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Assignments, Week Two
Read This is Your Brain on Music, introduction and chapters 1 - 5. Note that you can listen to examples of the songs he mentions by going to the website for the book. Click on the image of the book, choose Interactive Features, then go to "Listen to the Musical Examples" or whatever it's called. Each clip is only 9 seconds (the maximum allowable by copyright law), but at least it gives you an idea of what the examples sound like, especially the unfamiliar ones. You should have completed this reading by Monday's seminar, October 1. Take notes on questions you might have, points that you would like to discuss, and things that you found remarkable or surprising. Keep these notes in your portfolio (you don't have to turn them in, but we will be taking a look at them at the end of the quarter as part of your evaluation process).
Draft a one-page chart (by hand; this one you don't have to type) listing all of the different kinds of music you listen to, indicating what time of day (day of the week, time of year) you usually listen to them and for what purposes. What do you listen to when you’re trying to relax, or when you’re working out, or studying? What do you like to dance to? What music makes you feel, for example, romantic, nostalgic, happy, sad, patriotic, subversive? Are there specific kinds of music that you identify with your ethnicity, or with your cultural or national identity? On the basis of this chart, create and write out a one page (typed, double spaced) “music identity profile” of yourself, considering how music in your life contributes to your sense of who you are on multiple levels. Make note if you believe that your responses to a particular kind of music are universal, or applicable only to you. Staple your chart to your music identity profile (don't just fold the corners together), write your name, the date, and your seminar leader's name on the paper, and hand it in on Thursday, October 4 in seminar.
Note that your process paper for this week is due on Monday (to Jean) at the start of class.
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