Digital Audio Montage
Seminar
- Language of instruction
- English
- Semester offered
- WS 2025/26
- Schedule
Weekly
- Date(s) & Time
- Thu, 14:00 – 16:00
- Contact hours per semester
- 32
- Location
- Room 351
- Instructor(s)
- Lorenz Schwarz
This course teaches how to compose with sound through digital montage techniques, building works from recorded and processed audio materials. Building upon traditions of musique concrète, tape music, and digital signal processing, students will learn strategies of cutting, splicing, layering, spatializing, and transforming sound. The course emphasizes both technical skill and artistic exploration through studio-based projects. Topics include multitrack editing, mixing, digital signal processing, spectral modification, spatial sound, and the aesthetics of sound montage. The course also examines how emerging technologies like AI are reshaping the practice of audio montage. Weekly sessions are complemented by practical assignments and critical listening sessions. The aim is to enable students to design their own complex sound works that integrate both traditional and emerging tools of montage.
Prerequisites
- No prior knowledge required; open to students from all departments
- Software Audacity (install instructions provided during the course)
- Equipment: Students should bring their own laptops to class; sound studio facilities, recording booths, and equipment (microphones, recorders) are available for project work
Credits
- Leistungsnachweis (graded Course Credit)
- Grundlagennachweis Digitale Medien (Foundation Certificate)
Assessment tasks
- Complete practical editing/montage exercises (cutting, layering, spatialization)
- Design a complex sound work integrating multiple montage methods
Recommended literature
Technical references:
- Görne, Thomas. Tontechnik Hören, Schallwandler, Impulsantwort und Faltung, Digitale Signale, Mehrkanaltechnik, Tontechnische Praxis. Thomas Görne. Hanser, 2015.
- Izhaki, Roey. Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices, and Tools. Routledge, 2018.
- Katz, Robert A. Mastering Audio: Über die Kunst und die Technik. GC Carstensen, 2012.
- Raffaseder, Hannes. Audiodesign. Fachbuchverlag Leipzig im Carl Hanser Verlag, 2002.
- Roads, Curtis. The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press, 2011.
Compositional and aesthetic approaches:
- Roads, Curtis. Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic. Oxford University Press, 2015.
- Roads, Curtis. Microsound. MIT, 2004.
- Schaeffer, Pierre. In Search of a Concrete Music. University of California Press, 2012.