Online Course in Soundscape Composition with Barry Truax // Jesse Budel

From Barry Truax:

I would like to invite individuals who have access to an 8-channel sound system, along with teaching studios with the same format, to participate in my upcoming Special Topics course in Soundscape Composition this coming term, from January to April 2025.
 
The course will start Wednesday Jan. 8 and go through to April 2, with a weekly two and a half hour Zoom meeting starting at 10:30 Pacific time, which translates to 8 hours later in the UK/Portugal and 9 hours later in Central Europe. There will be a two week break in February (Feb. 12 & 19), so 11 meetings in total in which I will survey the theory, history and emerging practice of soundscape composition. There is no course fee.
 
I regard the octophonic component as essential to understanding the potential of studio-based soundscape composition, and although the webinars will feature many stereo examples, I intend to play one or two 8-channel pieces each week. How that will work online is that each week, I will send out a download link for the files involved, and then they will be played at the appropriate time during the following webinar in each location simultaneously on your own system, with a real-time Spectrogram display from my studio on the Zoom monitor. A stereo file will also be available for download.
 
So, in summary, I am prepared to host and conduct a weekly webinar over 11 weeks, sometimes including guest composers. I will also prepare a package of supplementary readings related to soundscape composition that can also be easily downloaded in advance. In addition, the full resources of the WSP Database will be made available.
 
In the case of participating studios, I will leave it entirely up to them as to who can take part in their studio, that is, whether they are treated as auditors or credit students and under what requirements. For individuals who have their own 8-channel access, they can join the Zoom meetings individually, and receive their own copies of the readings and soundfiles.
 
Those individuals who do not have multi-channel access are probably best advised to wait for the next online Tutorial course starting in May that will depend only on stereo sound examples. However, those wanting to audit this course just in stereo will be welcomed. Those wanting academic credit for the course need to arrange this with your home institution.

For those in the Pacific region and its time zones, this year for the first time, I have arranged a parallel version of the course, hosted by Jesse Budel from Australia who will present the same topics with my recorded audio and visual material. As a freelance individual, he will need to charge a fee for this service. More information on this version is available here.
 
I have a provisional course outline with most of the specifics which I will send to anyone who is interested.

Looking forward to your response
Barry Truax ([email protected]), Professor Emeritus, SFU

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