From Tech Cart to Tech Library
When the pandemic struck in early 2020, all of campus and the rest of the nation and the world had to shift their modes of operation. For College of Music Director of Information Systems and Music Technology Eric Retterer, the proper path forward was not only to ask, “How can we survive right now?” but also to ask, “How can this spur us to better ways of operating in the future?”
In fact, Retterer’s presence was itself in response to that very question. He was hired in June 2021 in a new position as the technology needs of hybrid and remote instruction that the pandemic made necessary became apparent. To use a cliché, Retterer took that mission and ran with it. Through a series of proposals for funding, what was once a single cart of equipment has been expanded to a comprehensive equipment inventory including high-end microphones, video cameras, and audio interfaces. The catalog now boasts nearly 1,000 pieces of equipment available for students, faculty, and staff in the College of Music, an offering almost unheard of in music schools across the country. All told, the College of Music is now proud to supply a music technology library valued at more than $170,000.
Those funds have translated directly to tools in the hands of students. The equipment has been used for a wide variety of projects, including professional auditions, graduate school applications, composition projects and interdisciplinary collaborations, both with assigned courses and initiatives of the students’ own design. Faculty, too, take advantage of these opportunities for more compelling research, composition, and performance. At the end of the spring 2023 semester, the University of Tennessee Balinese Gamelan and Electroacoustic ensembles gave a joint concert which incorporated many of these pieces of technology, providing live audio processing for gamelan instruments. This type of audio-processed Gamelan uses equipment that would have been impossible to provide while traveling internationally.
But those financial resources went further than the equipment catalog and even beyond performance.
“We were not only able to use these funds for the music tech library, but also overhauling our classroom infrastructure and large rehearsal rooms, which allowed us to pilot a hybrid education system,” Retterer said.
That system was piloted by University of Tennessee Professor of Percussion Andrew Bliss. During the pandemic, Bliss began working with Michael Mixtacki, a specialist in West African drumming, to remotely deliver regular instruction throughout the semester for the percussion ensemble students in-person at UT, creating a truly hybrid learning environment. In so doing, students were able to access a specialist in the field safely, affordably, and seamlessly for the entire semester, a greater benefit than a single occurrence masterclass. The overhauling of classrooms that Retterer and Bliss were instrumental in bringing about makes such virtual events, whether those be with musicians, composers, academics, or other experts, much easier to do in many more classrooms across the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center.
While there are clear benefits to this during the pandemic, this option also greatly expands access to high-profile experts across all music-related fields who might otherwise be unable to visit the Knoxville campus. Prior to this overhaul, bringing the equipment that would make such a set-up possible, particularly for masterclasses, required a great deal more time and staff support.
The University of Tennessee returned to campus full-time in Fall 2021. But the strides begun by the College of Music in enhancing our technological infrastructure will continue.
