Professional development courses at EML

Those of us who come to the study of music as artists and performers typically do so through either applied music degrees or private or self study. The challenge is that these pathways fall short in the attempt to address research, the creative integration of modern technology, and experiential and tactile explorations of the reality of music making. For the most part, music programs fully cede that space to completely academic, and frequently unrelated degrees.

The greatest performers can also be intensely curious about exploring questions about their singing or playing. They can deeply want to lay the foundation for an evidence-based approach to performing and teaching over a lifetime. The idea that one must either be curious or an expressive performer is an artifact of marketing, not reality.

These EML professional development courses are for those who:

  • are active and involved in music making and music teaching.

  • want to come to explore and better understand everything there is to know about their performance practice, the function of their voice or instrument, and the nature of the sound they make.

  • want to move beyond quick tips or tricks

  • are ready to shift their perspective and come to fundamentally change their experience of music making and teaching.

Our teachers have years of experience running envelope-pushing courses at major conservatories and schools of music. Their classes are now available to you.

Upcoming classes and classes in development

  • The Acoustic Vocal Pedagogy Workshop

    Registration now open for summer 2024

    In-person Synchronous | Online Asynchronous
    The premier workshop exploring modern voice acoustics and practical application for voice teachers and singers.

    In-person workshop July 29th, 2024 - August 2nd 2024

    Online course access opens June 1, 2024. Access for six months with synchronous faculty meetings June of 2024.

    Faculty

    Kenneth Bozeman
    Ian Howell
    Chadley Ballantyne
    Kayla Gautereaux
    Marci Rosenberg
    Joanne Bozeman
    Lauren Guthridge

  • Practical Fractals: A Score-Based Method for Expressive Interpretation of Baroque Vocal Music

    Online Synchronous | Online Asynchronous

    European music of the 17th and 18th centuries is formulaic, yet expressive. Simple, yet passionate. It is deeply human, ancient, and precient of our modern struggles all at once. Both smaller in scale than later orchestra-based traditions, and appropriate for concert settings and pastiche regardless of the original performance context, it presents a repertory accessible and profitable for new and veteran singers alike.

    How to best interpret and perform this music is a long debated question. In my career performing this music with countless colleagues and conductors, I was able to discern the patterns that point to obvious phrasing choices at the textual, melodic, and harmonic levels. This score-based approach will free you from the limitations of both strict adherence to the page and also the often structurally aimless result of purely emotional or sub-text driven approaches to singing. It will also significantly decrease your dependance on coaches or conductors and enable you to show up to the first rehearsal with a well-formulated and emotionally connected perspective.

    Appropriate for both professional and pre-professional singers, participants will learn the basics of figured bass notion, practice sketching out structural elements of their repertory relevant to their interpretive needs, and will learn the art of effective declamation of recitative.

    Coursework includes prerecorded lectures and analysis projects and low-latency small group coaching demonstrations.

    Faculty

    Ian Howell

  • Hearing Singing: Advanced Perception and Analysis

    Online Synchronous | Online Asynchronous

    This advanced online course covers the basics of sound generation, propagation, and perception of the singing voice. Coursework includes reading, lectures, and discussions, and students are encouraged to experiment with biometric and acoustic analysis.

    Faculty
    Ian Howell

  • Introduction to all the Graphs (Free)

    Online Asynchronous

    The voice science commonly uses specialized images and graphs to represent important concepts. These highly efficient images can actually inhibit understanding, especially when we encounter them without context or explanation.

    This short course aims to introduce and demystify common images used in voice science. You will come to understand not just how to read various images; but the processes that generated them. Images covered include a flowglottogram, derivative (including MFDR), spectrum, spectrogram, audio waveform, electroglottogram (including the dEGG), and respiratory inductance plethysmography traces.

    Faculty

    Ian Howell

  • Praat for Singing Voice Research

    Online Synchronous | Online Asynchronous

    Praat is an incredibly powerful and flexible app to analyze signals created by a singing body. Unlike consumer apps like Voce Vista Video Pro, Praat’s power is a result of its built in scripting language. This means that with a reasonably small investment of time to learn the basic concepts at play in writing scripts, you will be able to apply analysis processes to a large number of long files.

    This self-paced course, with synchronous and asynchronous elements, will take you from having no experience with Praat or programming languages, and teach you how to structure simple scripts, use variables, loops, textgrid annotations, conditional statements, and table objects (like a spreadsheet) to extract, analyze, and graph complex data from acoustic, electroglottographic, and respiration files.

    Faculty

    Ian Howell

  • Research Methods for the Voice Pedagogue

    Online Synchronous | Online Asynchronous

    Bridging the gap between the voice science literature and the types of research projects appropriate for students pursuing voice and pedagogy degrees is a persistent challenge. Many active in the field of academic voice pedagogy would like to build a voice lab, but do not understand what to do with it. Many enrolled in degree programs would like to supplement their voice pedagogy classes with information that empowers them to explore research questions on their own.

    This course, co-taught by Ian Howell and Harvard education researcher Joshua Gilbert, aims to fill in these missing tools. Heavily tailored to your interests, you will repeat published studies with either the equipment you own or with signals provided for your use. You will learn the basics of statistical analysis and gain skills using R-studio.

    Faculty

    Joshua Gilbert
    Ian Howell

  • Python for Data Analysis

    Online Synchronous | Online Asynchronous

    Python is an incredibly flexible and powerful programming language, capable of delivering robust analyses of large data sets. Appropriate for those interested in analyzing data collected in an Embodied Music Analysis Lab (e.g. acoustic, EGG, or respiration signals), this hybrid synchronous/asynchronous course will teach the skills needed to work independently.

    Faculty

    Xiao Shi

  • Biometric Instrumentation for an Embodied Music Analysis Lab

    In-person Synchronous

    Learn how to use technology to capture acoustic, biometric, and biofeedback signals. Equipment covered includes acoustic signal chain (microphones, preamps and audio interfaces, and audio software), electroglottographs, the Glottal Enterprises Aeroview System, and the RespTrack system.

    Faculty

    Ian Howell

  • Real Time Online Music Collaboration

    Online Synchronous | Online Asynchronous

    This course introduces the basic concepts that underpin low latency audio and video transmission over the commercial Internet. Multiple software and hardware solutions are covered. Workflows are introduced that are as simple as two parties for a lesson or as complex as a real time, distributed, multitrack recording session. Historical context for transmission of sound is provided and students will work toward several creative projects.

    Faculty

    Ian Howell