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California Institute of the Arts

MFA: Composition and Experimental Sound Practices

The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts

Two individuals performing on stage with musical and electronic equipment. One is playing an electric bass guitar, and the other is operating a laptop.

Realize your radical vision

CalArts’ MFA in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices fosters a radical and visionary creativity that obeys no particular stylistic or methodological constraint. In this context, the two-year curriculum is structured to provide the technical skills, contextual foundation, and creative opportunities for you to develop and project your own distinctive artistic voice into the world of creative music. The program features a mix of private lessons and forums that regularly convene our vibrant community of students, faculty, and visiting artists. You’ll build on this foundation with an extensive array of advanced courses in composition, experimental sound practices, theory, technology, history and literature, performance and pedagogy, as you also explore the more radical branches of contemporary audio art.

Musician wearing a feathered headpiece plays a violin under colorful ambient lighting.

Interested in this program?

View our step-by-step application guide to learn more.

Start your application

Creative impulses, critical discourses

MFA Composition and Experimental Sound Practices

People don’t come to CalArts to study under the faculty. They come to join a community of artists that includes inquisitive and innovative peers and a stylistically diverse faculty of world-class practitioners at the cutting edge of aesthetic and technical developments in their fields.

Where the wild things play

A lone performer plays a saxophone, standing in the middle of an empty stage in a futuristic bandshell with a lawn in front and trees and sky in the background.

The composer Morton Feldman used the term “Wild Beast” as a metaphor for the ineffable generative force in art—making it the ideal name for CalArts’ iconic variable-use, indoor-outdoor music pavilion.

The composer Morton Feldman used the term “Wild Beast” as a metaphor for the ineffable generative force in art—making it the ideal name for CalArts’ iconic variable-use, indoor-outdoor music pavilion.

Let's Connect

Our faculty provide individual mentoring and guidance, coaching, and instruction to help you develop the tools you’ll need to establish a lifelong musical practice and individual voice. In keeping with the Institute’s spirit of artistic exploration, we encourage you to seek out collaborative opportunities with your peers throughout CalArts’ six schools— filmmakers, directors, dancers, designers, musician, writers, and other artists—benefitting from the program’s unique location within the only accredited arts college in the United States that gathers the full range of visual and performing arts under one roof.

MFA programs in The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts are designed to equip graduate students with the skill sets you’ll need to stake out a place for your unique vision and reach the highest levels of professional practice. The curriculum is designed to be stimulating and challenging, and to foster a collaborative learning environment, in which music and sound artists—students and faculty alike—work together to refine and perfect their already distinctive voices, while simultaneously exploring new and inspiring creative territories.

Your coursework provides a strong foundation in the theory and application of digital media as well as the critical issues surrounding it. In addition, making work and presenting it in concert, or in installations or site-specific contexts is central to the program. Creative impulses and critical discourses will lead you in many directions, with the spirit of collaboration producing a rich environment for sonic experimentation. Students in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices have produced innovative sonic works via circuit-bending, experimental opera, instrumental modifications and deconstructions, chamber and large ensemble works, new forms of notation, random sound-effects, database surfing, field recordings paired with ionic filters, and terrain-to-sound mappings—and that doesn’t even include what you’ll add to the list.

MFA candidates are required to meet all requirements and pass a graduation portfolio review to complete the degree.

Admission requirements

To be considered for the MFA in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices, you must complete an application and all program-specific requirements, including a portfolio representative of your work, an artist statement, a brief video introduction, and two letters of recommendation. The program does not require an audition, but some applicants may be asked to take part in a virtual interview. Before applying, please familiarize yourself with the detailed application requirements and resources available to assist you in this important process.

View application requirements

Degree requirements

Each CalArts music student designs their course of study in collaboration with a faculty mentor.

MFA Composition and Experimental Sound Practices academic requirements

Minors and interdisciplinary opportunities

In addition to CalArts’ naturally collaborative atmosphere, the Institute provides several programs of study that can be pursued concurrently with a student’s chosen metier, such as a concentration in Arts Education or Integrated Media.

MFA concentrations

Courses you might take

What courses would you take as an MFA Composition and Experimental Sound Practices student? Browse the courses offered in the School of Music, including opportunities to study jazz, world music, experimental pop, film scoring, improvisation, electronic music, composition, vocal performance, African and Balinese ensembles, and much more.

School of Music courses

Meet the faculty

At CalArts, faculty and students are collaborators, teaching, learning, and working together as members of our community of artists. 

Embrace the alternative

Experiments in Electronic Sound Festival

The Experiments in Electronic Sound Festival offers a platform for musicians and artists whose works blur the boundaries between composition, improvisation, and sound art. Following a rich tradition at CalArts for embracing alternative ways of thinking, being, and creating in relation to electronic sound, the series of concerts invites the community to come together and share their work.

A woman wearing a blue parka, warm hat, and headphones stands next to a blue and silver contraption that resembles a megaphone on a tripod. The scene is outdoors in the snow on a sunny day.

Christina Milinusic is one of the artists featured in the 2024 Experiments in Electronic Sound Festival.

Gallery

Some of our alumni

* Pulitzer Prize in Music winner

 

More School of Music alumni

CalArtian duo Tauri talks creative process with Bitwig Studio

“The idea was to make something that was for artists,” says Alex Monasterio, who, with fellow alum Nicole Orlowski, comprises the duo Tauri. Talking about the duo’s single In the Dark, he says, “We wanted it to be about, like, defining your own terms of success and figuring out what aspects of creation are worth it and not worth it.” 

Album cover for the band Tauri, featuring an illustration of a woman with blue hair on the left, and legs on the right. A box in the middle says “In The Dark.”

School of Music Events

See more events

  • Performance School of Music

    New solo and ensemble works by the CalArrs DMA cohort: Daniel Newman-Lessler, Matt LeVeque, Seb…

    Tue, Oct 22 / 8:00 PM

    CalArts Campus

  • Performance School of Music

    Join us as the vocalists of CalArts sing some of their recent favorites. What are…

    Sun, Oct 20 / 8:00 PM

    CalArts Campus

  • Performance School of Music

    A lovely concert of chamber music performed by students and faculty, followed by a Porto's…

    Tue, Oct 22 / 8:00 PM

    CalArts Campus

Want to learn more?

We got you. Our Admissions team is all about providing the information you need to decide if CalArts is right for you. We’re excited to connect with you for a tour of our legendary campus, a virtual info session, or at one of our admissions events across the country or around the world. Take the next step—we’re here to help.