Presentations
In 2023, I began making presentations using Reveal.js. This a web-native presentation framework that allows me to easily share my presentations on a website (this one!). Access a presentation with the links below.
2024
Layers of Meaning: Teaching Instrumentation and Texture
Abstract
Music schools across the English-speaking world are attempting to become more broadly inclusive of different types of musics and students. This talk considers why theorists should—and how we can—incorporate timbre analysis into an undergraduate theory curriculum, and how this can contribute to a more equitable theory curriculum. I present some practical lessons and assessments and identify areas where timbre might fit most easily into a traditional or a modular curriculum. Timbre, instrumentation, and texture are inherent properties of all sound and thus can be studied in (nearly) all music; furthermore, these concepts do not rely on the complex systems of pitch that underlie most music-theoretical topics (and privilege students with access to classical training). While not a panacea, emphasizing the analysis of timbre, instrumentation, and texture is one way of developing a more inclusive pedagogy of music theory.
I Want It That Way: Good Practices for Pop Music Pedagogy
Abstract
This talk gives an overview of some prominent scholarly methods for analyzing popular music, and discusses issues surrounding the inclusion of pop music in music curricula. I discuss two common forms of pop music inclusion—through token examples that fit neatly into a classical-music-based curriculum, and through upper-level electives—and show how these approaches undercut popular music’s potential to be inclusive. I advocate instead for pop music to be included early in the curriculum as its own distinct repertoire, and present my own syllabus for a pop music theory course as a model. As time allows, I will elaborate on the analytical and compositional approaches students learn in that course, with the goal of giving audience members an idea of the tools they might use in their own future work with popular music, whether that be analyzing, composing, or teaching to young musicians.