Why is most scholarly writing about music and sound — even when the scholarship is excellent — so lackluster? In this course, we ask a fundamental question: What would it mean for scholarly writing about sound and music to be good, even great? Does musical and sonic writing encounter problems arising from a fundamental incompatibility or tension between sound, music, and language? Even if this is so, there is good writing about music and sound out there, so it must be possible to overcome this. But how can it be done? Does it require writing, in some way, to go beyond language in the direction of sound and music? Or is the problem a general lack of writerly ability on the part of music and sound studies scholars, perhaps because we have spent our lifetimes leaning away from language towards sound and music?

In pursuit of answers, we wade through the oceans of scholarly writing about the sonic arts in search of two things: pitfalls to avoid, and great writing that does justice to its subjects, and/or exemplifies, redeems, or transforms its discipline. We also look beyond scholarly writing about sound and music for inspiration, asking how we may usefully adapt other genres' perspectives and styles. Overall we aim to identify the different qualities that make for good scholarly writing about music and sound, and help graduate students to develop their own styles and voices of scholarly musical and sonic writing. We do not just read; we also experiment with different genres of writing: ethnographic, autobiographical, hagiographic, analytical, music theoretical, social-theoretical, philosophical, and others. And we experiment with different modes and styles of writing, alone and together.