CartMusic Writing Workshop Instructor: Romulo MoraesProgram: WorkshopCredit(s): 1Date: January 18th, February 1st and 15, March 1st Time: 14:00-16:30 ET
DESCRIPTION: An apocrypha, misattributed at different times to Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, and others, states that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
This maxim is a provocation against music critics, who would try to express musical sentiments in language as if they could casually translate them through their words. Although the quote hides a romantic notion of the ineffability of musical aesthetics, it is fair in its contestation of the current paradigm of music writing, which either implies easy transparency in the conversion of sonic impressions or relies on a cold, technical, supposedly rational interpretation of music by way of notational parameters. It also acknowledges the first lesson of art criticism: that writing is a form of literature, an art form of its own like any other, to which the critic needs to submit different artworks. Thus, music criticism would be, first of all, a literary practice. The main fault of the maxim is not that music is easy to translate but instead that the difficulty in translating itself can be potentially productive.
This Workshop will provide practical training on how to write effectively and synthetically about music. In particular, we will address pop music, which lacks a common imaginative vocabulary of abstractions, and we will use forms of communication that are amicable to current-day social media, which, contrary to traditional publishing, are ever relevant. Exercises will include short reviews, one-liners, video commentaries, and a longer essay (from the online pitch to the final editing process). The main takeaway from this Workshop should be a deeper engagement with listening and clarification of one’s taste and its translation into text. Why do you like or dislike a song that has been just released? How do you transmit the images and feelings it evokes in you to a wider audience, without alienating either the musically trained or the total dilettante? Lastly, how can music writing allow us to better understand the openings between art forms, between media, and between people?
Session 1: Introduction to Music Writing – We will introduce the bulk of the seminar and its schedule and assignments, and talk about comparative aesthetics and the phenomenology of the musical work, or how to effectively translate between artforms.
Session 2: Short Review – We will read and edit the outputs to your first assignment (short review) and compare them with examples of great music writers to understand how music reviews are usually structured and how creative writing techniques can play into it.
Session 3: One-Liners – We will read and edit the outputs to your second assignment (one-liners) and discuss the conditions of critique and judgment of a piece of music, as well as learn to synthesize complex ideas into punchy, forthright, often humorous or dramatic phrases.
Session 4: Video Commentary – We will watch and discuss the outputs to your third assignment (video commentary) and discuss the role of music criticism in the current landscape of low-attention-span, influencer-dominated social media, or how one may or may
not become a music writer in the practical sense, attentive to how freelancing markets work.
IMAGE: Mohammad Salemy, Record Store, 2023
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