Adam Bell is a fellow pop musician turned academic, and he hired me to teach at Montclair State University. He recently offered to observe my teaching; here’s what he found.
Teaching Observation of Ethan Hein – MUTC-101: Introduction to Music Technology
As the students began to trickle into the music technology lab and power up their iMacs, discussions immediately hatched about an upcoming assignment. A young woman turned on her speakers and played a work in progress made with the program Logic. “That’s cool!” responded one of her classmates as he listened intently. The piece commenced with a heavy guitar riff and shared sonic similarities with the “nu-metal” style of the early 2000s, comprised by the traditional trio of rock instruments: guitar, bass, and drumset. “Can we all listen to your song again? All the way through and more loudly?” asked Professor Hein. If there was a distinct moment when class had officially begun, this was it, and this was the first of many indications that the education occurring in this room under the guidance of Professor Hein is a continuing conversation that his students are engaged in and enjoying.
Professor Hein has a very calm disposition; he is soft spoken and speaks very articulately and pointedly to his students. The effectiveness of this approach is evident as this cohort of students listens carefully to every word he utters—an impressive feat considering that the early morning timeslot is dreaded by most college students, especially on a dark and cold November day like today. After hearing the song play once through, Professor Hein requested, “Can you play the beginning again, just the first loop. Does that happen again anywhere?” Understanding that he was referring to the opening guitar riff, the young woman responded with a simple “no,” and Professor Hein followed up with some constructive criticism: not enough of a relationship between the “Intro” and “A section.” He then posed a question to the rest of the class: “That breakdown, what do you guys think about that?” This open-ended prompt drew an array of positive reactions from the class, ranging from nods of approval to various verbal praises such as “I like it” and “that’s the best part.” Professor Hein offered his opinion that the breakdown was his favorite part of the song and that it could be longer and explained why (paraphrasing): “When we listen to music this way in class, analytically, we tend to think that every moment of the piece has to be really significant, but think about if we were listening to this at a party. The breakdown would pass and hardly anyone would notice. In pop music, repetition and extended song sections work because they give the passive or distracted listener at a party extra time to get into the music.” The young woman was very much accepting of Professor Hein’s suggestions and many of her classmates offered her words of praise for what she had accomplished thus far and encouragement to continue to refine her piece.
Recognizing that there was little time to spare in today’s class with a full agenda, Professor Hein announced that they needed to transition to an activity called “Demonstrate & Discuss,” where students are required select a piece of music and explain how they think music technology was utilized to create it. In total each student is given a maximum of five minutes to play excerpts of their songs and provide insights. The first student played a song by the neo-soul group Hiatus Kaiyote, opting to play the entire song before talking about it. The discussion centered around “pitch warble,” and Professor Hein asked the class to consider how the effect might have been achieved. A popular response amongst the students was something akin to the pitch wheel that can be found on most piano MIDI controllers. The second student presented “Fire on High” by Electric Light Orchestra and chose to focus on the use of playing speech backwards to create a psychedelic effect. Professor Hein furthered the discussion by explaining what an arpeggiator does and asked the class if they thought the keyboard performance in the song would have been accomplished with this technology or not. Looking around the room it was evident that many of the students were not familiar with the arpeggiator, but that their interest had been piqued. Professor Hein related jokingly to the class that those piano students who had diligently practiced their arpeggios would be disappointed to find out that we have hardware and software that enables someone to accomplish the same end with no practice. The next student to present played Aretha Franklin’s version of the Otis Redding song, “Respect.” Lacking any insights on how technology might have mediated the performance, Professor Hein helped the conversation along by talking about the drum sounds. He highlighted the fact that many recordings from this era have drums that sound like lifeless cardboard boxes, whereas “Respect” boasts of drums that “crack” and “thump.” Professor Hein explained that the drum sounds were achieved by having a second drummer reinforce the performance by playing along to the original recording and having his performance added to it. By “overdubbing” a second drum performance in isolation, the recording studio was used as a conduit to enhance the original drummer’s performance. Professor Hein also took the discussion of “Respect” as an opportunity to revisit a topic from a previous class, compression. After reintroducing the concept, Professor Hein added more depth by delineating the differences between analog and digital distortion, noting that the “vintage” sound from this era of recordings so loved by many is in fact the natural compression that occurs with recording tape when the signal is too hot (distorted). The end result is what many listeners experience and refer to as “warmth.” The final student to present played “Bones Exposed” by the metal group Of Mice and Men. The topic of metal in general evidently resonated with many of the students as there were many enthusiastic responses to the audio excerpts, especially with regard to the topic of vocal technique. To the class’s delight, one of their peers sings metal and performed a brief, but impressive growl and explained how metal singers condition their voices to enable themselves to perform on a regular basis. Professor Hein did well to allow the students to steer their own discussion, but also made sure to keep the group on task by posing some questions about the song’s use of technology. Recognizing that the group was enmeshed in a conversation about singing, he veered the conversation toward technology by asking them to consider how distortion was applied to the vocal performance to give an added dimension of grit.
The final twenty minutes of the class was allotted for working on the Logic Assignment, Professor Hein explained: “They’re using Logic, producing a ~3 minute instrumental track in any pop style, using any combination of loops, MIDI and audio.” Noting to students that, “There is no single path up the mountain,” Professor Hein suggested to the class that they could either focus purely on the compositional process before taking on the technological tasks of effects processing and mixing or they could integrate both stages together as part of a cohesive writing process. Further, Professor Hein offered to listen to all students’ work before they submit for grading such that they could have the advantage of responding to feedback prior to being evaluated. In keeping with current practices, Professor Hein has all of his students upload their work to SoundCloud such that they can get feedback from their classmates, but also from their peers in the music-listening world in general. Curious to hear what these Cali students are creating, I took a few moments to listen to the compositions posted on SoundCloud and I was impressed and proud to hear such a diversity of musics. As stated in the syllabus, one of the overarching goals of this course is to provide the students in education, therapy, composition, and performance with tools they can use in their respective fields, a difficult task considering this wide range of academic disciplines. Professor Hein avoids potential problems posed by this challenge through devising assignments that are sufficiently open-ended, inviting students to think imaginatively and creatively about how music technology might play a role in their future beyond their music degree. Clearly, Professor Hein’s approach to teaching MUTC-101: Introduction to Music Technology, has been effective in equipping the students of the Cali School of Music with the strategies they need to support their careers in music.