Program

The Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design Program enables undergraduates to build strong musical skills while mastering a variety of technology for the creation of sonic and visual art. This unique interdisciplinary program prepares undergraduates for careers focusing on electronic composition and performance, sound design and synthesis, audio recording, post-production, web/multimedia design, audio electronics, software development, and interactive audio for games. Students emerge with a full complement of theoretical and practical methods for creative expression.

The curriculum is unique among other seemingly similar programs at other schools. Students are engaged in activities ranging from custom software design, physical computing for human-computer interaction, electro-mechanical systems for robotic performance, and a smattering of many contemporary music subjects. The program teaches material most often found in disparate departments across traditional universities. With an emphasis on the sonic arts, students take classes covering subjects like electrical engineering, computer science, physics, acoustics, and mathematics, along with many courses emphasizing the program’s core interest in electronic music composition, production, and performance. Students are given a considerable amount of creative freedom to pursue projects of significant artistic merit.

The program in Music Technology also fosters collaboration between departments within the music school and CalArts as a whole. MTIID students are often found scoring and sound designing for the animation department, building installations with the art & theater departments, and engaging in musical collaborations with other students studying world music. Performance opportunities are plentiful across the abundance of concerts and events that occur year-round at CalArts.