Conference Agenda

In this paper I show that the slow progress of diversifying the core theory and aural skills curriculum is a result of the commodification of the repertoire, theories, and analytical skills that we study and teach. As Christoph Hermann (2021) argues, commodification is a process that leads from a good/service being given a price (like the introduction of a textbook) to a situation in which the actual content of the good/service becomes subject to change in order to minimize the costs of its own production (like the rigidity of the curriculum guiding an advanced placement course-to-test pipeline). I show how this process has shaped our discipline, leading to an alienation, deskilling, and/or disempowering of instructors. The paper ends with some examples of how we might overcome the barriers created by commodification and, in turn, make music theory more diverse, inclusive, and accessible.

The 2019 Society for Music Theory plenary session “Reframing Music Theory” exposed many ways in which music theory is rooted in, and continues to uphold, structural inequities. Since this revelation, music theory has seen burgeoning efforts to make the field more inclusive and diverse. One response involves collecting musical examples by historically marginalized composers for use in the classroom. Little work has been done, though, to examine who is given a voice to speak about music through publication. How do the demographic, cultural, and employment backgrounds of authors publishing in disciplinary journals, such as Music Theory Spectrum or Music Theory Online, compare to those publishing in pedagogical contexts, such as through textbooks or other classroom resources like Loeffert and Peterson (2025)? Our project addresses this question by comparing the results of our IRB-approved survey on publication data in disciplinary journals to similar data drawn from pedagogical publications including JMTP, Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, VanHandel (2020), Lumsden and Swinkin (2018), and Hoag (2022).

Our work shows differences between topics, musical genres addressed, methodological approach, and co- vs. solo authorship among those who self-identify as minoritized compared to those who self-identify as belonging to the majority.

In this talk, I argue that Video Game Music (VGM) represents a key pedagogical asset for reconceiving the core Music Theory curriculum as diverse, culturally capacious, and reflective of contemporary musical practices. In particular, it represents a largely untapped resource for Theory instructors wishing to re-weight undergraduate curricula toward understudied musical parameters such as timbre and time while placing the study of Music Theory within a rich interdisciplinary context. I illustrate this potential by detailing two timbre-centric lesson plans that assume no specialized prior knowledge, both used in the classroom during the past year.

I first examine how VGM’s idiosyncratic and eclectic approach to genre allows the instructor to introduce the study of timbre in an intuitive, culturally situated way, outlining a lesson plan based on Masatoshi Yanagi’s soundtrack to Ghostwire: Tokyo (2022). Evoking the juxtaposition of dense contemporary urban environments with ghosts and spirits drawn from traditional Japanese mythologies, Yanagi’s soundtrack blends the instruments of Gagaku with sounds and formal strategies characteristic of EDM production. Using this unique combination as a point of departure, students encounter sharp contrasts in timbral profile and ways of organizing time that map directly onto concrete experiences of gameplay. These encounters serve as an intuitive platform for learning to interpret spectrogram visualizations while opening doors to both more in-depth study of Gagaku as well as further study of rhythm and form in EDM.

I then outline a learner-driven approach to analyzing compositions for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) using FamiStudio, an open-source DAW that emulates the console’s sound hardware. Learners first identify musical effects in a set of assigned tracks. In class, after a brief primer on amplitude envelopes (ADSR) and the constraints available on the NES, they consider and discuss potential ways of generating these effects, turning to FamiStudio for collaborative analysis of selected compositions. Through analysis of how basic timbral effects can be simulated with limited means, learners construct a conceptual model of basic acoustic properties. Follow-up topics include the perceptualized nature of timbre, the role of technology in determining compositional constraints, and analysis of musical style.