Listening, making, thinking together.

This course uses music as a lens through which to explore place, history, spirituality, law, politics, and collective memory. Moving from Aboriginal traditions and settler histories to contemporary popular, experimental, country, folk, and classical music, students examine how sound has represented, contested, and shaped ideas of Australian identity.

Music of Australia: Place, Politics & Power — Spotify playlist

A survey of Western music from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular emphasis on the direct experience of listening. The course combines lectures, listening laboratories, and live performance to develop historical context alongside attentive engagement with musical works.

Introduction to Western Music — Spotify playlist

The first course in a three-quarter fundamentals sequence, designed primarily for students without previous musical experience. It introduces music notation and basic theory, including intervals, scales, keys, chords, and foundational rhythm skills.

A hands-on course in creative music production using digital audio workstations. Students work with tempo warping, beat and tonality matching, virtual drum kits, chord progressions, sound processing and effects, arrangement, and remixing across popular and experimental genres, while analyzing existing works for both aesthetic and production technique.

A critical examination of music from the early twentieth century to the present, focused on the ways cultural ideas are generated, embodied, and contested through music.

A study of works from the history of opera, combining lectures, listening, live performance, and opera on video. The course considers repertory in relation to style, historical context, performance, and the social worlds in which opera has developed.

An introduction to jazz through major performers, styles, and techniques. The course also examines the provocative role jazz has played in American and global society, including debates around its production and reception and the ways these have been shaped by race, class, gender, and sexuality.

A broad chronological overview of hip-hop from the late 1970s to the present. The course examines the style in relation to earlier African American musical and cultural forms, as well as the technological and legal issues that have shaped its development, with intensive listening focused on essential structures and production techniques.

A listening- and discussion-based course on popular music across different historical periods. Through lectures, films, and close listening, students examine changing genres, styles, performers, technologies, and cultural contexts.