Composing Music for VR/AR/XR

In today’s world of fast-paced technological innovations, composers have a growing number of options for presenting themselves and their music. There are expanding opportunities to collaborate with visual artists in the new medias that encompass virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed realities. This course provides the context for how to work with a client in these trailblazing realities, while also providing practical training to connect a composer’s musical vision to a technologized world. This course prepares composers to fully leverage these new realities as viable working environments. Students compose music for existing VR/AR/XR projects as a way to understand the potential of these new spaces. Students then begin to envision and cultivate their own music as the primary artistic expression within any of the new reality worlds. We currently see and hear music appearing in VR/AR/XR and 360 spaces in the form of video games, journalism, music videos, art installations, and more. Composers need to understand the varying applications and be able to develop their music to fully exercise the potential in each of these spaces. This course is about composers harnessing and taking advantage of the technology and tools that are already transforming art and music.