<p>MusicTechDad, your son might enjoy Umich’s PAT program 
Because if I had to describe it, this probably best represents the nut of many conversations I’ve had with my son trying to understand and capture his area of study in that program :):</p>
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<p>Compmom, I’ve spent the last four years trying to tease out the many nuances in this field. Like musictechdad, my son also started out with a degree of traditional composition skills, performance skills, and recording/mixing/mastering skills.
(Note – this is in part a response to a pm about what said kid studied :))</p>
<p>He also enjoys experimentation via the creation of instruments, controllers and Arduino. Just another way to create an aural experience using technology, in essence. The geek version of Hendrix :)</p>
<p>But he doesn’t define his work as electro acoustic, per se, although he would define SOME of his work that way. He more or less views technology as the tool to create an experience for an audience that is not genre-specific. EA has come for some to mean a fairly specific feel or aesthetic (think Cage, Oliveros). At the same time, the approaches used in EA find their way into all sorts of music, especially when it comes to video game music, for example, but even in “traditional” pop :)</p>
<p>His particular study of music technology has been to master the science, technology and compositional theory to write, produce and “program” music whether the sounds are electronic, hybrid, captured, organic, or synthetic and whether it is delivered via live performance or like a live interactive performance (think multimedia performance or live looping or electronic performances using an AP40 or notepad computer with often additional visual experiences) situational interactively (eg like a video game where the environmental music shifts according to play action) or produced/mastered for traditional delivery.</p>
<p>So the problem with the term “music technology” is that it is very broad. But the problem with “electronic music” is that suggests the exclusion of acoustic capture, which IMO, is not true (there are always acoustic instruments captured and modified in my son’s electronic compositions ;)) The problem with “ElectroAcoustic” as a term is that on one hand, technically speaking, it describes a now-common process, yet on the other, describes a pretty specific style of composition that is perhaps more experimental and academic than the average student seeking music technology is after.</p>
<p>By way of example, we recently had a poster on these threads interested in music technology as it relates to film scoring, but whose decided aesthic was definitely classical.</p>
<p>In McSon’s program, which was one part composition, mcson wrote and produced things as varied as: a classical minimalist piece for string quartet; an interactive exhibit whereby the users would pick up a phone at a sound station and have their words mixed in with generated and algorithmically controlled segments then produced on the fly with the resulting “piece” produced via speakers in the trees (kid ya not); electronic dance music; experimental ambient music; indie pop songs with a mix of traditional instruments and found sounds, drone music; chip tunes, short film scores and foley work, interactive visual events where the music generated visual graphical interpretations, and so on.</p>
<p>His particular curriculum, however, had the interactive media element. The engineering curriculum would have had more time spent on honing capture, mixing, and mastering, although he did study each. The difference was that in upper year courses, he took more interactive programming/performance systems/computer composition courses, and fewer upper level recording courses. </p>
<p>Where this leaves us in terms of understanding how best to assist students seeking “music technology” degrees is basically a set of questions about what the student would like to be able to do, what the students level of music performance, composition, programming, live capture, sequencing and mixing to date is, whether or not the student is mainly interested in creating their own music or producing others, and what kind of proficiency the student has in science and math, plus what kind of music the student prefers to make/is most interested in.</p>
<p>Beyond that, I think I’d need a degree in it myself to tease out the nuances of the labels :)</p>