(Get feedback on midterm proposals)
Guest: Cody Martinez will teach us how to make hyperpop
Everyone in the class will present about their midterm project. The presentation will be 10 minutes (with questions) and you will talk about:
SOPHIE - Immaterial ("I can be anyone that I want")
How SOPHIE and Other Trans Musicians Are Using Vocal Modulation to Explore Gender
[from the perspective of the article's author, Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard]
“I’d like to get you on four more milligrams of estrogen to raise that voice of yours. I will refer you to a speech therapist for vocal feminization, as well,” my doctor prescribed, unsolicited.
Tits, curves, and a soft face from hormone replacement therapy, hair sufficiently mermaidish—but my voice bellows as a bass and cracks when approaching atmospheric altitudes. Mainstream medical approaches to transgender transition expect a transsexual woman, like myself, to relentlessly pursue normative feminization for all regions of her body and behavior. My voice is subterranean and I do not want voice feminization surgery to slice the stalactites of my vocal box until rays of passability wash in. My deep voice feels good.
But the Snapchat voice filters that elevate vocal pitch tempt me as an entertaining experiment in how I could sound. Chipmunk, alien, robot—modes of sounding that chart a path beyond binaries of male and female. And this flight from vocal restraints and assumptions are what excite me most about SOPHIE’s songs.
Elektronauts Interview with SOPHIE
"I'm rather fixated on this idea of a a monophonic, elastic, full frequency range morphing composition. The language of electronic music shouldn't still be referencing obsolete instruments like kick drum or clap. No one's kicking or clapping. They don't have to! So it makes more sense in my mind to discard those ideas of polyphony and traditional roles of instrumentation. It seems wacky to me that most DAW software is still designed around having drums/bass/keyboard/vocal presets for production. That's what I find liberating about the Monomachine. It's just waveforms that can be pushed into shapes and materials and sequenced. Just like a sculpture machine. Not like a computer pretending to be a band form the 70's or whatever."