Considering the commercial
success of textbooks like Writing in a Visual Age (Odell,
Katz), Beyond Words (Ruszkiewicz,
Anderson, Friend), and Picturing Texts (Faigley,
George, Palchik, Selfe), the impact of visual rhetoric
on first-year writing pedagogy is undeniable. Because most
visually-oriented technologies also have audio components
(television broadcasts, the internet, video games, movies),
our discussion of visual rhetoric in the classroom should
logically extend to an examination of sound. But how can
this be accomplished? The following addendum to my first-year
writing syllabus—developed for my honours students—offers
one answer to that question:
(extract
of course syllabus)
Because this course is designated an
honours section of first-year writing, we are privileged
to have a smaller, enriched class that allows us to do
some extra learning together. So, in addition to all the
research and writing I’ve discussed on the previous pages
of this syllabus, we will be doing something a little out
of the ordinary.
Before
letting you in on the secret, let me give you some personal
background. In addition to my training as a writing teacher,
I also have an interest in making music; I’ve had two CDs
of electronic music published under the name The Joy Project
and have been making music for over 15 years now in a variety
of bands and on my own. Some of my research as a teacher
has explored the connections between writing essays and
writing music. In the past, students and I have found that
there are some interesting parallels between writing essays
and recording music; after all, both of them are “creative”
processes, and both mediums provide artists with the opportunity
to express their ideas, views, and feelings on a variety
of subjects. I’m sure you have some experience composing
essays already—but how would feel about doing a different
kind of composing as well?
This semester I’ve constructed a digital
recording studio space in the room right next door. It
contains a microphone; a digital drum machine (that can
produce about 300 different drum sounds and can be programmed
or played freehand); a keyboard synthesizer (that produces
about 300 distinct sounds); and a sampler (that allows
you to capture pre-recorded sound from CDs or tapes, or
sound through a microphone, and use that sound in many
different ways). There is also a computer-based, multitrack
recorder (that allows individual tracks of sound to be
recorded separately and then mixed together) and a bank
of “sound processors” (that can create special effects,
like echoes).
Here’s what I’m hoping we can do: After
we work on researching, writing, and revising our essays
in our regular class, we will meet in the studio next door
to experiment with sound (and hopefully we will be able
to record some music). Don’t worry: no music-making or
music-playing experience is required; all I ask is that
the sounds you create must in some way be connected to
the essays you are writing. For example, if you write a
persuasive essay arguing that forced volunteerism as a
high school graduation requirement is hypocritical or oxymoronic,
in the studio you will be trying to represent those same
arguments in sound. While the studio is primarily set up
to create experimental electronic music, if you have an
instrument you want to bring in to record, you may do that
as well.
Lastly, if you think the idea of writing
essays and recording music seems like a strange concoction,
I believe you’ll be surprised how much the two can be closely
connected. As a writer and musician, I personally have
discovered how much the two mirror one another (and how
much one activity has taught me about the other). By asking
you to engage in both of these processes, I hope you will
learn how to harness the emotional and intellectual power
of music (or sound) to better understand the rhetorical
(or persuasive) power of a well written, well researched
argument—and vice versa. Melding these two modes of expression
is a challenge, but with my help in the studio, I think
you will come to understand how artists might construct
effective persuasive arguments on controversial issues
in multiple mediums. Trust me, it’ll be fun; this is a
no-stress situation, but it will require your dedication
and openness to the process.
Faced with this course requirement, some
students immediately start looking for the exit. I’d be
lying if I didn’t say that even honours students initially
have difficulty comprehending this cross-pollination. The
rhetoric of words and the rhetoric of…sound? What could
the two possibly have in common? Fortunately, once I assure
everyone the only requirement is a healthy sense of exploration,
most students settle in. To orient ourselves to the connections
between written rhetoric and sound rhetoric, the students
and I begin our experimental first-year writing class by
discussing—in general terms—how rhetoric manifests itself
in a multitude of forms. Using excerpts from the aforementioned
textbooks, and other sources like Bronwyn Williams’ Tuned
In, we quickly explore
the visual, oral, textual, gestural, and aural aspects
of rhetoric. Since our focus is primarily on the aural
(and since students eventually create electronic musical
scores that correspond to their written texts), we focus
our exploration by listening to and journalling about a
variety of compositions (most of them experimental) recorded
by electronic artists who explicitly approach their art
in rhetorical ways.
One of these artists is Terre Thaemlitz,
whose recent CD release is titled “Coutre Cosmetique: Fragmented
Electroacoustique Symptomatic of the Need for a Cultural
Makeover.” Thaemlitz is a good example of a contemporary
electronic artist whose music is infused with an agenda.
As a self-prescribed “transgendered, non-spiritual, socio-materialist,”
Thaemlitz’s electronic and electroacoustic compositions
tackle a variety of controversial issues, including the
commodification of sex and gender, the erosive forces of
capitalism, and the questionable purposes of conventions
and social standards (Sun 2). At the beginning of our class,
students and I also analyze the experimental recordings
of John Duncan, an artist who has a long history of “transgressive
research in the name of art” (Young 5). His release titled
“The Crackling”—a meditation on the relationship between
science and religion—is composed from digitally edited
and treated segments of recordings made on location at
the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California (SLAC). According
to Duncan, the clattering blips and the subharmonic sinewaves
(all captured with carefully placed contact microphones
and manipulated digitally in post-production) represent
his inquiry into “the nature of humanity's view of its
place in the cosmos, in light of new discoveries about
the behavior of particles. Science has become as trusted
as a religion,” says Duncan. “But putting faith in science
to provide all the answers to all questions is a howling,
tragic mistake” (Young 6).
Although this basic orientation to the
rhetorical elements of contemporary electronic music is
crucial in making the class work, the point of my pedagogy
is not to simply talk or write about sound—but to MAKE
it. Fortunately for me, the majority of students quickly
grasp the idea of exploring the rhetoricity of both words
and sound, and most of them want the keys to the recording
studio post-haste. Emily, a student in my honours section
of first-year writing, was one of those excited individuals.
Like all others in the class, Emily initially worked at
researching, writing, and revising her essays in our rather
typical peer-centered, process-oriented classroom. But
this is not where her process ended. After developing a
solid written product, she took her ideas into the music
studio and attempted to represent them in sound as well.
(Note: While I understand this process may seem terribly
linear, the learning objectives for this first-year writing
course are set by the university—any “enrichment” work
we do, such as creating musical compositions, cannot take
precedence over the practice of writing traditional academic
essays.)
For one piece of persuasive writing,
Emily decided to investigate the subject of bilingual education.
She had spent most of her life feeling underprepared for
schools where the dominant spoken language was English
because she had been forced to attend what she considered
to be a flawed high school Spanish-English bilingual program.
As part of her written argument, Emily cited a number of
problems that she experienced firsthand, including teachers
who were non-native speakers and were not conversant enough
in English to prepare Spanish-speaking students. She also
argued that the bilingual system fueled separatist attitudes
by isolating Spanish students from their English-speaking
counterparts. To support her claims, Emily utilized and
documented a variety of print sources, particularly a series
of New York Times articles.
In her research, she discovered that a paltry 11 percent
of teenagers who enter the ninth grade actually leave bilingual
programs successfully, while the rest do not.
Because of her personal experience, Emily
felt very strongly about this issue. So, I was not surprised
when she entered the recording studio with a sense of determination
and an eagerness to see how her rhetoric might also be
represented using sound. Like most of the students in the
experimental course, Emily opted to create an abstract
electronic piece, one that did not rely on traditional
notation or rhythmic structures. My experience had taught
me that the “open canvas,” arrhythmic, atonal, aleatoric
approach used by some contemporary electronic abstractionists
allows room for students to experiment. Additionally, the
lack of formal training in music becomes less of an issue
for students when they feel free to work in an unconstrained
environment where they can focus on the ideas that
sound can represent, rather than on technique, chord arrangements,
or time signatures. Those few who do possess some musical
training are more than welcome to use that knowledge in
creating their compositions; but those who lack such an
education can have an equal chance at creating some stunning
pieces.
Sitting down with me in the digital recording
studio to begin her session, Emily unfurled the paper bag
she had brought with her. Inside was a handful of English-Spanish
language cassette tapes she had unearthed in the school
library; for her, these tapes represented the complexity
of her feelings about having attended a bilingual educational
program. She explained that she wanted to sample-and-cut
the English and Spanish voices on the tapes at alternating
speeds, while morphing the sounds through the sampler.
After a basic orientation to the studio equipment and a
few sessions of grubbing around (which, I’ve noticed with
most students, often mimics the prewriting stage in written
composition), Emily decided to begin her short, three-minute
composition with a tiny wisp of white noise which steadily
increases in volume over the duration of the composition
and eventually becomes an overwhelming roar. To me, it
sounded like an alien wind blowing through space—or across
an inhospitable landscape. She argued this menacing sound
represented how she and her peers felt when first introduced
to the U.S. educational system—she was lost in a vast,
faceless institutional system. As the hissing sound grows
incrementally louder, chopped fragments and slivers of
people talking are slowly introduced onto the canvas. Nanoseconds
in length, the fragments are purposefully not sustained
enough for the listener to understand complete words or
phrases; the voices are meaningless. In fact, it is difficult,
at first, to distinguish whether the voices are speaking
in any identifiable language; at such a shortened clip,
simply identifying them as human voices is a challenge.
She achieved this effect by using granular synthesis software
on the computer that allows the composer to sample any
piece of prerecorded material and reduce it to microscopic
pieces and rearrange it with the click of a mouse.
Stuttering along at a steady clip, the
fragmented voices grow incrementally louder, and they also
grow more sustained so that a few isolated words can be
understood at random. Although they are almost imperceptible,
English and Spanish voices—shrouded in a delayed echo effect—suddenly
rise from the chatter, creating a nonsense of words and
sentences. She claimed this jumbled mixture of vocal sounds
represented the confusion she felt having to navigate an
educational system that kept her mired in one language,
while claiming to give her access to the language of power.
Next, she added a factory-like grinding noise (representing
the idea of a monolithic educational institution) and more
sustained voices, and she slowly increased the volume of
all the elements to the point of digital distortion. The
composition, which took five, one-hour sessions to complete,
comes to a halting close just as it threatens to push the
listener to the brink of physical pain. This chaotic, shrieking
musical composition shares the same title as her written
essay: “A Superfluous System.”
In one sense, Emily managed to achieve
something remarkable. She took her well-crafted, carefully
researched written argument and translated it into sound.
Emily claimed that her abstract musical composition represented
her arguments against bilingual education as it is typically
practiced in the United States. On the other hand, it is
important to note that her musical score is considerably
less nuanced than her written essay: her experimental musical
piece cannot possibly incorporate opponent’s viewpoints;
nor can it cite authorities on this issue as support. The
very immediacy of sound as a medium required Emily to reduce
her argument down to basic (maybe even strictly pathetic)
elements; students are often quick to point out this and
other material differences between the two mediums. However,
students also note that their audio compositions sometimes
have an advantage in capturing a more emotional, personal,
and immediate response to various issues than their written
essays.
As I’ve detailed in other articles I’ve
written (see references), a number of interesting and useful
conversations arise from these parallel activities. For
example, students are often surprised at the similarities
of citing sources in a written text and sampling / manipulating
pre-recorded audio sources for use in a musical composition
(such as Emily’s use of the English-Spanish language tapes).
Referencing sources in either instance requires a certain
finesse if the cited or sampled material is to fit smoothly
within the composition; issues of fair use, documentation
and copyright permission, and the vagaries of misrepresentation
are relevant in both situations; citing written sources
and sampling audio sources equally highlight the complexity
of building directly upon the pre-existing work of other
scholars and artists.
Beyond the realm of sampling, I’ve noticed
that the recursive creative processes students naturally
use while composing music are strikingly similar to the
processes they utilize while writing their essays; all
nonlinear stages of the writing process—from prewriting
to publication (when we create a compilation CD at semester’s
end)—are present in the recording studio as well as the
writing classroom. Similarly, students and I discuss the
effects a written or musical composition may equally have
on an audience. Technical and stylistic issues also extend
into both kinds of composing: students discover how the
length and organization of a written or musical composition
should relate to its purpose; how themes or theses in written
texts are similar to musical motifs or particular repeating
sounds in music; how the effects of punctuation, like exclamation
points or commas, can be accomplished by using silence
or suddenly increasing volume in a musical piece. Additionally,
the technology driving both word processing and sound processing
have almost identical user interfaces that students tend
to grasp quickly. These include: functions to create new
documents, edit existing documents, and import elements
from external sources. Both also have “special effects”
options. In word processing, there are “visual effects”
like numerous types and sizes of fonts, as well as typeface
effects (bold, italics, shadow, outline, animation); in
music processing, there are many “sound effects” options
(reverb, echo, phasing, reversing, pitchshifting, and harmonizing).
In both kinds of compositions, students discover how such
effects might be used for rhetorical purposes.
As you can see, similarities in both
mediums are so numerous that a comprehensive discussion
is nearly impossible. Generally speaking, I prefer not
to hold prescribed discussions with students about these
theoretical and practical connections when we are in the
recording studio together. This way, I hope the student
experiences the studio as not simply an extension of the
academic writing classroom (which is often steeped in a
student-teacher hierarchy), but as an almost sacred place
of relatively pure experimentation. Accordingly, there
is one facet of this pedagogy I’ve tended to downplay in
the articles I’ve written on this topic, and I’d like to
correct that. To be honest, the most powerful effect of
this pedagogy has been the fun-factor. After teaching writing
at the secondary and post-secondary levels for over a dozen
years, I have to honestly admit that my classroom gets
a little stale from time to time—this is a perennial challenge
for us all. Being able to reinvent my writing classroom
by immersing students in the rhetorical aspects of sound—and
by spending hours with them as they discover this new “compositional
space” in the recording studio—has been a great boon to
me professionally. Certainly, learning is a serious endeavor,
but having fun is equally serious. Upon reflection, I realized
that my classroom had been lacking a lighthearted spirit
of exploration that it once possessed, and this pedagogy
has changed that.
Students are not shy about admitting
their sense of fulfillment and enjoyment, and their musical
compositions often reflect those feelings. As my syllabus
above states, writing students are supposed to rhetorically
connect their musical compositions to their essays in some
fashion. On occasion they purposefully bend that rule in
their desire to explore the world of sound, and the “essay-music
connection” can be tentative at best. In one case, three
students—Lisa, Jessica, and John—decided to coauthor a
musical composition called “Walking on Water in Two Notes.”
This composition was tangentially connected
to an essay written by only one of the students, Lisa.
Her written essay, titled “Taking Attendance,” examined
the pros and cons of mandatory attendance policies in college
courses. I allowed this musical collaboration because I
thought the chemistry between the three students in the
studio might make for an interesting product. Deciding
to “co-author” a musical piece was a bold move on their
parts; although I may be stating the obvious, these students
encountered many of the same challenges and complexities
that also accompany the co-authoring of written texts.
They had to navigate differences in voice, overall style,
opinions, personal musical preferences, and even schedules.
Additionally, since only Lisa had completed actual research
on the topic of mandatory attendance policies in college,
she needed to act as a guide for the other two students
in the studio by teaching them what she had learned about
the topic—and having to, ultimately, articulate her ambivalence
about the issue. In her essay, Lisa contended that college
students were often caught somewhere between childhood
and adulthood and that some, but not all, needed the motivation
that attendance policies could provide. At the same time,
she concluded that such policies could seem condescending
to students who were indeed self-starters. For research,
she examined the rationale for attendance policies that
were enforced on different college campuses around the
country and compared policies enacted by a number of her
own professors. After Lisa shared her research and perspective
with her peers, the trio’s conversation turned to the broader
topic of stress in college—how prevalent it was, how students
dealt with stress, and the overall seriousness that seemed
to characterize their college-level learning. As a group,
they lamented how fun learning used to be when they were
younger, and they wondered aloud what had happened to that
lighthearted sense of exploration.
Discovering this shared sentiment, they
decided to begin recording their musical composition. The
mood in the studio was very receptive, and the group managed
well as they explored various sounds and effects—collectively
and individually. The energy between them—and the spirit
of invention—is apparent in the funny, quirky, and lively
composition itself, which took three, one-hour sessions
to complete. The bubbling, syncopated keyboard sound (which
they claimed represented the hectic, fractured feeling
that punctuated their lives as college students) is peppered
with irreverent vocalizations (some which were planned
and others which were improvised), and the herky-jerky
nature of the piece is playfully off kilter. The menacing,
robotic “voice of authority” which tells listeners to “study
more,” “study harder,” and “study all night,” is undercut
by the overall jovial quality of the piece. In a reflective
essay students wrote at the end of the course, Lisa, Jessica,
and John admitted that their time in the studio was an
opportunity to temporarily shed the burden of tests and
midterm projects and to try and rediscover the fun of learning—while
also meditating on their ambivalence towards mandatory
attendance policies in college classes. All three said
they were feeling particularly overwhelmed at being college
students during the recording sessions, and that their
time composing together was a healthy way to commiserate
and let off steam. Again, having fun is serious business,
and Lisa, Jessica, and John managed to have fun, express
themselves, and learn something about rhetoric at the same
time.
While almost every one of my students
have responded positively to this pedagogical experiment,
the same cannot be said for all of my colleagues. While
I have heartily enjoyed implementing this pedagogy, I am
compelled, as a professional, to offer two caveats to any
writing teachers—especially untenured ones—who might try
to reproduce it. On several occasions over the last three
years, a number of my peers have been critical, rightly
or wrongly, of my pedagogical explorations. First, I’ve
been reminded that any claims I make regarding student
success are strictly anecdotal. This is true; I’ve not
conducted a quantitative or qualitative study regarding
the work students complete in the writing classroom and
the recording studio. Although this pedagogy is still in
its tentative, formative stages, I suspect such a study—especially
focusing on the attitudes and perceptions of first-year
writers engaged in this enterprise—would prove useful and
interesting. Future research into this area would be beneficial.
A second caveat involves the hoary tenet of “publish or
perish.” As a writing professional who is interested in
the rhetoricity of electronic music and its production,
I’ve listed my own original music (published by a variety
of record labels on CD and distributed to national record
franchises and online venues) as evidence of “publishing
activity” on my professional dossier. Unfortunately, I’ve
been reminded by tenure committees (at more than one university
where I’ve been employed) that this creative work lacks
scholarly relevance to the field of rhetoric and writing
and that such works are unlikely to have significant impact
regarding tenure. The privileging of traditional written
texts over alternative forms of scholarship and the simplistic,
binary thinking that drives the arbitrary separation of
scholarly work and creative work are topics that lie outside
the scope of this article. They nevertheless highlight
the fact that, regardless of how mature and open-minded
we are as scholars, there is always room to grow…
Spending time in the writing classroom
and recording studio with students has helped me grow in
many ways. I am continually exposed to new music through
my students; their ideas and opinions about music have
helped me grow as a musician. This learning experience
has also shown me, in concrete terms, how connected and
analogous various creative processes are. Additionally,
it has expanded my notions of rhetoric as it exists beyond
the line of sight, so to speak. As it turns out, rhetoric
is more pervasive than I ever imagined.
References
Duffy,
W. Keith. “A Pedagogy of Composing: The Rhetoric of Electronic
Music in the Writing Class.” Inventio. 29
September 2005. 1 October 2005 <http://www.doiiit.gmu.edu/inventio/>.
Duffy,
W. Keith.
"Digital Recording Technology in the Writing Classroom: Sampling As Citing." The
Writing Instructor. 1 February 2004. Retrieved 27 September 2005
<http://www.writinginstructor.com/essays/duffy-all.html>.
Faigley,
Lester, Diana George, Anna Palchik, and Cynthia Selfe. Picturing
Texts. New York: Norton, 2004.
Joy
Project, The. Trip to Style City. New
York: Bar-None Records, 2004.
Joy
Project, The. Way Out Here.
Miami: Neurodisc/EMI Priority Records, 2001.
Odell,
Lee, and Susan Katz. Writing in a Visual Age. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2005.
Ruszkiewicz,
John, Daniel Anderson, and Christy Friend. Beyond
Words: Reading and Writing in a Visual Age.
New York: Longman, 2005.
Sun,
Yew.
"Dropping the Lovebomb: An Interview with Terre Thaemlitz." Liquid
Architecture. 13 July
2004. Retrieved 15 August 2004
<http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/terre.html>.
Williams,
Bronwyn T. Tuned In: Television and the Teaching of
Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2002.
Young, Rob. "Worship the Glitch." The
Wire: Adventures in Modern Music.
January 2000: 52-56. |
