Hunt, Andy, and Ross Kirk, (1997) “Technology and music: Incompatible subjects”? British Journal of
        Music Education, vol. 14, no.2  : 151-161.
 

This article discusses setting up, developing, and teaching the U.K.’s first postgraduate music technology

course at the University of York.  Technology, music, and computing can be very closely related from a

higher education perspective. It is hoped that the course of study will be of equal interest to musicians and

technologists working in institutes at various levels in the educational hierarchy, and may be instrumental

in encouraging collaboration between them. It describes a fruitful and successful collaboration between

engineers and musicians in pursuit of new avenues in contemporary electronic music and engineering.

The authors are professional engineers as well as committed musicians who describe the ways in which

technology can benefit from music.

In 1986 the University of York began running the United Kingdom’s first  Music Technology course. The

idea was to take people from both artistic and scientific backgrounds and let them learn together about the

art and technology of music. As each course progressed,  the “engineers” and “artists” would find

themselves immersed in a dynamic new topic area which transcended their original  subject boundaries.

Musicians were encouraged to use their musical skill to help them to understand computer programming

and signal processing; Engineers discovered mathematics there is in music and acoustics, and found they

could, with  suitable encouragement, compose.

The course has grown and developed over the years and the University now also runs a range of cross-

subject undergraduate courses in this area. Many other universities have since developed similar courses.

The course topics are: Electroacoustic Music: Signal Processing; Computer Fundamentals; Acoustics and

Psychoacoustics; and Computer Programming for Musical Applications.

In the “Computer Programming for musical applications,” the students are taught how to program

computers , and are also encouraged to use the computers as tools for artistic purposes,  rather than just a

medium for a final artistic purpose, like a painter uses brushes, canvas and paint as tools for creating

pictures.

The author states that the output of a computer program has to be worth the effort of typing it in, which not

only introduce the students to the fundamental constructs of programming but are also worthwhile artistic

creations. As an example,  the students learn about the concepts Fahrenheit-Celsius table with a small

program which plays a chromatic scale. The notes act as an aural “trace” through the program. One can

hear the pitch going up in steps and can look at the computer code while this is happening. When the

students first hear the scale, there is generally a smile and a feeling of accomplishment, even at this simple

task.

Also, the Music Technology and research department is concerned with the design of new kinds of

performance instruments, using sounds which produce voices which could not be obtained by a natural

acoustic mean, and new ways of interacting with these instruments in performance.
 

This is a time when the rapid growth of technology, teaching and researching initiatives, offers many

opportunities in the development of music education programs.
 

Above all, they conclude that technology and contemporary music are most certainly not incompatible

subjects.