A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Digital Music Scholarship in Five Simple Sessions
Description
Please join us for a series of Thursday afternoon workshops with Macgeorge Fellow Richard Freedman (John C. Whitehead '43 Professor of Humanities at Haverford College).
These hands-on workshops are designed for anyone interested in learning more about digital approaches to the study of music. The focus will be on ‘metadata’ (the who, what, when and where of musical artefacts), and how we can model them in digital form. Using a few case studies (data from the famous Golden Record and the Beatles Songbook, as well as from leading Australian music archives, and even datasets of your own!), participants will learn how we collect, organize, clean, analyze and interpret music metadata using various tools—especially Python and Pandas (a powerful library for data analysis).
You will come away with a new understanding of how digital tools work—and you will also learn to think critically about how information about music is organized, and the values implicit in the archives through which it is curated, discovered, and shared. No previous experience with code or musical notation is required. (But those with either or both will also find interesting things to do and learn!)
You can sign up for as many workshops as you like – but we encourage you to attend all five! Scroll down to find the date, time and description of each workshop.
Prof Freedman inaugurates these workshops with a Macgeorge Lecture on 27 August 2026. Register for the lecture.
The workshops also culminate in a Study Day on 1 October 2026. Register for the colloqium.
Image: Drew Echberg
Workshops
- 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Mood Machines: Listening for Yourself in Spotify (and Beyond)
Most of us are by now familiar (even reliant) on streaming and recommendation systems like Spotify for our daily listening. But how do they work? How do they extract data from sounds and from our digital lives in an effort to know what we might want to listen to? More importantly, how can we use them (rather than them use us) to chart our own emotional lives? In this workshop we look closely at music, emotions, and the digital tools that might help us find the feelings in the music.
Important Information
Please stay home if you feel unwell, even with mild symptoms. Face masks are welcome in all settings for community and personal safety.
In order to account for drop-off in attendance, we overbook a select number of free events at the Faculty. If you have not arrived by the start of the performance, your ticket may be released to any waiting patrons at the door. Please arrive at the venue at least 15 minutes before the performance to secure your seat.
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PARKING
The City of Melbourne has changed the parking restrictions around the Southbank Campus. Parking control hours are now expanded to 7am–10pm, seven days per week, and are capped at three hours. A $2-per-hour fee after 7pm is also now in place. There is no change to the $4-per-hour peak rate between 7am–7pm. Parking inspectors are regularly in the area fining drivers who overstay their meter, so we encourage everyone to be aware and avoid an expensive fine.
ACCESSIBILITY
We are committed to making our events accessible and will accommodate requirements wherever possible. All venues at the Southbank campus are wheelchair accessible. Please contact us at fineartsmusic-tickets@unimelb.edu.au if you have any questions.
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity
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