Peer remix in Electronic Music
December 10th, 2023For the last two years, I have been part of Stetson’s Quality Enhancement Plan through my Electronic Music (DIGA 365) course. Our QEP is focussed on information literacy and teaching students to gather credible information from dependable sources.
At first glance, it seems like a strange learning goal for a course emphasizing the production of electronic music. But as I explain to students, “how can you make a piece of House music, if you don’t first research and listen to existing pieces of House music?” For project 1 in this course, the students had to use Ableton Live to compose an original track in an existing style. It’s not a new project, but bringing in the QEP materials and mindset has allowed students to better trace the origins of their influences. They can better explain why a 909 kick drum is essential to House music, or which breakbeats are the most used in Drum n Bass.
Here are some examples of their genre tracks:
New for project 2 in Fall 2023, my students picked a classmate’s Project 1 and created a remix. They each had to provide the original Ableton Live materials so that students could build on their existing work. Each student also had to research and present on an existing remix selected from several curated “best of” lists (like Billboard’s 2022 list or NME’s 2011 list), which led to some great conversations about what makes a remix aesthetically satisfying. One student’s project ended up being really popular and became the focus for 6 of the 8 remixes, but I loved hearing the variety of these eight results!
Here are some examples of their peer remix tracks:
Blending in information literacy is changing the shape of how I teach electronic music. It has hopefully made the students more aware of the interconnected nature of popular music, and enabled them to better trace and more fully appreciate the influences found in their own creations.
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