Your final project is an analysis of a pop song (broadly construed) of your choosing. The purpose of the project is for you to apply the skills you’ve learned in class to something that you enjoy and want to share with the rest of the class.
| Due date | Assignment |
|---|---|
| Sunday, April 23 at noon | Project worksheet |
| Thursday, May 4 at 7:20pm | Video |
| Sunday, May 7 at noon | Peer feedback |
| May 10–15 | Essay |
Recommended reading
If you want more explicit help and guidance on writing an analytical paper, read Chapter 7 of . This is available for you in the Readings folder on Teams. This chapter will teach you how to make sure your paper is unified and has a coherent argument.
Project Worksheet
To get you started, I have designed a worksheet that helps you think through your project. I have added a copy of the worksheet to your homework submit folder. The filename is 13 final project worksheet.docx.
Save as a PDF and upload to your homework submit folder by Sunday, April 23 at noon.
After you’ve gone through my feedback on your worksheet, you may like to schedule a time to do an individual meeting to discuss your project with me.
Video
Make a video (max 10 minutes) in which you apply knowledge you gained in our seminar to a song of your choosing. It is worth 15% of your final grade.
The video will be like a first draft of your final paper. This will be an opportunity for you to get feedback from me and your peers.
Content
- Use the worksheet you submitted and my feedback as a guide for your content. However, your video should go deeper than your worksheet. You should have specific analysis by this point.
- Analysis must engage with one or more methodologies discussed in class. This is where the majority of the points are—failure to do this will certainly result in a poor grade.
- You should have a clear thesis statement in your video, and all your analysis should tie into the thesis statement.
- Your video should be, at most, 10 minutes long. This correlates to about five double-spaced pages of writing. It’s really not much so make sure you’re tightly organized.
- Please make sure I have access to all necessary material to understand your paper (files or links for relevant video/audio, transcriptions, etc.).
- You should have a powerpoint presentation or some other comparable visuals.
- This video is too short to include historical context—get straight to your analysis! Historical context will not help your grade and will only give you less space to present.
Style
- Your voice explaining everything must be included in the video.
- You may do either a picture-in-picture layout, where one picture is yourself talking to the camera and the other is your powerpoint, or you may do a disembodied voice layout with only your powerpoint on screen.
- Videos must be professional, rehearsed, well-organized, and polished, in order to maximize the effectiveness of your limited time.
- Videos should be edited to remove any awkward pauses and unnecessary content.
Submission
- Upload your video on Teams by Thursday, May 4 at 7:20pm (class time—although we won’t have class).
- In the General channel, there is a folder called final project videos—this is where you should put your video.
- The filename of your video should be your last name.
Video grading rubric
[table id=2 /]Peer review
The peer review process is intended to mimic the process of reviewing an article for a journal. In addition to this practical experience, the review process should help you learn to pinpoint similar issues in your own work, and will allow you to get feedback from multiple perspectives (not just mine).
Peer review assignments will be posted to the #general channel on Teams. Further guidance is posted there.
Content
You will complete an evaluation using a form; this form will be made accessible as a tab in the General channel. The form asks you to answer the following questions:
- In your own words, and without re-watching the video, do your best to summarize the main points of the video. This will do two things: 1) help the author identify any discrepancies between what they thought they were saying, and what they seem like they are actually saying, and 2) help the author understand where you are coming from with your following comments.
- What was the most effective part of this video’s analysis? In other words, where did the analysis make you hear something differently, understand the piece better, or convince you of the argument?
- Everything in your video and in your final project should relate clearly back to the thesis statement. Was there any point at which you weren’t sure why the information was being presented?
- The final paper is longer than the script for these videos will be. In light of that, name one or two areas where you think the author can slow down, explain more, or go more in depth, to make the paper longer and more effective.
- Pose one analytical question to the author, and explain how you would suggest answering that question. The author may think this is a good idea/question, and end up answering it when expanding their analysis for the final paper!
Please don’t hesitate to provide honest feedback. Your feedback will not impact the scores that I give to the video. Of course, you ought to still be polite and constructive whenever possible.
Submission
Complete the form on Teams by Sunday, May 7 at noon.
Grading
Your feedback will be graded on completion and counted as a homework grade.
Essay
The analytical essay is the capstone project of the course, and is worth 35% of your final grade. The purpose is to demonstrate what you learned in our seminar by performing your own creative analysis of a song of your choosing. The paper will be an expanded (at least twice as long) and refined version of your presentation.
Content
This is a music analysis paper. Some additional requirements and guidelines:
- Your music analysis must rely on and deeply engage with the analytical approaches we learned in class. This is the most important aspect of this paper, and therefore worth the most points in the rubric.
- Your paper should be bound together with a thesis statement of some kind, i.e., some kind of central feature that you discovered while analyzing the piece.
- The vast majority of your paper should be music analysis. If historical/cultural context directly enhances your central music-analytical thesis, then you may include it. Otherwise, restrict your biographical information to one paragraph. Including extra information beyond this does not help your grade in any way—it’s just extra.
- You should have chosen at least three aspects of the piece to focus on as examples which prove your thesis statement.
- Avoid qualitative language and irrelevant personal experience. The purpose of this paper is to show your understanding of the piece and the analytical techniques used, not to convince someone else to like the piece.
- Your tone and focus should be extremely similar to the readings we did throughout class.
Length
- Your paper should be at least 10 pages, but no more than 20.
- If you are under or over my suggested page counts, please send me a draft and I’ll suggest places where you need to expand/condense.
- Page counts include musical examples (within reason).
Style
- 1” margins; professional 12 point font, such as Times; double-spaced
- Add a header with your name, the class, and the date you submit.
- Add page numbers.
- You must properly cite all authors whose techniques you use.
- This is not a research paper, so you should really only be citing people we discussed in class.
- You should have a bibliography at the end, even if it includes only one source.
- Use Chicago or MLA format for your citations, whichever you are more familiar with. I am uncomfortable proofreading/assessing APA style.
- Proofread carefully.
Submission
- You may submit your paper anytime between May 10 and May 15.
- Submit by May 10 if you want detailed feedback on your grade.
- Papers submitted after May 10 will receive feedback on the rubric alone. (You can of course ask me after the semester/holidays for more feedback if you like.)
- The paper will be submitted to me in your homework submit folders.
- You must submit your paper as a .pdf file.
- Please make sure I have access to all necessary material to understand your paper (video/audio clips, transcriptions, etc.).
Final Paper grading rubric
[table id=3 /]Helpful tips
- Come talk with me one-on-one to improve your paper! Students who meet with me always end up with better projects than students who do this on their own. I write a lot and have worked in a writing center, so I have a lot of wisdom about writing to share with you.
- Begin your project by analyzing the music. Make your musical examples. Then, begin writing the paper by explaining your analysis. Write down the “low-hanging fruit” first to get the ball rolling so you’re not staring at a blank Word document.
- Read your paper out loud to another human being before you submit it. This is the fastest way to find weird grammatical errors that you made.
- Words and phrases to avoid: very, it, interesting, unique, thing, genius, “it is ___ that,” “some say,” “I believe,” “it seems.” Maybe also “to be.”
- I recently made a practical guide for how to type theory things in your word processor of choice.
Bibliography
Readings are either in the Readings folder or are available online through the library (or both!).