List of institutions that use supercollider as their go-to language in a course

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Hi all, as I am currently trying to gather my thoughts towards pitching some sort of supercollider related research project (from the musicology side, not the informatics side), I wonder if we have a list somewhere of institutions that use supercollider as their go-to language in a course (and what courses, in which program and who taught/teaches them)?
(And if this has been answered somewhere already, kindly point me there please)

By this (the “go-to language in a course”) I mean that the course requires students to use/learn/understand sclang, not just that the instructor uses it in their own work. What this doesn’t mean is that the course needs to be on supercollider exclusively or in particular.

This would be helpful because it would give me an idea on the degree to which the project is or is not de facto tied to the university ecosystem, if/how much it interfaces with more traditional composition programs, etc.

I figure that more than one forum member on here teaches or has taught such a course, but for instance I only recently learned that the Université de Montréal has a dedicated course in their computer music program… I guess it’s a testimony to how much I have been leaving the house…)

So if you have intel in that respect, maybe quickly post it here (institution and whatever details you are privy to and wish to share) or (if for whatever reason you don’t want this to be public), write me a message? I would be very grateful.

So far we have:
Estelle Schorpp, U de Montréal
Rachel DW Rome, Berklee
Scott Wilson, U of Birmingham
Sam Pluta, Peabody
??? , UW Seattle
Daniel Mayer, KUG/IEM Graz
??? Georgia Southern, possibly GA Tech as well (tbd)
Julian Rohrhuber, SH Düsseldorf/IMM
Eli Fieldsteel, Urbana-Champagne
Ron Kuivila, Wesleyian
Mike Cottle, U of Utah
@amt, hmt München
James Harkins, Xinghai Conservatory, Guangzhou
Bjarni Gunnarson, Royal Conservatory The Hague

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Rachel Devorah Wood Rome teaches such a course at Berklee… (public info) Audio Programming in SuperCollider | Berklee College of Music @R_D_W_Rome

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My experience from British post graduate courses is that many of them don’t teach software, but teach a broader topic and look at software briefly, letting students decide what to learn. I’ve led one off sessions at the University of Glasgow doing this. The undergraduate course uses Max with the option of pd, although SC would be fine if a student wanted to, again it is more the sound design concepts that are taught rather than software.

It might be worth also considering how long the course runs for and if it is a mandatory part of something, at Glasgow, the undergrad course is one semester and coupled with another semester doing sound design in reaper.

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I teach SC at the University of Birmingham.

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I teach it at Peabody Institute. It is part of our Masters curriculum, but many undergrads take the class.

Before that I taught it at University of Chicago. Before that I taught it at Manhattan School of Music. I doubt it is currently being taught at those last two places.

Sam

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Im pretty sure UW Seattle still uses it as well!

/*
Josh Parmenter
www.realizedsound.net/josh
*/

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`Thanks all for the replies so far! I’ll update my original post to actually make a list, but keep it coming…

@jordan, this was my experience in Vienna (mdw) as well, and it does sound reasonable in environments where students don’t have much prior programming experience.

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Hi,

I am teaching SuperCollider as part of the mandatory 2-year (4 term) sound synthesis course within the BA Computer Music and Sound Art at IEM Graz. Hence, it is not primarily an SC course, but SC is a basic vehicle for the content. From time to time, I am offering an extended (“unorthodox”) synthesis course, also based on SC.

That said, students encounter various software in different courses, mostly open source. Aside from SC, Pd is also a popular choice. Which software students use for their artistic projects is up to them. See the curricula and course descriptions of the Bachelor’s and Master’s programs via the links below (*).

best

Daniel

BA Computer Music and Sound Art

https://www.kug.ac.at/en/studying/studies-offered/fields-of-study/computer-music/bachelors-programme-computer-music

Courses (link from above):

https://online.kug.ac.at/KUGonline/wbstpcs.showSpoTree?pStStudiumNr=&pSJNr=1143&pStpStpNr=2889&pStartSemester=

(*) Click the small squares with the arrow, then select the course to view the description. You may need to change the language to English using the menu at the top right.

MA Computer Music and Sound Art

https://www.kug.ac.at/en/studying/studies-offered/fields-of-study/computer-music/masters-programme-computer-music

Courses (link from above):

https://online.kug.ac.at/KUGonline/wbstpcs.showSpoTree?pStStudiumNr=&pSJNr=1143&pStpStpNr=2894&pStartSemester=

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also Georgia Tech had a big presence at the Symposium - I expect there are some dedicated classes there…

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At the Institute for Music and Media, we teach a number of courses that have SuperCollider as a lingua franca. There are three courses:

  • algorithmic acoustics
  • hybrid sound computing
  • extended systems (algorithms in the wild)

The courses are officially part of the programmes B.Mus. Musik und Medien (artistic) and B.Ing. Ton und Bild (engineering). The students from the Masters programme Klang und Realität often participate. Also we have people that just come as guests.

I generally combine topics from philosophy, media theory, mathematics, and physics with programming, and SuperCollider serves as a common ground for experiments.

Some links:

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Great question! three more that I know of in here in the US:

Eli Fieldsteel at Urbana-Champagne Eli Fieldsteel - School of Music

Ron Kuivila at Wesleyan Experiments in Sound and Technology MUSC 224

Mike Cottle at University of Utah Mike Cottle - School of Music - The University of Utah

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and I learned from Chris Brown at Mills College, RIP Mills

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I teach Supercollider at the University of Music and Theater Munich, Germany.

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Indeed, we do use SC here at DXARTS (UW Seattle).

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I’ve used SuperCollider for one semester of Digital Audio and Interactive Multimedia (数字音频与交互多媒体) for master’s students at Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou – the multimedia requirement ends up being Jitter in the second term though. (Yeah I know… I tried with Gem in Pd for awhile, keep the open source flame alive, but encountered several strange behaviors on Mac so I had to dump it )

hjh

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In Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, SuperCollider is a central tool in both teaching and practice. I teach three courses that use it extensively, and it is also featured in workshops. In addition, our Wave Field synthesis class, and the accompanying system are also in SuperCollider.

https://sonology.org/
https://sonology.org/bachelors-programme/
https://bjarni-gunnarsson.net/courses

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Ah! Sorry! Forgot Joo Won Park at Wayne State University in Detroit!

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Hello, I am a teacher at a professional conservatory. My students are aged 16-17. In the subject of New Technologies Applied to Music, I am thinking of teaching Sulercollider for at least one term. I am looking for ideas on how to approach this in order to stimulate my students and awaken their interest in algorithmic music.
Best regards