduction to the campus and local popular music scene, including curricular and extracurricular activities in music and related disciplines. Non-musicians are welcome!
Students explore the intersection of topics by taking the following course package:
UGST 109 First-Year Experience Seminar - 1-credit
MUS 151 Popular Songwriting - CoreEd or major satisfying course, 4-credits
This course is for students seeking to learn about popular music. The course will examine three aspects of music: the societal and cultural context that produces musical style, the technical construction of the music itself, and the resultant ideas that music expresses. To gain a deep understanding of these, students will listen to and analyze historical musical examples and engage in ‘hands-on’ work, using software applications to compose and produce songs.
CINE 230 Remix Cultures - CoreEd or major satisfying course, 4-credits
With the advent of digital content creation, publishing, distribution, and sharing via the Internet, consumers—and specifically college students—are simultaneously the producers of and infringers upon intellectual property rights. Given this precarious state between creator and “criminal,” this class explores how our creative worlds are a remix and how the concept of the remix interacts with American intellectual property (IP) laws. Students will actively and critically engage consumer media culture to understand how collaborative efforts are governed by laws that typically value and reward a singular author/genius. Given the importance of IP to American industries, this class looks at how IP laws, licensing, innovation and originality actually function in a practical manner (i.e. how licensing works in the music industry or software industry).