Professor: William Overcash

Contemporary Music encompasses a wide variety of music and concepts, and at first it can be quite intimidating. But with time and practice, it can become liberating and even improve your classical playing! Difficult techniques, strange notation, and struggle with grasping musical concepts are all common problems which drive students away. But in this course, Contemporary Music for Strings, we will discuss how to navigate this massive genre of music and discover how to make it an enjoyable and enriching experience: one that can last a lifetime! 

With workshops on improvisation, rhythm training, and electronics in music, we’ll go through a broad variety of topics and sustainable techniques that will inform you and give you tools for working with most types of music in the future. 

In addition to all these workshop possibilities, students and chamber music groups can receive private lessons on contemporary works, as well as general guidance on contemporary practices and audio engineering. Previously formed chamber groups also encouraged and welcome. 

Depending on the interests of the students as well as the amount of participants, workshops can change or be extended to more than one day. Please send me a message about your interests in the workshops as well as your wishes to participate in chamber music, so I can tailor the program to everyone’s wishes. An overview of the workshops can be found below:

General Introduction to Contemporary Music:

Listen, learn, and interact with the grand diversity of contemporary music. 

Rhythm and Intonation Workshop:

Tips and Guidance for navigating unconventional or difficult rhythms and interpreting various intonation systems.

Improvisation Workshop:

Guide on improvisation , opening ears and mind to elevate one’s experience with one’s instrument and the colleagues with which one plays.

Electronics in Music Workshop:

Learn about Digital Audio Workstations like Logic Pro and Max/MSP and gain basic understanding of music production and live engineering.

Interpreting Different Notations:

Get to know different types of notation originating from the mid-20th century and gain knowledge of how to interpret them.

Open Studio for Performance and Presentation:

Open Studio for students to present their own performances concepts.

If desired: Technique Workshop (string focus): 

Explore the variety of new sounds and ways of playing that might look confusing on the page, but are relatively simple to execute.

If desired: Field Recordings, Soundscapes and Audio Editing:

Explore the concept of recording your environment (especially in the beautiful Alps) and learn how to cut field recordings together with audio editing.

Formules