Kids say the darndest things

Alvin likes to tell folks about his undergrad seminar that he teaches on Esxperimental music. His goal is to inundate the kids with thousands of musical examples and not much discussion. he wants them to understand structure and not talk about emotional reactions to music.

this stance has led to speculation on the part of the grad student population as to what motivated him to limit discourse in this way. One of the vetran students said that the undergrads here will say bizarre things trying to describe their reaction to a pice. really, really strange, he said.

Today, in the class I TA, the students were playing their midterm projects and the class was discussing them a bit. One of the students played a really good project. Very nice. Very tonal (as in, it used them, verses being musique concrete), very thoughtful. It was lovely. Ron gave some feedback and then the class was asked if they had comments. they're a quiet bunch. half the time, they won't say anything. But this one kid, who was very impressed, started speaking, kind of slowly about it. "The beginning sounded like robots who were in love, but who were fighting, like, on top of a carribean restaurant . . ." [pause] "that was full of aliens."

took the words right out of my mouth