Education
In addition to writing and recording music, Matthew Bardin is an active educator: teaching classes on both the high school and university level and giving various presentations to both university groups and at various conferences throughout the year.
TEACHING Statement
As a Music Educator, my goal is to not only provide students with the knowledge they need to succeed in the modern world, but to foster their creative growth as the next generation of artists. Having only taught for five years at the time of writing this, I am still formulating my exact opinions and methodologies, I have found great success in providing students with the necessary tools, then trusting them to further explore and find ways to apply that knowledge in a way that is relevant to each student individually.
Throughout a given semester, I have found my students respond well to a mixture of guided instructions and open exploration. I will go through a unit of a course, making sure to cover the necessary material, but make time a few times per semester to allow for students to lead the discussion. With no topic off-limits, we explore anything the students would like to cover. To keep things reasonable, I frame the activity in that it is a chance to review and expand on anything covered so far, or clarify any questions. The students responded positively to this because I was able to specifically answers their concerns, and since no students were required to ask questions in front of the class, all the questions were relevant and led to meaningful discussion of the course topics. Specifically, I have had the most success with this method in courses such as Audio Recording Techniques II at the University of Nebraska when we specifically reviewed recording instruments we hadn’t explored in several weeks just before the final.
In terms of course work, I set mine up to be largely project-based, with multiple medium-to-large scale projects throughout the semester. In these projects, I mainly grade on if the student has a technical understanding of the concepts, but also grade on creative effort. I don’t specify on what that looks like to the students, but encourage them to explore sounds they find interesting. In courses such as Electronic Music Production and Sound Design, it helps maintain student investment in the projects and create a wider variety of end results.
A .pdf copy of my teaching statement can be downloaded here.
“A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.”
Teaching Resources
In addition to writing the textbook for the course, Matthew has crated a video series going through the majority of content for the Programming Digital Media course in the LSU STEM Pathways Program. This content goes over the basic coding conventions and their formatting in JavaScript, as well as the implementation of the p5.play and tone.js libraries to create sprite interactions and adaptable soundtrack elements in coding projects. These videos, as well as a series geared more towards teachers are located below.
As a supplement to the Sound Design course (also an LSU STEM Pathways course), Matthew has also created a series of videos that briefly explain a variety of music theory concepts at their most basic level. This playlist also includes a few tutorials on how to achieve a variety of creative results with the Studio One and Audacity softwares.
If you would like to see more of my teaching materials, lessons, and original music, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel where I share these and other things most weekends.
Online Course: Programming Digital Media
PDM TEACHER VIDEOS
Papers and Presentations
Matthew has presented at various conferences and in front of several groups of students as a guest speaker. Below are several resources from those events.
Cyberinet: Integrated Semi-Modular Sensors for the Computer Augmented Clarinet: Doctoral Dissertation
On Josquin and Authenticity: Fortuna Desperata: Paper
Developing an Augmented Sensor for Wind Instruments: Presentation at LSU
Using OBS: Streaming for fun and profit!: Presentation with Dr. Jesse Allison at LSU
Designing collaborative and mediated experiences with networked circuit-bent devices: Presentation at SIIDS 2020 with Dr. Anthony Marasco and Dr. Tate Carson
Three Electroacoustic pieces: Presentation at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee
“Every artist was first an amateur.”