Your final project is an analysis of piece of your choosing. The purpose of the project is for you to apply the skills you’ve learned in class, to a piece that you enjoy and want to share with the rest of the class.
Due dates
May 1: Project worksheet
- After doing some preliminary analysis, complete the project worksheet.
- Submit the worksheet to me on Blackboard.
- Send me a recording if your piece is not available on Spotify or Youtube.
May 8: Presentation
- Submit script/notes to me (hard copy or email).
- Prepare either a powerpoint-type presentation or a handout to act as a visual aid for your presentation.
- More details below.
May 9–15: Essay (may submit any day)
- Due on Blackboard in .pdf format
- More details below.
Presentation
In this presentation, you will apply knowledge you gained in our seminar to a piece of your choosing. It is worth 15% of your final grade.
Additionally, and more practically, the presentation will be like a first draft of your final paper. This will be an opportunity for you to get feedback from me and your peers.
Presenting and submitting
- On May 8, you will give a ten minute presentation, followed by a five minute Q&A.
- You must have either a powerpoint-type presentation or a handout to share with the class as a visual aid. Submit this on Blackboard.
- Submit your script/notes to me on Blackboard. It won’t be graded, but I use this to see how you improve/develop your ideas compared to the paper.
Content
- Use the worksheet you submitted and my feedback as a guide for your content.
- Analysis must engage with one or more methodologies discussed in class.
- You should have a clear thesis statement by the time you present. Doctoral students are expected to have an especially insightful thesis statement.
- We do not have time for historical context—get straight to your analysis!
Style
- Presentations must be professional, rehearsed, well-organized, and polished, in order to maximize the effectiveness of your limited time. Doctoral students will be held to a higher standard of professionalism.
Presentation grading rubric
Helpful tips
Essay
The analytical essay is the capstone project of the course, and is worth 35% of your final grade. The purpose is to demonstrate what you learned in our seminar by performing your own creative analysis of piece of your choosing. The paper will be an expanded (at least twice as long) and refined version of your presentation.
Submission
- You may submit your paper anytime between May 9 and May 15.
- The paper will be submitted to me on Blackboard.
- You must submit your paper combined into a single .pdf file.
- If you have video examples, these may be submitted separately.
- Instructions for combining documents with Acrobat/Windows
- Instructions for combining documents with Preview/Mac
- There are also websites you can use to combine .pdfs but I have not tested them and can’t vouch for a specific one.
Content
This is a music analysis paper. Some additional requirements and guidelines:
- Your music analysis must rely on and deeply engage with the analytical approaches we learned in class. This is the most important aspect of this paper. Master’s students should use one approach; doctoral students should combine two approaches.
- Your paper should be bound together with a thesis statement of some kind, i.e., some kind of central feature that you discovered while analyzing the piece. For doctoral students, you will still have a single unified thesis, which ties together both lenses of your analysis.
- The vast majority of your paper should be music analysis. If historical context directly enhances your central music-analytical thesis, then you may include it. Otherwise, restrict your biographical information to one paragraph.
- You should have chosen at least three aspects of the piece to focus on as examples which prove your thesis statement.
- Avoid qualitative language and irrelevant personal experience. The purpose of this paper is to show your understanding of the piece and the analytical techniques used, not to convince someone else to like the piece.
- Your tone and focus should be extremely similar to the readings we did throughout class. You might like to view my sample paper as a guide.
Length
- Master’s students: your paper should be at least 8 pages, but no more than 13.
- Doctoral students: your paper should be at least 14 pages, but no more than 20.
- Page counts include musical examples (within reason).
- If the length is causing you issues in any way, please talk with me and I’ll see if I can help you expand or condense your paper as needed.
Style
- 1” margins; professional 12 point font, such as Times; double-spaced
- Add a header with your name, the class, and the date you submitted it.
- Add page numbers.
- You must properly cite all authors whose techniques you use.
- You should have a bibliography at the end.
- Use Chicago or MLA format, whichever you are more familiar with.
- Proofread carefully.
Essay grading rubric
Spectrogram video examples
Many of you are using spectrograms in your final paper. I think the best way for you to include these as an example for me is to make a video of the spectrogram (as I do in my dissertation—see here).
To do so, you will make a screen recording of the spectrogram playing in the Sonic Visualizer app. Here are instructions for Mac and for Windows (the Windows one is for recording games, but you can actually use it to record anything).
Because embedding a video into a PDF is a fussy business, I’m okay with you submitting these examples as separate files. Just number them accordingly and reference them in the paper (e.g., “see Video Example 1”).