How shall we study music? We can watch others doing it on YouTube, we can hear others doing it on YouPod or we can read about others doing it on YouKindle.

Let's DO it! (Sadly, there's no "YouDo".)

Let's study music by creating and performing it. After all, music's a thing made by the brain, the heart and the fingers.

You'll be asked to sing, study an instrument and perform for others in the class, write vocal and instrumental arrangements and sing and perform them. The class environment will not be a competitive one: the goal is to stretch out and learn and challenge oneself and not compare one someone with another one someone. The study of music requires a commitment to practice, to listen, to remember and to learn. This program aims to offer you time in which to do just that.

You'll learn about writing harmonies, singing them, and about how difficult it is to write vocal parts that are interesting both melodically and harmonically. There will be a strong emphasis on ear training, sight singing and aural dictation, along with studies in tonal harmony. You'll be asked to write and perform musical canons. We'll study the history of Western classical music, jazz music from the early 20th century, popular music of the past 50 years and experiments in music composition as well. There will be regular listening sessions, along with readings from the arts.

In class, students will be assigned performance groups, and each group will be asked to prepare a vocal or instrumental work. This will happen twice each quarter. Rehearsal time will be set aside for such practice, and the faculty will act as a coach for the rehearsals. Each quarter, students will be asked to write one substantial research paper exploring an aspect of music they are unfamiliar with. There will be class trips to concerts in Seattle and Portland, along with visiting guest artists throughout the year. During spring quarter, students will be working on independent projects under faculty supervision. These projects will be developed and submitted by the end of winter quarter. They should combine research and study with creativity and performance, culminating in an end-of-spring-quarter mini-conference, with students delivering both research presentations and musical performances.

In addition to classroom activities, each student will be expected to take instruction in a musical instrument outside of class and bear the cost of that instruction (the faculty member can help you find a teacher for your instrument). Practicing an instrument is a way to bring together the seemingly separate activities of the brain, the heart and the fingers: it concretizes music theory, gives a goal to the wobbling fingers and releases the heart from its regularity of "thump thump thump".