It seems as if every song now has two or three remixes or has been mashed up with a different song with similar harmonies or lyrics to create an original beat and piece. From Girl Talk to DJ Earworm's catchy mashups of the year's pop songs, mashups have been popular in the past decade. Students enrolled in the Winter Term course "Mashups: Hip Hop and Electronic Dance Music" are learning how to create mashups of their own while also studying the process behind this art.

This course is the first of its kind at Elon University, and Clay Stevenson, lecturer of music, said the class was popular even before Winter Term began.

"When it popped up, I got a bunch of emails about it," he said. "Seniors got priority and I'm sure some freshmen weren't too happy about it. Ideally, what students do is create their own mashup, which is to use preexisting material to make something original using composition as your instrument and other people's music as your notes."

[box] Martin Luther King Jr. Mashup by Elon Pendulum Sophomores Spencer Harrison and Michael Garberich created this mashup.[/box]

Although there is an assigned textbook for the course, students are taught harmony, melody and music composition by listening to different genres of music and use Pro Tools, a digital music software Stevenson said is the standard recording tool used by mashup artists. Even though some students, such as senior music technology major Jared Gilbert, have experience with the software, Stevenson's teaching doesn't ostracize students without experience.

"It's really organized and he's pretty much a new teacher but is very well-prepared," Gilbert said. "He teaches in a way that's not abstract and teaches to everyone's level. No one's ever distracted in class, and you get to learn a lot."

Bobby Watts, a senior music technology major, said he's interested in mashups and the process behind creating them. He said the availability of Pro Tools on campus is advantageous to students like him, and he'd like to continue using the software after this class.

"I've always wanted to learn how to do a mashup because it's fun and it's obvious it's popular," Watts said. "Pro Tools is the tool in the industry I'm going into and it's really cool that Elon has it."

Even though the focus of the course is creating mashups, students also learn about the legal aspect of using another composer's work, Stevenson said.

"People have been borrowing music for as long as we've had music," he said. "Since it's such a cutting edge concept, we talk about melody, tempo, which are very important to create a mashup but we also talk about the legal part of it."

Students have already created several mashups throughout the course. Most have been tutorials, but the class did create a mashup of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech using instrumentals, according to Keyona Osborne, a senior statistics major. Projects like this are fun to make and can be used in students' portfolios, Gilbert said.

"You can practice this art form and make it relevant to what's going on today," he said.