M-JP-ET

Practical Classes

4

8

20

One 90-minute session per week

30 hours

100-120 hours

Completion of year one of Jazz & Pop and Composition for Film & Theatre. This subject can only be followed on-campus.

See Competencies Matrix.

Acquiring and developing extended techniques on your instrument.

Related to the main subject module

Music is more than notes and rhythms—it is a world of textures, timbres, and possibilities waiting to be uncovered. Extended techniques push the boundaries of traditional instrumental playing, unlocking new ways to shape sound and redefine expression. From percussive string playing and multiphonics on wind instruments to the use of objects, preparations, and unconventional articulation, these approaches challenge our perception of what an instrument can do.

Extended techniques have played a crucial role in 20th- and 21st-century music, with composers such as George Crumb, Helmut Lachenmann, and Pauline Oliveros expanding the vocabulary of instruments in radical ways. These techniques are now widely used across contemporary classical, jazz, experimental, and electroacoustic music. In this course, we will explore their impact on performance, composition, and listening, examining both their historical significance and their role in current practices.

Through hands-on experimentation and analysis of key works, we will investigate extended techniques across different instrument families. String players might explore sul ponticello bowing or subharmonics, while wind players experiment with circular breathing or tongue rams.

Pianists will work with prepared piano techniques, and percussionists will expand their approach using friction, unconventional mallets, and found objects.

By treating sound as a physical and spatial experience, students will gain a deeper understanding of their instruments and develop new possibilities for expression. Whether you're an instrumentalist (note: including vocalists), composer, or sound artist, this elective offers a chance to rethink technique, embrace the unknown, and discover the hidden voices within your instrument.

Sessions.

n/a

n/a

Assessment by the instructor at the end of each semester.

Creativity, improvisation, rhythmic idioms, timing and tempo control, musical interaction, intonation, sound, interpretation, form principles, tonal balance, preparation, accompaniment, collaboration with other arts forms and attitude.

The student has completed this module if being awarded a minimum grade of 5.5 at the end of the second semester.

Written assessment by the instructor at the end of both semesters. Assessment at the end of the autumn semester is formative and expressed in terms of satisfactory/unsatisfactory. It indicates a student's progress in this module. No ECs are awarded and there is no resit. Modules can only be absolved, and ECs awarded, after the end of the spring semester. The end-of-semester assessments comprise evaluations of students' performance during the rehearsals and public performances.

See the Education and Assessment Plan.