Where to go for experimental electronic music composition?

College Majors Music Major
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<p>WARNING WARNING WARNING LONG POST AHEAD YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED</p>

<p>I don't know how many of you are familiar with experimental electronic music, but I love it to the point where I could spend my life making it. Experimental electronic music is a very broad term, so I'll narrow it down: I specifically like IDM[/url</a>], [url=<a href="http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_music%5Dglitch%5B/url">http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_music]glitch[/url</a>], and [url=<a href="http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass%5DDNB">http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_and_bass]DNB</a> and its subgenres and everything in between. Honestly though, I just plain like at least something about every piece of music I hear more and more as time goes on.</p>

<p>As far as general background, I'm 18, maintained somewhere around a mid three GPA in high school but left after junior year for Simon's</a> Rock, where I got a 2.7 last semester (taking 12 credits), though I aim to get a lot higher than that this semester (taking 18 credits). I've got a 2200 on my SATs and a 221 on my PSATs, and I'm now a National Merit Scholarship finalist. Musically, I've played the viola in orchestras throughout grade school (but unfortunately was lazy and unmotivated and never applied myself as well as I could have), but I'm taking piano lessons right now and also plan to learn the electric guitar and bass; I am also in the school's jazz ensemble and chorus. I took an electronic music course last semester, and I'm currently taking Theory II. I've been programming forever and messing around with music programs for a little over four years right now semi-seriously. </p>

<p>Currently, I'm a freshman at Simon's Rock College (an early college in Great Barrington, MA), and I plan to transfer after getting my AA. I like California quite a lot (preferably Northern California), so Stanford (with its [CCRMA[/url</a>] facilities) really appeals to me. However, I've heard nothing but great things about USC Thornton and Berklee (which is in MA as well). An anecdote from BT (one of my favorite artists) about Richard Boulanger (who has a good deal of fame in the field of electronic for good reason) sums up pretty well why I'd go there:

[quote=<a href="http://www.keyboardmag.com/article/the-mind-bt/Dec-05/16024%5DDr"&gt;http://www.keyboardmag.com/article/the-mind-bt/Dec-05/16024]
Dr</a>. B is like f***ing Yoda!” he says. “He’ll assign a book or exercise that seems abstract and weird relative to the musical problem you’re having, but if you do it, everything falls into place. It’s scary.” One exercise he was assigned was to construct a full arrangement from a 15-second audio clip, using as much editing and processing as needed. “It could be a speech by Martin Luther King,” he explains. “You’d use the plosives [P’s and K’s] as drums, then take the word ‘how,’ time-stretching and pitch-shifting it like crazy to make building blocks for chords, and so on. It forced you to think about the music more than the tools.”

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<p>This is insane; it's definitely the sort of exercise I would need to be doing to give my brain the practice it will need to be able to articulate itself in my compositions with whatever tools I give it.</p>

<p>I can and do still compose in traditional notation at with whatever instrument I have on hand when creativity strikes, and I'm slowly learning to read more than my native alto clef to read bass clef and treble clef. But, my real interest is in computer based music composition.</p>

<p>I love Ableton Live (it is nirvana for a composer that loves live based composition), and I additionally love using trackers(wikipedia:Tracker_music)--they are very much my home ground for composing. I've used SkaleTracker, Buzz, Renoise, Modplug and Psycle in the past (though I've spent the most time on Renoise). Outside of that, I've used Reason, Fruity Loops Studio, EnergyXT and to a lesser extent, GarageBand (shudder) and a bit of DP and REAPER. I am not made of money, so I haven't touched Pro Tools. </p>

<p>My real interest as far as composition software goes lies in open source composition software. I've installed Linux, so I've started to mess around with all the amazing software available for it. Stanford's CCRMA site has a good (but by no means exhaustive) list of some software I will not only make use of but eventually master: [url=<a href="http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/packages.html%5DThe"&gt;http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/packages.html]The&lt;/a> Planet CCRMA package collection](<a href="http://ccrma.stanford.edu/%5DCCRMA%5B/url"&gt;http://ccrma.stanford.edu/). It seems like a lot of stuff, but it's mostly just high level software (like recording software IE Ardour) and low level software (like music languages IE CSound, PD, ChucK and Supercollider and its brethren). I am specifically extremely interested in composition using the lower level music languages (like CSound, PD, ChucK and Supercollider and brethren), and I definitely believe I've got the background for it.</p>

<p>I took Precalcus during the summer a few years ago, then AP Calc AB (with a 5 on the exam) last year along with Calc II at a CC (which I got a B in) and Linear Algebra this year (which I dropped halfway through but intend to self study and take again or test out of).</p>

<p>In addition to informally programming experience in some way shape or form since I've learned to use a computer, I can comfortably program in Java and pure C (C++ is a little shaky but I can handle) as well as ASM (not perfect but still, I can handle it), so I've got enough experience with programming languages to parse whatever gets thrown at me and do something meaningful with it given time. I took AP CS: A (which I got a 4 in) last year as well as Data Structures and Algorithms last semester (CS 243 here) and Discrete Mathematics this semester (CS 252 here). During my freshman and sophomore year in high school, I did an internship at an MRI research center which got me well acquainted with Matlab and reasonably acquainted with signal analysis and manipulation, so I have a grasp (however imperfect) on the Fourier series.</p>

<p>The combination of all these odds and ends gives me the ability to do something amazing compositionally with music programming languages, and I need a college that will help me do that, preferably one in California, and Northern California at that--hence the reason I was thinking about Stanford vs USC Thornton.</p>

<p>So this is where I am at. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I am going to do something amazing compositionally with music programming languages, and I want to find out which college experience will give me most of what I need for those two years after I get my associates. I don't know if that's Stanford, USC Thornton, San Francisco Conservatory, or some other place that I'm forgetting (which I likely am), but if there's only one thing I've learned during my time here on these forums, it is that above all else, you guys know what the hell you're talking about when you make college recommendations. I think it's something about the competitive nature of posting--it's so easy to simultaneously correct misinformation and so fun to one up someone that it's tough for someone who really wants to find the right answer to not be able to. </p>

<p>So please help me [url=<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_and_college_schools_of_music%5Dnarrow"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_and_college_schools_of_music]narrow&lt;/a> down my choices<a href="though%20I'm%20open%20to%20suggestions%20of%20other%20ideas">/url</a>. I am by all means listening--I don't give a damn about prestige. I just want to write my music.</p>

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<p>UC Berkeley has an electronic music program and a first-rate (nonperformance) music department – check their website.<br>
Look at TIMARA at Oberlin – though it is nowhere near Northern California geographically or meteorologically (the culture is much like Berkeley, though).
Your grades would seem to make Stanford and Cal, which are highly competitive and very stats oriented, reaches, so make sure you have safety options.</p>

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<p>Brown University has an outstanding electronic music program, so I hear from my musician son who goes there–not a music major, but definitely knows the music department. If you’re from Simon’s Rock, I think you would like Brown.</p>

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<p>AH, I knew I missed something. I’ve definitely heard a lot of good about Oberlin and experimental music (nothing about TIMARA in particular, though). The one problem I have with the course guide there (that I quickly skimmed) was the insistence of usage of Macintosh studio software; I think this is more of an industry standard thing moreso than a school decision, but it would still be tough for me to reconcile that with open source software; on the other hand, Stanford has its whole CCRMA center dedicated to just that. It would be near-sighted to limit myself to just that, but my focus is in that direction. Though they have a lot of singular focus on Max/MSP (as some of the courses at TIMARA seem to), the CNMAT at UCB seems great, and the location is great as well. Brown’s electronic music program looks like it places a pretty heavy focus on graduate work, but that’s just a general feeling from skimming the website. How stats focused are Berkeley and Brown with regards to transfers (as well as Stanford and Cal)? If they’re as much reaches as mamenyu makes Stanford and Cal out to be (which I don’t doubt), then I’ll definitely need some safeties as well.</p>

<p>But I’d like you guys to keep in mind that I’m open to ideas. My knowledge about colleges with strong electronic music programs is limited to a small subset of the world–I’ve got no idea about electronic music programs in the rest of the world, but knowing how much the IRCAM did, I’d wager that there are some pretty amazing programs in the rest of the world as well–even if it’s not realistic to go there, I’m still pretty curious about them.</p>

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<p>I know nothing about electronic music, but two schools in the west you may want to look into are College of Santa Fe [Contemporary</a> Music Program](<a href=“http://www.csf.edu/academics/contemporary_music/program]Contemporary”>http://www.csf.edu/academics/contemporary_music/program) and University of Denver [DU</a> | Lamont School of Music | Academic Programs](<a href=“Lamont Home | Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences”>Lamont Home | Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences)</p>

<p>Also, Mills College, but this is a masters program culminating in an MFA. [Mills</a> College :: Music :: Programs](<a href=“http://www.mills.edu/academics/graduate/mus/programs/index.php]Mills”>Home - Northeastern University Oakland)</p>

<p>And I found this site by Googling electronic music college [The</a> Top US Electronic Music Schools | XLR8R](<a href=“http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2007/10/top-us-electronic-music-schools]The”>http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2007/10/top-us-electronic-music-schools)</p>

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<p>Cal and Stanford are very stats focused at every stage. The UC’s take a lot of transfer students at junior year, mostly from community colleges in California, though.
Mills is in Oakland, near Berkeley. It has had a lot of prominent composers through the years (including Milhaud); it is still a woman’s college at the undergraduate level, so if you are a man, that would rule it out.
UC San Diego? It is southern California, but a lovely place, great weather and beaches. Not as hard to get into as Cal or UCLA, but one of the top UC’s.
You might also look at UC Santa Cruz (I don’t know anything about their program), which is one of the easiest UC’s admission-wise and one of the most beautiful campuses in the US. [UCSC</a> EMS Home Page](<a href=“http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/]UCSC”>http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/)</p>