Sound, Voice, and Place in the Age of AI

(3 Credits)

What does it mean for a place to have a "sound," and how do geography, migration, and community shape a local musical identity block by block? How have technologies of capture and reproduction, from the 78 rpm disc to generative AI, changed who gets to make music, and who gets credit for it? As AI becomes capable of generating convincing music and voices, what remains irreducibly human about music? Every city has a sound, but few offer students the chance to make music inside it. This intensive, studio-based course uses Tulsa, home to Western swing, singer-songwriter Americana, gospel, jazz, and hip-hop, as both subject and workshop. Students spend most of their time composing, recording, and performing original work alongside two lead instructors: a multi-platinum producer and mixer, and a Tulsa-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist for Hanson and Tinted Window. Classroom study on the neuroscience of music alongside encounters with Tulsa's musicians, venues, and traditions, including its Americana heritage and legacy of Black musicians, culminate in an original body of recorded work each student will write, perform, and produce.