The University’s New College blended history, science and music in a course offered in the three-week Interim semester in May.
The New College course, Handmade Sounds: Electronic Music in Theory and Practice, is based on the history of electronic music, but students spent a great deal of time learning how to construct electronic instruments.
Andrew Dewar, a New College professor, educated the students on methods such as circuit bending, and he oversaw their construction of personal and unique electronic instruments.
Dewar said his primary goal with the class is to encourage the students to think about their relationship to technology.
“The way we’re programmed is to passively use technology,” he said. “You buy a product to do a thing and you use it to do that thing that it’s for, and it’s ‘magical.’
“This is giving them the opportunity to say, ‘No it’s not magic. It is technology. It is science, and it is something that isn’t beyond what you can understand.’”
The class is eye-opening, he said, and it changes the way students feel about the technology around them.
Many students said they didn’t have a background in science or engineering but still learned the techniques of electronic circuit building.
Parker White, a senior, said he was most drawn to the class by its history component.
“I usually don’t consider myself a musician, I’m just interested in music generally,” he said. “I host a radio show on the college station, so I listen to a lot of music. When I heard about an electronic music course, I felt like it would be an insightful and fun elective.
“Virtually everything that we listen to today is influenced by what we study in this class, which is very interesting to me.”
Despite lacking an engineering background, White was able to create an instrument by changing the circuitry of a children’s toy and adding photo resistors to generate abstract tones.
White said Dewar did an excellent job teaching the various techniques to those who didn’t have experience.
“It was surprising how much technical information we covered in this class, but not in a way that you had to know things about it beforehand,” he said.
Adrian Marmolejo, a sophomore, said he took the class so he could learn how to build electronic instruments.
“I’m a music major, but I’m trying to get into New College to build synthesizers and stuff like that, so this is a perfect class for what I’m trying to do.”
Marmolejo constructed an instrument he said he believes can be used in a variety of musical genres.
The instrument was built by attaching several capacitors and resistors to a microchip, he said. The capacitors manipulated the pitch of the instrument and the resistors controlled volume.
“Ideally I’d like to integrate it into my music,” Marmolejo said. “I’m a jazz studies major, but I’m also in a rock hip-hop band.”
Dewar said he wants to instill the idea that one can take an active role in his or her relationship to technology.
“Even if we are not engineers or scientists, we can take things apart; try to do something creative with them,” he said.
The majority of the students worked with the same electronic chip, but they were able to create a wide range of different instruments.
“That is pretty amazing,” he said. “They aren’t scientists, and they aren’t engineers, but they are designing a circuit that is unique to them and they are taking an active role in their relationship with technology.”
