Music (MUSIC)

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course aims to help students improve their writing skills, taking a particular type of music as its central material. The goal of the course is to help students prepare for academic writing, develop analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter, and receive an introduction to college-level research papers. Depending on the topic the course may include a section of one to two hours for further listening to musical examples in a group setting.
Reading and Writing about Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A course in basic vocal techniques, only for students in the University Choruses, covering techniques of breathing, pronunciation, and articulation.
Vocal Technique: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Fundamentals of musicianship, including musical time and pitch space. Conducting, singing, listening, and beginning linear analysis.
Introduction to Musicianship: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Fall 2014
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment is limited to 15 freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 3 Week Session, Spring 2025
This course introduces students with little or no previous musical experience to the fundamentals of Western music theory, analysis, and notation. After an introduction to basic terminology and how notes, rhythm, meter, tempo, and other expressions are notated, the course covers the fundamentals of music theory and specialized notation for common instruments of the symphony orchestra. The second half of the semester focuses on notational analyses of medieval and renaissance music, jazz, popular music, and twentieth century graphic and electronic music.
Introduction to Music Theory, Analysis, and Notation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2024
Two perspectives are developed: 1) diverse music of groups in America, and 2) American music as a unique phenomenon. Groups considered are African, Asian, European, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. Lectures and musical examples are organized by topics such as music of socio-economic subgroups within large groups, survival of culture, pan-ethnicity, religious and concert music, and the folk-popular music continuum.
Music in American Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
Two perspectives are developed: 1) diverse music of groups in America, and 2) American music as a unique phenomenon. Groups considered are African, Asian, European, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. Lectures and musical examples are religious and concert music, and the folk-popular music continuum.
Music in American Cultures: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
Devoted to the development of listening skills, and a survey of major forms and types of Western art music.
Introduction to Western Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2000, Summer 1996 10 Week Session
Opening ears and minds to musical sounds and the people who make them, imparting basic concepts and ways of listening in order to deepen students' experience of music from a variety of cultures, including Western, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian traditions (specific traditions may vary depending on instructor). While the emphasis is on listening, students will become physically involved through hands-on workshops.
Listening to Many Musics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
This course explores the basic materials and models that set the boundaries for various present-day musical experiences. Students are exposed to terminology and modes of engagement with the aim of inspiring new paradigms of listening (e.g., listening to silence, noise, space, and timbre). Composers and musicians of today continue to explore new ways of defining and organizing sounds into music. The course focuses on the most adventurous music of our time, but the concepts learned can be applied to any style of music. The course is designed to enrich and deepen the students' musical abilities through direct involvement with musical materials. Direct engagement through listening and participatory learning is accomplished in part with software created at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. The course does not require students to be able to read music nor to own a personal computer.
Music Now: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
The advancements in machine learning, especially the recent breakthrough of artificial neural networks, promoted novel art practices in which computers play a fundamental role and fostered research in the field of computational creativity.
Music 30 (Computational creativity for music and the arts) aims at exploring the
potential that computers have to support, enhance and challenge music creation.
The course is divided into three modules. The first module introduces the essential
mathematical and machine learning tools and gives a general introduction to sound.
The second module shows real applications of creative computing for music. The
third module focuses on the connection between the society and computational
creativity at large.
Computational Creativity for Music and the Arts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
We explore music by considering its connections to broader ideas like culture, memory, identity, and gender. Listening to music with these perspectives can deepen our emotional connection to it, which helps us develop stronger senses of empathy, influencing how we interact with others as compassionate citizens.

We’ll practice this "radical listening" by analyzing popular music from artists like The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Missy Elliott, David Bowie, Kanye West, and more. We'll also explore experimental music and new trends, and the impact of AI. No previous music experience is required.
You will also learn to use a digital audio workstation (DAW) to edit audio files, create mashups, and produce podcasts.

Radical Listening: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2013, Fall 2012
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
A course designed for students who wish to attain a beginner's level of proficiency on the carillon. Prospective students must have a working knowledge of the keyboard, read treble and bass clefs fluently, be secure in key signatures through three sharps and flats, and be comfortable with common duple and triple meters.
Group Carillon Lessons for Beginning Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Private carillon lessons to develop a personal repertory. In this course, students will begin to learn different practice techniques.
Private Carillon Lessons for Beginning Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Private carillon lessons stressing musical questions and de-emphasizing technical and repertory issues. Composition and arranging may be included. Personal musicianship is examined and musical horizons are extended.
Private Carillon Lessons for Intermediate Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2013
This course is designed for students to reach an advanced level of proficiency. Students are required to play one ten-minute concert per week plus participate in the student recital.
Private Carillon Lessons for Advanced Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course is a requirement for those students who are studying for examination by the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America.
Carillon Lessons for Advanced Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2025
Students will learn the fundaments of healthy singing. The classical style will be learned and applied to other styles of singing. Students will receive group instruction and individual feedback throughout the semester. Singers will perform two solos: one in English and one in a foreign language. The course is open to all undergraduates. Students involved in campus vocal ensembles are encouraged to enroll. No prior music experience required.
Voice Class: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 10 Week Session, Summer 2024 10 Week Session, Summer 2023 10 Week Session
Piano instruction includes music theory (musical notation, triads, scales and primary chords) at the keyboard. Repertoire draws from simple classical pieces and melodies accompanied with chords. Mastery of the material will be demonstrated at the keyboard and through three written assignments.
Weekly class attendance and daily practice (5 hours weekly) are expected.

Beginning Piano Class 1 for Non-Music Majors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 10 Week Session, Summer 2017 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session
Continuing from MUSIC 45, pianists will build on their musical skills through understanding music theory. Course covers minor scales (relative/parallel keys; three forms of the minor scale; primary chords in minor scales), chord inversions, chord progressions, and dominant seventh chords. Repertoire will include classical works and music suggested by students. Weekly class attendance and daily practice (five hours weekly) are expected.

Advanced Beginning Piano Class for Non-Music Majors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Two semesters are strongly recommended for music majors who lack the basic keyboard skills needed for musicianship and harmony classes.
Elementary Piano: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
Fundamentals of guitar performance, including tuning, basic pitch and rhythm reading, melody and chord playing.
Fundamentals of Guitar Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course is designed to introduce students to the field of music therapy with an overview of: what music therapy is, bases for uses of music in therapy, key theoretical models of music therapy, and clinical applications of music therapy with various populations. Through didactic and experiential assignments and classroom discussions, we will create a collaborative and process-oriented learning environment. Pre-requisites: Open to all interested students.
Introduction to Music Therapy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course provides a gateway to the more advanced music and technology curriculum including the Music 158 series and is open to non-majors and majors alike. Basic concepts and techniques of electronic music composition and sonic art are presented. Compositional etudes are accomplished using models and techniques drawn from the history of electronic music including present day digital music practices. Formal problems and aesthetics related to sound design and the shaping of electronic sound are studied. Core topics in audio and digital signal processing are covered with a focus on hands-on experience using delays, echos, filters and equalization, samples, noise, and related sound materials.
Introduction to Electronic Music Composition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Introduction to the study of music history; required for music majors. This writing-intensive course offers an in-depth study of musical genres and styles in relation to conditions of production and reception. Through listening, reading musical scores, and studying historical documents, students will draw connections between specific features of music and the ways in which listening, performance, and the function of music have changed over time.
History of Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course is an introduction to the field of Ethnomusicology, its practice, and the study of musical diversity. You will learn about key issues that motivate ethnomusicologists, the ethnographic methods they use to study those issues, possibilities for public engagement through ethnomusicological scholarship, and the theoretical orientations that shape the questions they ask. Students will conduct a research project from an ethnomusicological perspective. Weekly activities and assignments include lectures, discussion sessions, writings, and workshops.
Introduction to Ethnomusicology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Introduction to creative music research, theory and practice.
Making Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Spring 2016
Department organized and supervised field programs involving experiences in tutoring and related activities. Students taking the course for the first time will be provided with training suitable to the subject matter being tutored.
Field Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Group study in a field that may not coincide with that of any regular course. See the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of the General Catalog for enrollment restrictions.
Directed Group Study for Freshmen and Sophomores: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
Berkeley Connect: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2018
Directed individual study in a field that may not coincide with that of any regular course. See the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of the General Catalog for enrollment restrictions.
Independent Study for Freshmen and Sophomores: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
This course will cover the fundamentals of music production, including (but not limited to): the science of sound, signal flow and recording chain, intro to various Digital Audio Workstations (Logic, Reaper, Pro Tools, Garage Band and the differences between them), with a focus on music production using Ableton Live, effects processing, and mixing and mastering. If time and interest allow, basics of Max for Live. This course is best suited for those with little to no experience with DAWs or Ableton.
Introduction to Music Production using Ableton Live: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2023
Students will explore the fundamentals of music production using Ableton Live 11 and participate in group discussions about genres, electronic music history, bay area hip hop, remixing, sound design concepts, and audio career options. This course is recommended for students who desire to learn about the creative process within Ableton Live 11 and have beginning experience with other digital audio workstations or hardware.
Electronic Music Production & History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Students will develop, in consultation with the instructor, a semester length project that focuses on creating a piece of music, and/or researching and building new software tools for music.
Independent Projects in Computer Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
A review of the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive foundations of listening, performing, and composing. Topics include relations among various acoustical and perceptual characterizations of sound; perceptions of pitch, time, temporal relations, timbre, stability conditions, and auditory space; auditory scene analysis and perceptual grouping mechanisms; perceptual principles for melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic organization; orchestration as spectral composition. A course research project is required.
Music Perception and Cognition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
The goal of this class is to interrogate and make explicit the powerful musical intuitions that are at work as you make sense of the music all around you. What is the nature of the knowledge that is guiding these intuitions? How does this knowledge develop in ordinary and extraordinary ways? To approach these questions, small composition-like projects aided by a specially designed computer music environment will function as a workplace. You will explore, experiment, question, and reflect on how and what you know how to do as you generate the musical coherence that you seem simply to find.
Music Cognition: The Mind Behind the Musical Ear: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Theory and practical experience in the art of musical improvisation, through study and internalization of the Black American music known as jazz.
This is a class for acquiring knowledge and skills necessary for improvising in the jazz tradition, with the goal of creating a personal and ensemble language. Areas of study include transcription, harmonic analysis, melodic research, and composition.
We will study the work of practitioners from across the history of jazz, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk, Sun Ra, and Steve Lacy.
Open to both music majors and non-majors by audition at the start of term.
Improvisation in the Jazz Tradition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session
For majors and non-majors. A study of issues in the history of music and sound. Topic will vary from class to class.
Topics in the History of Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2016
A study of musical and dramatic aspects of opera. Lectures on selected operas will be supplemented by assigned recordings and films or videotapes of notable performances.
Opera: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
A study of musical and dramatic aspects of opera. Lectures on selected operas will be supplemented by assigned recordings and films or videotapes of notable performances. Analytical studies and a term paper required.
Opera: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2015, Spring 2013
This course is an introduction to Beethoven's music and its historical contexts. While closely analyzing individual works, this course also examines how Beethoven and his music have been represented and interpreted until our own day, exploring the values--musical and cultural--that have ensured Beethoven's towering position in Western music.
Beethoven: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2015, Spring 2013
This course is an introduction to Beethoven's music and its historical contexts. While closely analyzing individual works, this course also examines how Beethoven and his music have been represented and interpreted until our own day, exploring the values--musical and cultural--that have ensured Beethoven's towering position in Western music.
Beethoven: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Summer 2011 8 Week Session, Spring 2009
An introduction to the music of J. S. Bach (1685-1750), a central figure in the history of Western Art Music. The course includes discussion of his organ music, harpsichord works, cantatas, Passion settings, and instrumental chamber music, discusses the relationship between Bach's biography and his compositions, and places study of the man and his music in its cultural and historical context. Required work will include one short paper and one longer paper. There will also be weekly reading and listening assignments.
J. S. Bach: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Summer 2011 8 Week Session, Spring 2009
An introduction to the music of J. S. Bach (1685-1750), a central figure in the history of Western Art Music. The course includes discussion of his organ music, harpsichord works, cantatas, Passion settings, and instrumental chamber music, discusses the relationship between Bach's biography and his compositions, and places study of the man and his music in its cultural and historical context. Required work will include one medium-length paper, one longer research paper, and one analytical study. There will also be weekly reading and listening assignments.
J. S. Bach: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 1998, Fall 1995

Mozart and Haydn: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2008, Spring 2005, Spring 2001
A study of song and the interaction of poetry and music, from late 18th through the 20th century, with texts in English, German, French, and Russian in translation. Music by composers ranging from Mozart and Schubert to Gershwin and Bernstein will be included, with occasional live performances by local artists.
The European/American Art Song: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
A survey of jazz music from the 1920's through the 1980's covering the major stylistic periods, including the New Orleans and Chicago styles of the 1920's, big band jazz, bebop, hardbop, free jazz, fusion, and neo-classicism. Major innovators to be studies in depth include Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman.
History of Jazz in America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Fall 2008, Spring 2007
Topic(s) in contemporary improvised music will be selected from among the following: innovations in jazz in the 1960s; further innovations in jazz in the 1970s; women in improvised music; improvisation, intermedia, and new technologies; the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the phenomenon of the composer/performer/improviser in today's music; a global look at improvisation: fusion and hybrid forms. Please contact instructor for information on current topic(s).
Topics in Contemporary Improvised Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Fall 2008, Spring 2007
Topic(s) in contemporary improvised music will be selected from among the following: innovations in jazz in the 1960s; further innovations in jazz in the 1970s; women in improvised music; improvisation, intermedia, and new technologies; the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the phenomenon of the composer/performer/improviser in today's music; a global look at improvisation: fusion and hybrid forms. Please contact instructor for information on current topic(s).
Topics in Contemporary Improvised Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session
A study of the American musical in the 20th century, beginning with its roots in operetta, vaudeville, and Gilbert and Sullivan, and focusing on its connections to politics, technology, film, opera, and a variety of musical styles, including Tin Pan Alley, jazz, and rock. We will consider a selection of shows through a series of theme units, including American mythologies (and counter-mythologies), race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, issues of fandom and performance of personal identity. For non-majors.
The American Musical: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session
A study of the American musical in the 20th century, beginning with its roots in operetta, vaudeville, and Gilbert and Sullivan, and focusing on its connections to politics, technology, film, opera, and a variety of musical styles, including Tin Pan Alley, jazz, and rock. We will consider a selection of shows through a series of theme units, including American mythologies (and countermythologies), race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, issues of fandom, and performance of personal identity. For music majors.
The American Musical: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017
Songs can mark occasions, convey emotions, and create communities. We’ll explore the ways songs produce the different effects and impact that they do. We’ll analyze the qualities and moods created by melody and rhythm, the singing voice, phrasing and form. The aim is to develop a critical understanding and vocabulary about song—an awareness that will be applicable to the papers you write and the music you create. By the end of the term students will have written and recorded original songs and learned how to listen closely to and write about music. Assignments and discussion will emphasize keen listening, the challenge of describing musical experiences in writing, and developing creativity through engagement with song-writing.
Songs and Song-writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017
Songs can mark occasions, convey emotions, and create communities. We’ll explore the ways songs produce the different effects and impact that they do. We’ll analyze the qualities and moods created by melody and rhythm, the singing voice, phrasing and form. The aim is to develop a critical understanding and vocabulary about song—an awareness that will be applicable to the papers you write and the music you create. By the end of the term students will have written and recorded original songs and learned how to listen closely to and write about music. Assignments and discussion will emphasize keen listening, the challenge of describing musical experiences in writing, and developing creativity through engagement with song-writing.
Songs and Song-writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019
This course is intended, above all else, to create the circumstances in which we will each independently develop as intimate a relationship as we can with Beethoven’s music. With an open mind and a bit of application, we ought to become well-acquainted with several of his compositions, extremely friendly with others, and perhaps even head over heals in love with a couple of them.
We’ll be seeking to understand this music through attentive listening and close technical description, but also by looking at the historical environments in which it was composed, performed, and heard.
For that reason, we’re going to take a roughly chronological route through Beethoven’s life and works.
Topics in the History of European and American Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016
The decade from 1959-1969 was tremendously exciting in the evolution of Jazz. The experimentation with freedom principles and hybrid forms, the influences of African and Indian musical traditions, the larger socio-cultural revolution, and the rise of the Black Nationalist Movement all contributed to the making of a very potent and creative body of work which continues to influence many contemporary music and art scenes throughout the world today. Through lecture, guided listening, discussion, short papers and research projects, we’ll examine the acknowledged conventions in jazz pre-1960, how those conventions were transformed in various ways throughout the 60s, and how the new practices continue to influence artists today.
The Shape of Jazz to Come: Innovations in Jazz from 1959-1969: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Spring 2009, Spring 2006
Historical and analytical study of African-American music in the 20th-century. Emphasis on the evolution of jazz and various forms of popular and religious music.
African American Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2014 First 6 Week Session
Historical and analytical study of African-American music in the 20th-century. Emphasis on the evolution of jazz and various forms of popular and religious music.
African American Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course considers select musical practices stemming from Latin America and its diasporic communities. Focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries, but tracing longer historical threads, we will study musics that go from the “folkloric” to the “popular,” the local to the transnational, and from south to north of the American continent. We will address these practices at the intersection of the “musical” and “cultural.” We will delve into historical and site-specific issues of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, migration, media capitalism, and power. We will query the role music has played in processes of identity formation and un/belonging in the context of Latin America and the communities this loaded signifier includes/excludes.
Musics of Latin America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Cumbia is a music found throughout the American continent. Though particular types of cumbia are found in most countries, they differ musically and contextually. This class focuses on local cumbia practices in and outside the Americas. Tracing its musical similarities and differences, as well as the circulation networks through which it has spread, the class disentangles cumbia’s convoluted genealogy and considers its many manifestations within their geopolitical backdrop. Along the way, it also offers an overview of relevant sociopolitical issues in 20th and 21st century Latin America.
Cumbia: Music, Difference, and Circulation in the Americas: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course considers a wide variety of musical practices emanating/taking place in Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. An interdisciplinary course, it critically engages with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, media, migration, and trans/nationalism by focusing on specific music practices and artists. We will cross the border often and cover musics that go from the “folkloric” to the “popular,” the nationalistic and the “regional,” and the local to the transnational. We will emphasize developing critical reading and writing skills via readings and writing assignments.
Musics in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2009, Spring 2007
Music of the Middle East, including folk, art, popular, and religious music of the Pan-Islamic and Israeli traditions.
Music of the Middle East: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2014, Fall 2012
Surveys musical traditions of Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia with special emphasis on Java and Bali and the central role of music in theater and dance in these countries.
Music and Theater in Southeast Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009, Fall 2005, Spring 2001
In-depth study of the Central Javanese gamelan tradition including performance contexts, repertoire, vocal and instrumental idioms, modal practice and improvisation in current practice and in historical perspective.
Music of Central Java: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 1997
This course explores the complex webs and flows of historical and contemporary transnational musical exchanges of Asian/Asian American popular music in the 20th and 21st centuries. For each musical practice, we will give attention to the histories of violence, im/migration, contested claims about national identity, and technological development that have produced the conditions in which the particular music was created. Resisting a monolithic imagination or understanding of “Asia,” this course will show how popular musical practices enable us to “hear” a dynamic production of Asia through hidden histories, memories, distant places, social differences, struggles, and innovations that go far beyond geographic national borders.
Popular Musics in Transnational Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025
The course explores the intersection of music, politics, and social transformation through a survey of ethnographic accounts of musical protest from the US to Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Japan, and beyond. Examples will include songs that critique gender, class, and racial inequalities, violence, environmental damage, greed, complacency, and the notion of “protest music” itself. Students will examine what the function, potential, and limits of musical protest have been in transforming civic life; the role of musical sounds in mediating and contesting oppressive regimes, structural inequalities, and social injustice; and how music might offer creative rethinking of the relationship between critical attention, compassion, and commitment.
Music and Social Protest: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2001, Fall 1999, Spring 1996
This course offers an introductory survey of musical practices in four selected regions of the world. Students will cultivate critical listening skills and open-minded/eared sensibilities to appreciate diverse approaches to music making. Performing artists will be invited to give an interactive, hands-on workshop on music/dance for each area, providing an opportunity for students to gain embodied insights into the musical practice under discussion. Students will also be introduced to basic musical concepts and terminologies, and acquire listening skills that will enable them to better encounter and understand music in this course and beyond. Final project will take the form of a mini local ethnography or a research paper.
Listening to Musics of the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012, Spring 2010
Focus on the history, musical structure, and socio-political, economic, and cultural roles of selected traditional and popular music genres of the Caribbean.
Musics of the Caribbean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
How might critical attention to sound and music yield a new insight into the interactions among societies and their environment? This course will examine how the ecological relationships between humans and their surroundings are expressed, sustained, and sometimes challenged through musical sounds. From bird songs in the rain forest to songs of the indigenous land rights movement in Australia, students will investigate how sonic/musical creativities have intersected with the production, preservation, or destruction of ecologies—natural, social, cultural, or otherwise. We will focus on the social and political issues around environmental resources, and the role of the arts (especially music) in relation to conflicts and power relations.
Sound, Music, and Ecology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2025
Surveys the music and music making of different world cultures outside the United States, with a focus on current issues in the arts, culture, and society. Such issues can include the impact of government polices on the arts, transnational circulation, intellectual property rights, as well as the current movements in the arts ranging from popular styles to cutting-edge contemporary experimentation. The particular culture to be studied will vary.
Topics in Musics of the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2025
A performing course for the study and practice of Indonesian music and instruments.
Javanese Gamelan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
UCB Symphony Orchestra rehearses twice per week and performs six times per semester. Admission by audition. Attendance at all rehearsals and concerts is mandatory.
University Symphony Orchestra: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
The UC Berkeley Philharmonia Orchestra is open to as enrolled students and non-enrolled students and community members. This orchestra performs 1-2 concerts per semester in Hertz Hall as well as during community events such as Cal Day. Admission to the orchestra is by audition.
Philharmonia Orchestra: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A performing course for the study and practice of traditional and contemporary wind band repertoire.
University Wind Ensemble: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A course that will focus on the performance of choral music of the African American gospel music tradition with a particular emphasis on contemporary performance techniques. The Gospel Chorus, as is the case with other formal University music performance ensembles, will prepare music to be presented to the public in at least two concerts each semester. Students will be selected for the chorus on the basis of individual auditions.
Gospel Chorus: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
The University Chorus performs music primarily from the 17th to the 20th centuries including works for chorus and orchestra.
University Chorus: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This is a three-week intensive choral workshop where singers will learn a program set and give a concert performance at the end of the term. This workshop will be in conjunction with the Summer Conducting Workshop, where multiple active conductors and the master teacher will be working closely with the chorus during the last two weeks of the three-week term.
Chorus Summer Workshop: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A smaller mixed chorus that aims at a professional standard of ensemble singing and explores the lesser-known choral repertory.
University Chamber Chorus: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Learn to perform music suited to Balinese gamelan Semar Pagulingan, Pelegongan, Baleganjur, or Gender Wayang (emphasis may change from one semester to the next). Classes will consist of instruction on playing technique and memorization of pieces taught by ear, in the traditional Balinese manner. The course will culminate with a public performance.
Balinese Gamelan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session
A performing course for the study and practice of Indonesian music and instruments.
Balinese Gamelan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025
This practice-based ensemble course introduces students to a wide range of music from Latin American and the Caribbean through the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will experience being part of a professional orchestra through score reading, rehearsals, performance, and recording activities.

Latin American and Caribbean Music Ensemble: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Performance of West African music with particular emphasis on the music of Ghana. Practical instruction in traditional instrumental and vocal techniques.
African Music Ensemble: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
Performance of West African music with particular emphasis on the music of Ghana. Practical instruction in traditional instrumental and vocal techniques.
African Music Ensemble: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Performance of Renaissance and Baroque music for voices and instruments.
University Baroque Ensemble: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course will help students develop musical skills through sightsinging, score reading, and piano harmony, acquiring confidence with music that has chromaticism, modulations, meter changes, and contemporary influences.
Sightsinging and Score Reading: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
This course will help students develop musical skills through sightsinging, score reading, and piano harmony, acquiring confidence with music that has chromaticism, modulations, and meter changes.
Sightsinging and Score Reading I: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
By audition for experienced vocalists. A comprehensive program of vocal studies including participation in University Choruses, vocal technique training, and ensemble work with other instrumentalists or vocalists. The student's program will be worked out in consultation with the faculty in charge of the course. Each student's studies will lead to some kind of public performance.
Vocal Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
The program will focus on the study of solo repertoire. The student's program will be worked out in consultation with the faculty in charge of the course. Each student's studies will lead to some kind of public performance.
Keyboard Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Diatonic harmony, chorale harmonization, and analytical studies. Emphasis on written exercises.
Harmony I: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Introduction to chromatic harmony and analytical studies. Emphasis on written exercises.
Harmony II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Advanced chromatic harmony, advanced modulation, altered chords, linear chromatic harmony, and analytical studies. Emphasis on written exercises.
Advanced Tonal Harmony: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Materials and techniques of 20th-century music. Analytical studies. Emphasis on written exercises.
Twentieth-Century Harmony: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021
Sight singing, ear training, keyboard harmony, and score reading involving increasing chromaticism.
Advanced Musicianship I: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2017
Continuation of the skills acquired in prerequisite courses, with an emphasis on score reading skills (including use of the voice) and the realization of Baroque figured bass lines, harmonization, transcription, rhythm,study of several 20th-century and contemporary practices, and further work on ensemble singing.
Advanced Musicianship II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
A study of species counterpoint. Regular exercises in two and three voices required. Group discussion and analysis.
Sixteenth Century Counterpoint: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
A study of 18th-century counterpoint. Regular exercises required. Analysis of chorale preludes, two- and three-part inventions, canons, and fugue expositions.
Counterpoint: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A study of formal problems using contemporary composition techniques.
Music Composition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Spring 2024
The study of various analytical techniques and their application to important works of music.
Studies in Musical Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2022
A study of instrumentation--the construction capabilities and idiomatic qualities of all of the individual instruments which comprise the contemporary symphony orchestra followed by a study of the 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century orchestrational technique. Analysis of scores and assignments in scoring of selected instrumental combinations.
Orchestration: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2021
A study of instrumentation--the construction capabilities and idiomatic qualities of all of the individual instruments which comprise the contemporary symphony orchestra followed by a study of the 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century orchestrational technique. Analysis of scores and assignments in scoring of selected instrumental combinations.
Orchestration: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2025 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2025 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2025
Explores the intersection of music and computers using a combination of scientific, technological, and artistic methodologies. Musical concerns within a computational frame are addressed through the acquisition of basic programming skills for the creation and control of digital sound. Will learn core concepts and techniques of computerbased music composition using the Cycling74/MaxMSP programming environment in combination with associated software tools and programming approaches created by the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Included will be exposure to the essentials of digital audio signal processing, musical acoustics and psychoacoustics, sound analysis and synthesis. The course is hands-on and taught from the computer lab.
Sound and Music Computing with CNMAT Technologies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
The practice and theory of contextual instrument design for use in musical expression is explored. Students create new instruments and performance environments using a variety of physical interaction paradigms, programming practices, and musical processes emerging from the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Building on the methodologies established in Music 158A, the course develops aesthetic, analytic and technical skills through discussion, empirical study, and collaborative engagement. With a balance of artistic and technical concerns, participants deepen understanding of the creative process, demonstrating the results through class installation and public performance.
Situated Instrument Design for Musical Expression: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2021
Software engineering for musical applications covering programming concepts for live-performance real-time systems as well as cloud-based music information retrieval applications. Topics include the software representation of sound and music, real-time scheduling, analysis of gestures from systems of sensors, common design patterns, analysis and controlled synthesis, and machine learning applications for music understanding and creation. Behavior driven design and test driven development are core ideas that permeate the course.
Computer Programming for Music Applications: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
A study of the basic elements of conducting: physical gesture, score reading, and score analysis. Development of skills with emphasis on conducting and rehearsal techniques applicable to orchestral literature in various languages and musical styles. Preparation of selected works for rehearsal and performance in class. Should be taken in a two-semester sequence.
Instrumental Conducting: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
A study of the basic elements of conducting: physical gesture, score reading, and score analysis. Development of skills with emphasis on conducting and rehearsal techniques applicable to orchestral literature in various languages and musical styles. Preparation of selected works for rehearsal and performance in class. Should be taken in a two-semester sequence.
Instrumental Conducting: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2009
Continued development of skills introduced in 160 with emphasis on conducting and rehearsal techniques applicable to choral literature in various languages and musical styles. Preparation of selected works for rehearsal and performance in class.
Choral Conducting: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2015 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 3 Week Session, Summer 2007 3 Week Session
This class is an intensive two-week conducting workshop that is designed in two parts. We will cover conducting techniques in the morning session and have rehearsals in the afternoon. The goal of this class is to help establish a solid foundation in conducting with an eye toward being a better future conductor or performer. The course will focus on working with proper physical gesture vocabulary and related abilities. Conducting technique classes will be taught at an intermediate/advanced level. See prerequisites.
Workshop in Conducting: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
Creative Jazz and Improvised Music Performance Workshop is an intermediate-level performance course in which we’ll explore many approaches to making improvisational music including, jazz, blues, and experimental practices, along with a study of the music of innovative improvising musicians/composers from around the world. Class projects and activities include: deepening our ability to “listen,” developing a lexicon of musical materials and strategies for improvising in small and large ensembles, studying graphic scores and alternative notation, playing game pieces, and improvising film scores. Students with technical instrumental facility and some knowledge of music theory, from diverse musical backgrounds, are welcome to audition.
Creative Jazz and Improvised Music Performance Workshop: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This advanced small ensemble of improvisers (The Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective) will explore a range of repertoire including music by innovative jazz composers of the 1960s and 70s, as well as contemporary works and original student compositions and arrangements. Students will be expected to practice, compose, and arrange music for the bi-weekly rehearsals outside of class time, and will be given individual guidance on composing and arranging by appointment.
Berkeley Nu Jazz Collective: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023
A study of problems in creative music, with emphasis on listening, collaboration and the development of original work.
Aurality and Creative Interaction 1: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025
Further studies in active listening, collaboration and creation, with emphasis on experimental and global practices of the last 100 years. Includes projects in composition and collaborative performance.
Aurality and Creative Interaction 2: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Private instruction of 6 hours of lessons for non-music majors throughout the semester for performers of the orchestral instruments. Lessons are focused on the study and performance of etudes and repertoire on the organ with a member of the private instructor faculty.
Orchestral Instrument Instruction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Private instruction of approximately 6 hours of lessons throughout the semester for singers who participate in the University Chorus (Music 144) or University Chamber Chorus (Music 145). Lessons are focused on the study and performance of vocalises and repertoire for voice with a member of the private instructor faculty.

Vocal Performance Instruction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
By audition, for intermediate performers of the notated keyboard repertoire, offering private instruction in 6 hours of lessons throughout the semester, typically given as twelve 30-minute lessons, focused on study and performance of keyboard repertoire with a member of the piano faculty. Placement is determined by audition of 2 contrasting pieces from the standard keyboard repertoire.
Intermediate Piano/Fortepiano Instruction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Private instruction of 6 hours of lessons and additional small group coaching throughout the semester for instrumentalists and singers who participate in the University Baroque Ensemble (Music 149). Lessons are focused on the study and performance of exercises and repertoire for Baroque instruments or voice with a member of the private instructor faculty.

Early Music Performance Instruction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Private instruction of 6 hours of lessons for non-music majors throughout the semester for performers of the organ. Lessons are focused on the study and performance of etudes and repertoire on the organ with a member of the private instructor faculty.
Organ Instruction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
By audition, for experienced performers of orchestral instruments who are concurrently-enrolled in Music 141. Students will receive 10 hours of private lessons with department faculty. Repertoire will be chosen in consultation with the faculty instructor. Students will perform in a solo public recital or jury each semester of enrollment. Students must re-audition each term to continue in the course.
Instrumental Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
By audition. The course will be a conservatory-style performance option for instrumentalists, offering instruction in performance of small group ensemble work (duos, trios, quartets, octets). Participants receive some coaching from faculty, and share their work in public performance.
Classical Ensembles Performance Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
Declared music majors who are concurrently enrolled in Music 144 (University Chorus) or Music 145 (University Chamber Chorus). Placement is determined by audition and is made at the discretion of the coordinator and supervisor. Students will receive 10 hours of private lessons with department faculty on fundamental vocal technique, stage technique, and musical and dramatic interpretation. Repertoire will be chosen in consultation with the faculty instructor. Students will perform in a solo public recital or jury each semester of enrollment. Students must re-audition each term to continue in the course.
Vocal Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
By audition. Vocal performance group workshop and studio course, designed to integrate applied vocal performance instruction, performance theory, and live performance.
Vocal Performance Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
By audition, for experienced performers of notated keyboard repertoire who are concurrently-enrolled in a Department of Music ensemble course. Students will receive 10 hours of private lessons with department faculty. Repertoire will be chosen in consultation with the faculty instructor. Students will perform in a solo public recital or jury each semester of enrollment. Students must re-audition each term to continue in the course.

Piano/Fortepiano Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
By audition, for pianists enrolled in 168C, offering ensemble work including individual practice with fellow performers. Ensembles may include working with vocalists or instrumentalists. Focused on the study and performance of the ensemble repertoire, including two sessions of coaching by the instructors involved. May be repeated, with or without credit.
Piano/Fortepiano Ensemble Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024

By audition, a companion course with MUS 168C for experienced performers of notated keyboard repertoire who are declared music majors or music minors. Students will be required to prepare and play work(s) from keyboard repertoire during the studio, as well participate in ensemble work including practice with classmates and live performances outside of class time. Course may be repeated for credit.

Piano/Fortepiano Performance Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Intermediate or advanced instruction in musical practices not encompassed in 168A-168B-168C, within the context of a directed academic program of studies. Students must have experience on the instrument or have studied it in the 130 series. The student's program will be worked out in consultation with the faculty in charge of the course. Each student's studies will lead to some kind of public performance.
Various Musical Practices Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
Intermediate or advanced instruction in the performance of jazz and improvisation. A directed program of study including participation in department-sponsored or UC Jazz ensembles, workshops, and special projects where applicable. Will include instruction and/or coaching, individually or in groups. Each student's studies will lead to some kind of public performance. The student's program will be worked out in consultation with the faculty in charge of the course.
Jazz Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
By audition. The course will be a conservatory-style performance option for jazz instrumentalists and jazz vocalists, offering instruction in performance and performance practice of small group ensemble work (duos, trios, quartets, octets) and providing expanded opportunities and incentives for performance. Students will be required to prepare and play work(s) during the studio.
Jazz Combos Performance Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
Music 168F is a vocal performance course for music majors who are concurrently enrolled in one of the Department of Music ensembles. Placement is determined by audition and is made at the discretion of the coordinator and supervisor. This course develops fundamental vocal techniques, stage techniques, and musical and dramatic interpretation.
Vocal Performance: Popular and Commercial: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
By audition, for experienced performers of classical guitar who are concurrently enrolled in a Department of Music
ensemble course. Students will receive 10 hours of private lessons with department faculty. Repertoire will be chosen in consultation with the faculty instructor. Students will perform in a solo public recital or jury each semester of enrollment. Students must re-audition each term to continue in the course.
Guitar Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Intermediate or advanced instruction in early music performance. The student's program will be worked out in consultation with the faculty in charge of the course. Each student's studies will lead to a solo public recital or jury each semester of enrollment.
Early Music Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
For students concurrently enrolled in a Department of Music ensemble course. Open by audition to experienced performers of organ repertoire from Baroque (or pre-Baroque) eras through the twenty-first century. The course will consist of 10 hours of private instruction with an organ instructor on the Music Department faculty, focused on the study and performance of organ repertoire. The student will perform in a solo public recital or jury each semester of enrollment.
Organ Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A seminar for upper division music majors. Topics will change each semester but will always represent a fairly narrow focus on a single issue in the history, interpretation, or social meaning of music. The course provides students with an opportunity to go deeply into one subject, to discuss their ideas in a seminar setting, and to carry out a substantial independent research project.
Topics in History, Culture, and Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A seminar for upper division music majors. The primary purpose of this course is to create an environment in which students can combine the research and analysis of music with live performance. The specific topic covered will change each semester. Class time will be divided equally among (1) historical and analytical readings; (2) discussion and analysis of recorded and live performances; (3) in-class performance. The final project will combine scholarly work and performance in the form of a lecture-recital or collaborative creative project.
Topics in Research and Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Materials and techniques of popular music across historical and global styles including new and current practices.
Popular Music Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
A seminar for upper division music majors. Topics will change each semester but will always represent a fairly narrow focus on a single issue in the history, interpretation, or social meaning of music. The course provides students with an opportunity to go deeply into one subject, to discuss their ideas in a seminar setting, and to carry out a substantial independent research project.
Topics in History, Culture, and Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
A seminar for upper division music majors and other prepared students by permission of the instructor. Topics will change each semester but will always concentrate on a selected musical practice from an ethnomusicological perspective. The course provides students with an opportunity to go deeply into one subject, to discuss their ideas in a seminar setting, and to carry out a substantial independent research project.
Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Selected Topics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
For those students who have completed Music 48 (Introduction to Music Therapy), a more in-depth study of the music therapy profession.  From analysis of case studies and research studies to clinical improvisation techniques and a closer look at music therapy interventions, this course will dive deeper into the profession.  This course will also begin an exploration into the psychology of music, the neurological responses to music and the innate human propensity for musical response and musical communication from a Music Therapist’s perspective.
Inside Music Therapy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
Individual study, undertaken in conjunction with an academic course, leading to the completion of the capstone project for the Music major.
Capstone Project in Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Individual tutorials leading to the completion of a special honors project.
Special Study for Honors Candidates in Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2018
Department organized and supervised field programs involving experiences in tutoring and related activities. Students taking the course for the first time will be provided with training suitable to the subject matter being tutored.
Field Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Not to serve in lieu of regular courses of instruction.
Group Special Study for Advanced Undergraduates: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
Berkeley Connect: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Not to serve in lieu of regular courses of instruction. Enrollment restrictions apply; see the Introduction to Courses and Curricula section of this catalog.
Supervised Independent Study and Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Principles and methods of scholarly research in Western art music, especially history and criticism of music; use of documents, and design of projects. Presentation of results in written and oral forms.
Introduction to Music Scholarship II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Broad overview of the methods, theories, topics, people, and historical forces that have informed ethnomusicology from both the humanities and social sciences perspectives. Students will learn to situate their own research in relation to the preceding scholarly debates, and to broaden and deepen their intellectual horizons.
Intellectual History of Ethnomusicology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2020, Fall 2019
Overview of the field of computer music and its application to music composition. Practices, procedures, and aesthetics related to the application of newer technologies to music composition will be covered in tandem with contemporary research topics in computer music. Recent computer music repertoire with its related technologies will be examined. Students in this proseminar must have advanced musical training and knowledge of the history and repertoire of electro-acoustic music.
Proseminar in Computer Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Studies in 20th-century music.
Seminar in Contemporary Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
A study of relevant problems and compositional techniques of contemporary music. Original compositions required of students. Group discussion and criticism.
Seminar in Composition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
The application of analytical principles to a group of compositions and the intensive study of at least one major work.
Studies in Musical Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
This graduate-level seminar is designed to foster community, artistic development, and professional preparation among composers. This seminar emphasizes studio sharing, group critique, and professional readiness. Students will engage in peer feedback, refine compositional approaches, and prepare materials for academic and industry opportunities, including CVs, job talks, and funding applications.
Continuing Graduate Seminar for Composers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Designed for graduate students in music composition, but open to graduate students in related disciplines who can demonstrate thorough knowledge of the history of electro-acoustic music as well as significant experience with computer music practice and research. All projects are subject to approval of the instructor.
Advanced Projects in Computer Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Experimental studies in Music Perception and Cognition. Research projects required.
Advanced Music Perception and Cognition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2012, Spring 2011
Technical and musical issues in the design and development of computer-based music systems including digital signal processing for the analysis and synthesis of sound, scheduling of multiple musical control processes, perceptual and cognitive models, user-interface design, reactive real-time control, and the analysis and representation of musical structure.
Advanced Topics in Computer Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2019
This course will provide a weekly forum for the exploration of strategies for composing for improvisers and improvising for composers, culminating in the presentation of new work. A number of approaches including gaming strategies, graphic and alternative notation systems, conduction, and other topics of interest to the students will be explored through performance, listening, analysis, and discussion.
Graduate Seminar: Composers and Improvisers Workshop: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
A specialized course in musical criticism. The topic will change each time the course is offered.
Topics in Music History and Criticism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course provides direction to graduate students in the latter phase of their PhD degrees. It is devised to provide productive structure to the dissertation writing process, and to help students write and learn skills important to their professional development. Students will have the opportunity to work through their dissertation ideas and present their work orally in a supportive academic environment.
Professional Development Colloquium: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 1995
Music can be a form of weapon or torture; a mediating force in conflict resolution; a force complicit with violence; storehouse of memory or process of healing for survivors of violence; a mode of resistance against a violent regime; and a creative process of alliance-building, among others. This seminar explores the various intersections of music and violence, and the emerging body of scholarship within ethnomusicology over the last decade dedicated to the subject. We will investigate the role of expressive culture in generating, mediating, contesting, or sustaining political and other social violence, and ask how music enables us to think creatively through the relationship between critical attention, compassion, and commitment.
Music and Violence: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 1996
This seminar explores the techniques of imaginative processes through which humans design alternative narratives, histories, futures, and subjectivities. Focusing on the musical and sonic, we examine how the musical imagination relates to other social and cultural processes by which we imagine culture into being. After a brief investigation of the anthropology of the imagination, we turn to the process of imagining the historical past; urban nostalgias and immigrant cultures; transnational and diasporic imaginaries; and the dystopian imagination in music. We consider how and why music participates in the social life of romanticism and fantasy, and how these roles inform conceptions of music’s importance to and place in society.
Music and the Imagination: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 1996
This seminar queries the relation between sound, technology, and power. Taking these three keywords/concepts as broad starting points, we will engage with theoretical approaches and case studies that span the emergence of recording technologies at the turn of the 19th century to algorithmic and robotic systems in the present. We will consider the avenues through which difference is represented, constructed, unsettled, and disturbed in music, films, archives, engineering, and software, among others. We will approach these matters from a variety of perspectives (e.g. Latin American, Chicanx, feminist, and Black radical intellectual genealogies) and academic disciplines (science, ethnic, media, cultural, border, and indigenous studies).
Sound, Technology, and Power: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This seminar will explore the trajectories and creative possibilities within sound studies through close reading of groundbreaking and recent ethnographic monographs. Each monograph is paired with theoretical texts from various fields that have informed the analytical and methodological approaches taken by the author. Students will consider the new possibilities and limitations that sound offers us, not only as a scholarly subject but also a medium of creative expression and social critique. Many authors will visit as guests—this will also provide an opportunity to inquire into the process of writing monographs; to learn how to generate generative and generous questions; and to ask how to participate in and create a scholarly community.
Ethnographies of Sound Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2021
Exploration of the conceptual and practical issues around research methods used in ethnomusicology, including onsite and digital fieldwork, transcription, interview techniques, recording, audio/visual documentary production, and ethnographic writing. Focus on skills to conduct original research in ethnomusicology through short-term local ethnographic projects during the semester.
Research Methods in Ethnomusicology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2019
Instruction in designing a doctoral research project, writing a dissertation prospectus, and formulating a grant proposal. The course will also explore possibilities of mobilizing scholarship beyond traditional academic avenues. Students will normally take this course one semester prior to presenting the prospectus for their doctoral dissertation.
Research Design and Praxis in Ethnomusicology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2000, Fall 1997
This course introduces ethno/musicological approaches to the study of sexuality and gender. We will study scholarly works that consider how music informs and reflects cultural constructions of femininity, masculinity, and non-binary genders, and consider questions of sexuality within and apart from these frameworks. Taking wide-ranging examples that include popular music, folk and indigenous musics, and European art music, we will investigate how gendered and sexualized subjectivities are negotiated through musical practices such as composition, performance, audition, and consumption. Class readings will include ethnomusicological, musicological, anthropological, feminist, Marxist, and queer theory approaches.
Music, Sexuality, and Gender: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2016, Fall 2012
Critical survey of the major issues raised and methodologies used in the study of popular music. Selected readings from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, musicology, ethnomusicology, communication, history, political science, economics, and music journalism.
Theory and Method in Popular Music Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2022, Fall 2021
A highly specialized course in ethnomusicology. The topic will change each time the course is offered.
Topics in Ethnomusicology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2022
Readings on interpretive theories dealing with current issues from the multiple disciplines informing the study of music. The selection of theoretical writings will change each time the course is offered. Course may be repeated for credit.
Current Critical Theories of Sound, Music, and Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Explores the intersection of music and computers using a combination of scientific, technological, and artistic methodologies. Musical concerns within a computational frame are addressed through the acquisition of basic programming skills for the creation and control of digital sound. Will learn core concepts and techniques of computer-based music composition using the Cycling74/MaxMSP programming environment in combination with associated software tools and programming approaches created by the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Included will be exposure to the essentials of digital audio signal processing, musical acoustics and psychoacoustics, sound analysis and synthesis. The course is hands-on & taught from the computer lab.
Sound and Music Computing with CNMAT Technologies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2019
The practice and theory of contextual instrument design for use in musical expression is explored. Students create new instruments and performance environments using a variety of physical interaction paradigms, programming practices, and musical processes emerging from the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Building on the methodologies established in Music 258A, the course develops aesthetic, analytic and technical skills through discussion, empirical study, and collaborative engagement. With a balance of artistic and technical concerns, participants deepen understanding of the creative process, demonstrating the results through class installation and public performance.
Situated Instrument Design for Musical Expression: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
Meetings for the presentation of original work by faculty, visiting lecturers, and advanced graduate students. Assigned readings. In rotation members of the class will be appointed as respondents for the papers.
Colloquium: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2017, Spring 2016
Open to qualified students who have been advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. and are directly engaged upon the doctoral dissertation.
Directed Dissertation Research - Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Open to qualified students for research or creative work on a particular topic. Not to serve in lieu of regular courses of instruction.
Group Special Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025, Spring 2023
Open to properly qualified graduate students for research or creative work, including work on the doctoral dissertation. Such work shall not serve in lieu of regular courses of instruction.
Special Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Special study under the direction of a staff member with emphasis on the teaching of undergraduate courses in music.
Professional Preparation for Teaching Assistants in Music: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
Preparation for the comprehensive or language requirements in consultation with the field adviser.
Individual Study for Master's Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Study in consultation with the major field adviser, intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare themselves for the various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D.
Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read More [+]