Students create new sounds in the Future Music Oregon program.

With the sounds of electronic music taking over the radio, it appears that computer made music is here to stay. And, for budding musicians that offers a chance of opening new doors for creation. Future Music Oregon lends a helping hand to students who want to explore what electronic music has to offer and gives them a chance to share the innovative music they create with the world.
Future Music Oregon is home to electronic musicians, composers, and performers. The program, run through the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, is one of the few across the country.
The program goes into multiple disciplines: electrical engineering, programming computer science, physics of sounds, cognition, and perception. Chet Udell, one of the program’s professors, calls the program a “hodgepodge of all kinds of disciplines,” but the real magic happens when all the disciplines come together.
“The central thing that leads all these disciplines together is musical expression. And how do we leverage all these theories, technological complexities, and skill sets of the 21st century into new ways of musical expression,” he says.
The program was created by its current director, professor Dr. Jeffrey Stolet, a musician whose work has been heard around the world. “It’s important to create music that is representative of a time. Clearly the music from this time is mediated through technology, so almost everything comes to you from speakers of some sorts,” Stolet says.
“Someone has to make the speakers and wires. Going through these wires is representations of sound, and how we do that in a beautiful and expressive way is something that had to be developed — it didn’t just happen. The way we push sound around and make sound that sort of envelopes our lives. We want to be able to teach that and have it be a goal for students if they choose to pursue that,” Stolet says.
When Stolet first created the program he remembered that there weren’t many models to base it off of. “There are just things where it’s like, ‘It’d be a good idea to do this,’ and I think it was a good idea because there’s been a lot of interest about how to use technology with art or perform using computers and related devices,” he says.
This program is anticipating the surge of electronic music’s popularity and gives musicians a new way to perform music.
“We’re in a world where you can map any performance gesture into any sound,” says  Udell, who along with teaching is also a musician. “We as performers and musicians in this new media, we’re in a strange point in history where not only do we need to conceive in our music, we have to conceive in the devices that we build, and how that will initiate and shape sound. So, it’s a very tall order.”
Udell became interested in the program when he saw what students were accomplishing and how they used technology to address the question of what it means to compose new and electronic music.
The goal of Future Music Oregon, according to Udell, is “to make some kickass music!”
“We see all the stuff in front of us and we’re curious at leveraging all these things for new and creative purposes. The real pitfall, is that it’s really easy to fall into the ‘gee wiz factor’ which is to geek out over the technology, and it’s not about that at all,” he says.
For Nayla Mehdi, graduate of the Intermedia Music Technology program and Future Music Oregon, the program brought out her love for sound.
“The director of the program, Jeffrey Stolet, always manages to have you care about every sound that you decide to create. It is intrinsic to his teachings and philosophy,” Mehdi says.
For a project on interactive sound instillation, she gathered field recordings of natural sound outside, and after applying electroacoustic techniques, incorporated them into her project. She is also working on a musical program in Portland. She credits her success to Future Music Oregon for nursing her passion and giving her a chance to use it.
“When I was first introduced to the world of experimental music and sound art, I appreciated all that came along with it; the excitement after innovation, challenging your brain with all the new and surprising information in this ever-changing field, and being savvy with technology all while being creative,” she says.
Udell says he’s edified by Mehdi’s success in the program. He enjoys seeing his students find new ways to express themselves and think about music.
“Applying these really heady left brained principles in a right brained creative applied way, student’s eyes light up. A light goes on like they get it. I think we get something really special out of this.”