Music Archives | Page 2 of 52 | The Open College of the Arts

Study event: OCA North

Join the next meeting of OCA North at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester on the 15 June with OCA tutor Rachel Forster.

Study event: OCA East of England

Come and join us for a talk about “The Influence of Curation on the Creative Arts” with OCA tutor Andrea Norrington on Saturday 27 July.

Study event review: OCA East of England

The session focused around making a mini-concertina book and each student successfully made their book. In the session, students were shown how to cover hard backed covers and hopefully gained some useful tips on how to glue cover materials and on the assembly of books.

Study event review: Thinking through art

Having Emma and the students talk around my project, helped me consider it from other viewpoints and look at other options. This has greatly helped me to think about what I’m doing for the project and will inform the direction this will take through the rest of the degree.

The Making of Books. Part 2.

Making individual page layouts is an essential part of the book planning process. Play around with the sequencing of images. This stage can take longer than you imagine. It is good to spend time with various versions of your book before completing it.

Study event review: Arts & environment. Part 2.

These events are part of a program of Art & Environment visits taking the context of climate change as a backdrop for explorations of art, design and ecology, environment and nature.

OCA Music web chat: Inspirational orchestration

Join OCA Music tutor Chris Lawry and fellow music students for an informal web chat from the comfort of your own home. The chat will start at 6.30pm on Wednesday 29 May and continue ‘live’ for at least an hour and a half. The chat will also remain open after that time for follow up conversations, or for those unable to be online at that time to catch up and read. The chat will provide an opportunity to ask questions, share ideas, inspirations and music, to highlight best practice in critical listening and compositional skills, and to engage with the wider OCA music community.

Music and Maths 2: Back to Basics

While modernism and contemporary music are often thought of as very mathematical, numbers and ratios are in fact central to all western music. In this post I’m going to take a look at the roots of western music theory and explore the mathematical origins of our notions of consonance and dissonance.

Study event review: Arts & environment. Part 1.

In our discussion about trial and error and finding the right working conditions to be able to experiment as part of the creative process, OCA student Bernadette summed it up nicely, “Lets set out to make loads of mistakes.”

The Making of Books: Part 1

If you are new to bookmaking, then experimenting with making artist style books is a fantastic learning experience. They are a great way to understand the basic structure of books, play around with different materials and methods of production.