Overview
Overview
The 2019-2020 academic year at University of California San Diego (UCSD) through the Fall and Winter academic quarters generated a significant amount of documentation materials (written, audio, and video) for the ACTOR CORE Project.
In the Fall Quarter, the course MUS206 - Orchestration as Timbre, led by Professor Roger Reynolds with Professor Rand Steiger, involved a group of graduate students from composition, performance, and computer music dedicated to learning and discussing Orchestration as Timbre as outlined and delineated in materials supplied by Stephen McAdams as well as looking at Reference Musical Works as listed by Professor Roger Reynolds in the course Syllabus.
The Fall Quarter process broke down into 3 major components: timbral concepts, student group presentations of the Reference works, and the application of this knowledge through writing/analyzing new Timbral Etudes (for the composition students) and analysis of these new pieces (for the performance students).
The composition/analysis projects also divided into several parts: Project Proposals, composition or analysis of these compositions, performance, recording, and a final, post- recording analysis/report submitted by each composition students on their own works. The last section of the Fall Quarter course included 2-3 rounds of discussing the Project Proposals so that students were allotted time to provide and receive feedback from each other and to revise their Proposals.
The Winter Quarter was devoted to the rehearsal, performance, and audio compilation of these Timbral Etudes. Professor Rand Steiger worked closely with the departmental audio production staff and the selected ACTOR CORE Project performers to set up a rehearsal schedule spread out over the Quarter. Each composition student had scheduled rehearsal time to meet with the performers and discuss the goals for their work in the recording studio in order to optimize the recording session. The plan was to do 2 rounds of recording so that the composition students would be able to listen to the first recording session, make corrections, and then do a second recording to further investigate or explore timbral concepts. The first round of recording sessions ran into unavoidable logistical issues between the performance ensemble’s schedule and the recording studio schedule during a busy academic quarter. Still, the first round of recording was completed by early March. The Covid-19 global pandemic disrupted the later phases of the proposed process, but each of 11 grad composers achieved a well-recorded, and edited recording representing their work, updated their scores to reflect revisions, and submitted a culminating Report.
The documentation from the two courses are on a shared Google Drive where the participating students can upload their presentation slides, proposals, music scores, analysis and reports. There are class notes for the Fall Quarter and video recordings of selected classes in the Fall Quarter.