Dodge received his undergraduate education (BA) at the University of Iowa in 1964, where he studied composition with Richard Hervig; he earned his MA (1966) and doctorate (DMA) (1970) at Columbia University where he studied with Jack Beeson, Chou Wen-chung, Otto Luening, and Vladimir Ussachevsky.
During Dodge’s years as Professor of Composition and Director of the BC-CCM, Dodge not only had the BC-CCM designated as an official Center within Brooklyn College in 1978 but more importantly brought it to a world-class standing in the field of computer music.
In May 2009 he retired from the position of Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, a post he held for 18 years.
In addition to his work as a composer, Dodge is noted for co-authoring the highly praised book Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance, ISBN 0-02-864682-7 [5] Best known in recent years as the owner, with his wife Katharine, of the Putney Mountain Winery in Putney, Vermont.
[citation needed] Dodge created many works in the field of computer music, including Earth’s Magnetic Field (1970), which mapped magnetic field data to musical sounds, Speech Songs,[6] a 1974 work that used analysis and resynthesis of human voices, The Waves (voice and computer music), Profile, and Any Resemblance is Purely Coincidental (1978), which combines live piano performance with a digitally-manipulated recording of Enrico Caruso singing the aria "Vesti la giubba."