I taught these classes for the MIT High School Studies Program in the summers of 2009 and 2010. The syllabi and course materials here were used to organize and inspire weekly discussions around various questions about sound, music, hearing, and technology. Sound in the 20th Century was a sonic media history class that used experimental and avant-garde music as material to think about media technologies and the nature of hearing. Experimental Music shifts the center from thinking about technology and hearing to making music, using in-class performances as a vehicle for questions about what music is and might be. The 2009 class site is organized in rough class agenda form; the 2010 site is a link-dump of materials relevant to the class. Embedded videos may have disappeared, some things may be out of date, and the classes always included less and more than what is kept here. Feel free to poke around.
If you have any questions or comments,
you can email me at nseaver[shift-2]gmail.com