“Just make music that you like, and think back to what you did.” Professor O’Malley opened up the class with this piece of advice, a guiding statement for us that are still nervous about this project. We then went over GarageBand once again, going through instructions that will help us use the program. The slides are a useful step-by-step instruction, so I tried to take pictures of every slide and pay attention to what Professor O’Malley was doing as he demonstrated certain steps so that they become clearer.

I appreciated that he clarified that the “Audio files are blue”, because I wanted to have a quick visual on what was what in his demonstrations. I also breathed a sigh in relief when he said that he would be placing this online so we can use it as an example. For all of his explanations and general advice, I’m still worried that I will do something wrong in this process, so I’m glad that some of this will be available for us to refer to during our work on this project.

Professor O’Malley reminded us that there is a “Promise of the internet”, in that there is a lot of information and sources that we can use for this project, compounded with the MIDI files that he uses as a demonstration, before going more in depth with the mixing that we can do with the files of music that we utilize in this project.

After his review, Professor O’Malley ended with one final piece of advice for us if we’re lost on how to start “Always start with the drums.” Maybe I’ll use that when I start working on this in detail, but regardless it seems that I will need to properly manage my time for all of my final assignments and exams within the next week. Better to start sooner rather than later.

The class opened with Professor O’Malley going over, once again, what is required for the final project. We need to quote the readings, use what we learned in class, and if we can use DAW software critically and synthetically. Then we went into the discussion of whether or not digital technology affects our attention.

We discussed how we have a displacement of space and time because we can talk to people that aren’t even here. We tied it with the displacement of culture and music. “How can an instrument that came from Hawaii become the symbol of white music?” Professor O’Malley asked. It was an interesting question, but then we moved on to the history of radical openness and how a lot of technology that we used today find their origin in the Cold War.

The broad themes that we went over this course such as attention, displacement, racial categories, enclosure vs openness, and individualism vs social was briefly discussed, along with the other themes that we went into as we talked about the subjects more deeply, such as the generational gap and the issue of authority and their structure. “Find a theme that goes across the text,” Professor O’Malley advised.

Professor O’Malley then went over what we can ask him over the themes that we can possibly use for the final project. We can use any of the books and readings, and go more in depth with any of the topics that we talked about during classes. I’m starting to wonder what I should be discussing more in depth, because I suck at music in general, so I hope that I can do something simplistic so that I don’t humiliate myself with how pitiful my music taste is.

The class was then dedicated to helping us go through the major topics that was previously discussed, giving a starting point for each one so that we can have an easier time in finding out which theme we want to use for the final project. It’s a problem that I am going to think over, mainly by searching through every topic and see what I enjoy going over.