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Week 1
Opening Day
Our first day at COSMOS! After successfully moving in, the Newsletter committee met up and picked jobs! Then, we ate dinner at 64 Degrees before heading to programming like painting and sports. We went to sleep excited to meet the rest of our cluster.
Monday
Today was our first day of classes! As it turns out, Cluster 9 is in one of the furthest from the dorms, but we met our professors, who were all super cool, and did introductions with all of the other students. After that we did a tour of the building our lessons are in (the Music Department). Once the tour was done, we went back to the classroom to download software (Audacity, Max, and Ableton), and then left for lunch.
After we came back from the long trek to lunch we finished downloading our software, and got a super interesting lesson on noise, sound, and music from Professor Cantrell that ended in an experience with AM radios, picking electromagnetic signals and creating audible noise.
We started planning our COSMOlympics skit, debating through ideas like a human piano, a battle of bands, and a diss track before settling on a competition between classical and techno musicians. We split into groups to pick music for our performance before heading off to dinner and to activities including a Target run of immense proportions, Matcha Night, arts and crafts, and soccer.
Tuesday
We started off our morning with a lecture on Ethics from Professor Brandt, which all clusters attended on Zoom. This gave us more information about our final ethics video, which all COSMOS students make in small groups. Using the information from this lecture, our cluster spent an hour creating mini presentations on ethics in music, with topics ranging from copyright to AI music to artist compensation.
Each group gave a short presentation and then we had a break for lunch. In the afternoon, Professor Liu gave a lecture on the science of sound, which covered tons of topics, including how ears work, acoustics, the physics of sound waves, and useful components of sound.
We continued working on our skit, learning the dance to Shut Down by BLACKPINK, which was our compromise between classical and techno music. We discussed props and instruments needed.
In the evening, we chose between an evening run for the athletically inclined, a second Target run, coaster painting, and dodgeball.
Wednesday
This was our first chance to use all the software we downloaded on Day 1. In the morning, we did a sound scavenger hunt, which allowed us to record clips of useful or interesting sounds around the music building.
Professor Lou then guided us through an experience using the software Audacity, which allowed us to import our sound clips and edit them, then make them into a one minute processed song. We ran out of time to present our songs, but we will have a chance to do so next week.
In the afternoon, our TA Aaron taught us how to use Ableton, another software, which let us make songs out of samples, and a few people presented their songs.
We then worked on our props, music, and script for our skit, before running through our entire skit a couple of times.
After dinner, some of us headed to the Keeling Apartments rooftop for a sunset painting party; some of us went to the Falling Star on campus; some of us played tetherball, wall ball, or four square; and some of us did yoga and stretching.
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