uTunes: Music 1.01

FAIN: HD-50258-07

University of Texas, Austin (Austin, TX 78712-0100)
Robert S. Freeman (Project Director: April 2007 to July 2012)

Development of a series of audio and video podcasts and additional online elements on the history and aesthetics of music.

uTunes: Music 1.01 is an initiative to develop an unprecedented multi-media approach to teaching Americans basic musical literacy, in the context of the new-media environment inhabited by today's "Net Gen" students. Program elements would be a mixture of "expert testimony" by leading academicians and scholars from both inside and outside of UT's College of Fine Arts, combined with classroom instruction, live in-studio and in-concert performances by leading resident ensembles, guest appearances by key musical celebrities, and graphic, text, audio and video interstitial elements. These programs will be designed for publication and distribution across a broad range of media platforms, aimed at the broader American public. At five to fifteen minutes in length, the program segments would be available as podcasts (both video and audio), on-demand "streaming" audio segments on traditional public-service media (e.g., public radio and television sites), as well emergent social media sites.