SFCM continues its coverage of the New Music Gathering with a report on events at the Center for New Music on January 17 in San Francisco.

A standing-room only crowd of gatherers flocked to a panel on technology at the Center for New Music on Saturday morning. Composer and Sideband Mobile Quartet member Jascha Narveson chaired a veritable composition think tank of panel participants including Sideband leader Dan Iglesia, fellow Sideband comrades Anne Hege and Lainie Fefferman (Gathering co-founder), Ryan Ross Smith, MaryClare Brzytwa, chair of SFCM’s Applied Composition and Technology (TAC) program, Clay Chaplin, technical director of the Computer Music/Experimental Media Studios at CalArts, and Headless Monkey Attack founder Ryan Carter. 

Drawing on her various experiences at Mills College and CalArts and as architect of the Conservatory’s  new TAC program,  MaryClare Brztywa (MCB) fielded a question about the place of technology in music education:

MCB: I have come around most recently to thinking that a lot of the music technology skills can be separate from a lot of the aesthetic stuff that can come up. If you had asked me that 10 years ago as a Mills student I would have said, ‘No! it’s all integrated into the process.  Everything you do in music technology is an act of composition and therefore you must have a reason and it must all fit into some master scheme.’

Since designing the curriculum at the Conservatory I have come around to thinking that a lot of the music technology skills can be built in the same ways we teach musicianship or theory. The theory of electronic music is a set of principles—a set of skills—that once you understand you can apply it anyway you want; and having a solid foundation in that is just as important as having a solid foundation in musicianship, theory, etc.

Panel chair Jascha Narveson followed up with a related question submitted to the panel. “What is the biggest mistake schools are making right now with regard to technology? What is the one non-negotiable thing that students should learn/experience with regard to technology in schools?”

MCB: That’s it’s optional! Or that it’s a risk to engage in any way with acquiring these skills. I think it’s fundamentally an important skill, whether it’s incorporating it into your creative work or just empowering yourself to use technology in a way that promotes new music or advances your career.

Clay Chaplin of CalArts concurred but stressed that technology alone does not replace the drive to create:

We definitely want every student that leaves CalArts to know how to record themselves, to have a website, have a portfolio, to know how to code, how to program, but I do think there may be a little too much reliance that technology is going to come in and save the day. There is a lot of solutionism with technology and for programs in terms of the music curriculum: ‘Oh, if we just put it on a Ipad they’ll learn!’ or ‘if we put it online it will save the day.’  So I think it should be taken with a grain of salt, but it is very important that students know how to work on the computer and have the skills of music technology.