I just returned from several days at the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States National Conference.  In addition to hearing loads of new music, I gave a presentation on the MPG Carepackage.  This continues my efforts to get more people using this collection of patches for networking computers running Max/MSP/Jitter and sharing musical data.  Overall, the reaction was positive and I hope many of my colleagues from around the country will follow up by downloading the following files:

• enhanced podcast of lecture – 14.1 MB
• extended abstract in PDF – 104 kb
• MPG carepackage – last update 11 Nov 2009, 185 kb

It is worth noting that I gave this MPG Carepackage lecture earlier at FEAST in November and you can download a recording of that presentation.  At FEAST, I was a little less pressed for time and so it might be easier to understand the more relaxed pace of that version.

I also had a chance to spend some time with two former Stetson students: Jana Fisher (BA/2009) and Chester Udell (BM/2005).  Jana had a piece entitled Top40:France selected for the conference. She created this spectral composition for her senior project and it sounded fantastic on the big Genelec speakers.  Chester had a piece for trombone and live electronics that was really well done and I am not the only one that thought so; Chester was awarded first place in the annual SEAMUS/ASCAP Student Commission!  Big congrats to him as this is a huge honor.

All in all a good conference.  Looking forward to hearing where next year will be held.

Banners around campus made sure you knew where you were at.

My lecture from this year’s FMEA is now available for download.  The presentation highlighted how the media has helped propel the concept of the laptop as instrument into the public consciousness.  It concluded with some ideas on how K12 music educators can start to wrap their heads about the potentials of making laptop music.

Special thanks to Nick Eggen and the FMEA tech committee for the invite.

BTW, a majority of the photos used my slides were obtained via Flickr, where they are posted under a Creative Commons license.  As with all the other content on my site, this podcast is offered under a similar license.  Although the photo credits are contained in the presentation, I will also post them in the comments for those that might be interested.

• enhanced podcast of lecture – 25.1 MB

Talking about my own experience with laptop music.

On Thursday this week, I will be giving a lecture at the Florida Music Educators Association Annual Clinic-Conference.  This is the largest gathering of K12 music teachers in the state.

My talk will cover:

• the media’s role in how the laptop came to be considered an instrument
• myths and stereotypes about laptop music
• famous names associated with this emerging instrument
• thoughts about what the future may hold
• discussion about what K12 music education’s role could be

If you are going to FMEA, mark your planners or circle me in the program:
Thurs, Jan 7 • 2:45 PM-3:45 PM
Marriott Waterside Room: Meeting Room 4

I hope to see some of my old friends that work in music education around the state.  Spread the word and invite your friends.  Yes, I know it’s across the street from the main site (as the tech sessions always are!) but I hope to make it worth the walk.

Some laptops in action during an MPG performance.

If you were not able to attend the FEASt Festival at FIU, you can now download an enhanced podcast recording of my lecture.  The topic of the presentation was network-enabled coordination of laptop performance and featured the public debut of the MPG Carepackage.

The patches involved can be downloaded as well.  There are currently no help patches, so feel free to comment on this post if you have questions about this work.  The demo should work once you have placed the supporting files in the Cycling 74 folder of your Max installation.

• enhanced podcast of lecture – 17.4 MB
• MPG carepackage – last update 11 Nov 2009, 185 KB

This weekend, I will be giving a lecture as part of the FEASt Festival on my work as music director of MPG. I will be introducing for the first time to a group outside of Stetson my MPG carepackage. This collection of abstractions makes it easy for our members to share relevant musical data over the network and focus on the business building instruments that produce interesting timbres.

Special thanks to Paula Matthusen and Nayla Mehdi for the invite.  I am looking forward to it!

MusicLinks screenshot

ABSTRACT – Mobile Performance Group is a collaborative, multimedia project involving faculty and students from Stetson University’s Digital Arts program. The group’s primary mission is to find new ways of presenting art outside of traditional venues. Since 2004, MPG has fulfilled this objective by presenting a number of site-specific performances at festivals and conferences throughout the country. For each performance, members of MPG collect sounds and video from a given locale using digital equipment, edit the material into libraries based on common traits and use these libraries as the basis for a structured improvisation using laptop computers and specialized controllers. Requiring students to design their own instruments for our collective improvisation system provides a platform for them to apply advanced musical concepts including sound synthesis, audio processing, algorithmic composition, and gestural control. This demonstration will address technical methods used and discuss how these reinforce learning objectives within our interdisciplinary university program.

Stephen, Jana, me, Amanda and David. Photo courtesy of David Royse.

• Download Slides in PDF – 7.1 MB
• Listen to MP3 recording – 26.1 MB

ABSTRACT – The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) maintains a broad set of guidelines for music technology degrees. Even after assembling the required resources to establish such a degree program, applying for NASM approval can seem like a daunting task. This paper will discuss the questions to consider when establishing an undergraduate music technology degree program, distill the NASM proposal formatting requirements into an easy to follow format, and detail the process of preparing for plan approval. The author will illustrate specific points with descriptive accounts from of his recent experience preparing a successful NASM application to establish a Bachelor of Music in Music Technology.

• Download Paper in PDF – 280 kb

ABSTRACT – Most learning management systems feature online discussion forums, allowing students and instructors to communicate asynchronously outside of class meetings. However, beyond their ability to exchange text messages, most also include the option of attaching small files to user posts. It has also become common for audio software to export projects as MP3 files, a file format that today’s students are very familiar with. These two technologies, discussion boards and MP3 files, can be easily combined to implement a powerful system for tracking student progress on music composition and audio production assignments.

• Download Handout in PDF – 48 kb

Co-Chairs: Nathan Wolek and Virgil Moorefield
Additional Participants: Dan Trueman and James Harley

ABSTRACT – The performing ensemble has a firmly established role in music education. In the music conservatory model, conventional acoustic groups such as the chamber orchestra provide students with the opportunity to apply musicianship skills that are taught in the classroom. These skills typically encompass subjects such as theory, analysis and aural skills. Traditional ensembles also have long-standing conventions about how their membership should be balanced based on instrumentation or range. When extending this ensemble tradition into the domain of technology-based music, certain questions commonly arise: what instrumentation is most effective in a technology-based music ensemble? What is the primary intellectual focus of the activity (code, learning software, performance skills)?

Institutions of higher learning produce diverse answers to these questions. Historically, there have been some general trends. Early technology-based ensembles were centered around the synthesizer, and leveraged its timbral variety. Repertoire usually consisted of arrangements or commissioned compositions tailored to an ensemble’s membership. As computer hardware has become less expensive and more portable, the laptop computer has begun to unseat the synthesizer as the instrument of choice.

The transition from synthesizer to laptop has created exciting creative and pedagogical possibilities. The use of general computing hardware makes it easier to explore intermedia, and enables students to more directly participate in the compositional responsibilities; this in turn raises the question of aesthetic antecedents and direction. As a teaching tool, technology-based music ensembles facilitate experiential, problem-based, collaborative learning in ways that complement and extend conventional classroom teaching. This panel will focus on the ability of laptop ensembles to enhance the development of artistic and technical skills in music students.

• Download Proposal in PDF – 64 kb

ABSTRACT – In Formalized Music (1963/1992), Iannis Xenakis proposed a method of using sonic grains to synthesize original sounds. His musical application of Gabor’s (1947) theory of “acoustical quanta” has since spawned a variety of electronic and computer music techniques chronicled by Curtis Roads in Microsound (2001). The most well known among these techniques are granular synthesis and granular processing.

In developing his proposal, Xenakis gave consideration to the limits of human auditory perception. He wanted to ensure the grains would not fall below the minimum duration and intensity that a listener could perceive. Xenakis also employed Fletcher-Munson equal-loudness contours as the basis for his screens. Although future research and development of granular techniques would continue to demonstrate an awareness of perceptual issues, direct empirical study of how listeners perceive granular sounds is missing from the literature.

The current author designed a series of three experiments to investigate how listeners perceive differences between granular processing examples. The findings were used to inform the design of a new graphical user interface (GUI) for granular processing. The resulting GUI helped to verify this study’s conclusions by successfully demonstrating their practical application to software development. The author will demonstrate the GUI’s unique controls for managing randomization and its feedback display for monitoring differences between the control input and audio output.

The author will conclude by addressing future directions in which this research may continue. Processing differences for the current experiments were limited to grain duration and grain period in order to provide a necessary focus. Additional parameters for testing in future experiments will be identified, as well as experimental methods besides MDS that may be used to approach this same inquiry and strengthen the current study’s findings.

• Download Slides in PDF – 1.2 MB