Final Project Guide
First Complete Track
Take your strongest sprint piece and finish it. The final project is your first complete, intentional track — not a new idea started in week 14, but the sprint piece you believe in most, mixed and finished. Four candidates are already in hand: the collaborative groove, the recorded sketch, the built-from-scratch piece, and the arranged short track.
This upgrades the previous semesters’ looser final (“pick something you made this semester that you are proud of, make it a little better, and share it with me as an audio file”) into a defined finishing process with the mixing fundamentals to support it.
Schedule
| Date | What |
|---|---|
| Mon Dec 7 | In-class Feedback #4 on Sprint 4 — the last chance to hear the room’s reaction before you choose |
| Wed Dec 9 | Final kickoff: choose your piece, plan the finish, mixing introduced |
| Sun Dec 13 | Final plan posted — which piece, what it needs, what “done” means for it |
| Mon Dec 14 | Lecture: Mixing & finishing — balance, EQ, dynamics, space, export, “when is it done?” |
| Wed Dec 16 | Closing jam |
| Sun Dec 20 | Final track due (11:59 PM) |
Requirements
Delivered as a post to the Final — First Complete Track thread in StemShare, following the sprint deliverable template:
- ☐ A finished stereo mix of one sprint piece — a clear static balance, EQ used to carve space, dynamics under control, space (reverb/delay) that adds depth without muddying
- ☐ Exported to spec: correct format and sample rate, headroom preserved, clearly named
- ☐ Work → Notes: which sprint piece you chose and why, what you changed to finish it, and a reflection on what you learned this semester
- ☐ Tools used credited
- ☐ Peer comments on classmates’ final picks
Mixing is intentionally light in 174 — the basics plus finishing this one track. Deep mixing spirals into 175, where you deconstruct a professional mix.
Grading
The final project is 20% of the course grade and uses the same specification grading as the sprints: a pass/fail checklist on the thread, a provisional grade you can see, finalized by the instructor. There are no live final presentations; the closing jam is the in-person capstone.
Looking ahead
Your finished track and the four sprint pieces behind it are the baseline evidence for the spring: MUSC 175 opens by reconnecting with this body of work and asks you to design two semester-long practice habits that build on it.