"Knowing is Seeing:" The Digital Audio Workstation and the Visualization of Sound

The computers visual representation of sound has revolutionized the creation of music through the interface of the Digital Audio Workstation software (DAW). With the rise of DAW-based composition in popular music styles, many artists sole experience of musical creation is through the computer screen. I assert that the particular sonic visualizations of the DAW propagate certain assumptions about music, influencing aesthetics and adding new visually-based parameters to the creative process. I believe many of these new parameters are greatly indebted to the visual structures, interactional dictates and standardizations (such as the office metaphor depicted by operating systems such as Apples OS and Microsofts Windows) of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Whether manipulating text, video or audio, a users interaction with the GUI is usually structured in the same mannerclicking on windows, icons and menus with a mouse-driven cursor. Focussing on the dialogs from the Reddit communities of Making hip-hop and EDM production, DAW user manuals, as well as interface design guidebooks, this dissertation will address the ways these visualizations and methods of working affect the workflow, composition style and musical conceptions of DAW-based producers

Speech Communication

Contains reports on three research projects.U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories under Contract F19628-72-C-0181National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-09)Joint Services Electronics Programs (U.S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300M. I. T. Lincoln Laboratory Purchase Order CC-57

The Presence of Groove in Online Songwriting Projects

Collaboration for groups with members who are disconnected by geography or time is convenient for many reasons, but remains a challenge due to time zone differences, network congestion, and the attenuation of nonverbal communication cues. Virtual collaborators engaging in creative work often deal with these challenges, even more so when tasked with expressing their emotions to distant partners. This study seeks to determine the social factors and tools that impact the quality of an online creative collaboration. Members of the Kompoz.com music composition community were surveyed to solicit projects that had the potential to be optimal collaborations. Judges listened to these songs and measured how much each song prompted them to move. This measure, called groove, was used as an indication of a successful collaboration. Judges assisted in selecting one case that was an exemplar of groove, and another that urged them to move much less, to stand as an exemplar of diminished groove. The comparative case method was used to compare and contrast the tools, social practices, and skills employed in each project, and offers guidelines for the design of and participation in online creative communities

BLURRING THE LINES: AN INTEGRATED COMPOSITIONAL MODEL FOR DIGITAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DESIGN

CIM14 9th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicolog

Backing tracks/play-along materials: origins of several currently popular platforms and strategies for their use.

The objective of this research is to discuss if the use of backing tracks/play-along materials can be an effective method for musical development. For this end, I interviewed six influential musicians who answered particular questions in order to have a better understanding about the real-world scenario of the use of backing track materials. Based on their answers, I found that the learning engagement and/or musical development happen when specific strategies while using such materials are made

Creative Practice for Classical String Players with Live Looping

In recent years, string pedagogy discussions have highlighted the greater need for creative practice as classical string players. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, string methods have shifted towards a limited scope of improvisatory techniques, parallelling the decline of improvisation in Western classical music performance practices. This thesis explores live looping as a practice tool to facilitate learning concepts and help string players develop musicianship skills including improvisation, participate in non-classical genres, and explore their creative voices. Examining the results of string educators that incorporate live looping into their own teaching reveals the tool’s effectiveness in bridging curricula standards with opportunities for avenues of creativity and endless experimentation. Ultimately, live looping can help string players learn a concept more deeply, employing scaffolding techniques to practice abstract models and thus relying less on any specific example such as learning from sheet music. This encourages a broader musical foundation enabling classical string players to feel more equipped in areas beyond their comfort zones and participate in and enjoy a wider range of musically fulfilling experiences

Jazz and Recording in the Digital Age: Technology, New Media, and Performance in New York and Online

This dissertation is a study of the uses of recording technologies and new media by jazz musicians in New York. It privileges the perspectives of professional musicians, gleaned through interviews and observation of their discourses and practices in live and recorded performances and in online new media spaces. Contrary to scholarly and critical approaches to jazz that privilege live performance, this dissertation argues that mediatization, through use of recording technologies, digital formats and platforms, and social media, is a vital mode of jazz performance in the digital age. Chapter 1 shows how formative encounters with jazz by musicians coming of age in the 1980s, ‘90s, and 2000s were often with recorded media, instilling in them positive attitudes towards the creative and professional opportunities presented by recording technologies. Chapter 2 presents the professional and artistic reasons why musicians make recordings, how they choose music to record, and how they fund their recording projects amid a traditional recording industry averse to developing jazz musicians. Chapter 3 describes the ways that musicians use the technologies of the recording studio, which increasingly challenge conventional distinctions between stages of recording, aligning instead with integrated practices of “production” central to studio-based genres like hip-hop, electronic music, and pop. Chapter 4 examines how musicians are using new media of distribution and promotion—often despite the exploitative practices of media companies—to release their recordings and cultivate social networks of fans and fellow musicians. Chapter 5 discusses some current trends in the style of recording-oriented jazz under the aesthetic frameworks of songs and beats and considers how these frameworks accommodate the improvised solo, a hallmark of jazz. Chapter 6 interrogates the ontology and phenomenology of jazz recording, using the framework of mediatized performance to argue against the common notion that recording necessarily impoverishes improvised music. In closing, Chapter 7 reveals how mediatized performances have enabled jazz musicians to participate in social movements that themselves are highly mediatized. This dissertation contributes to our knowledge of contemporary jazz, the ways musicians are adapting to and innovating with new technologies and media, and the relationship between recording and performance in the digital age

Doing It to Death: An investigation into a session musician’s migration

This doctorate dissertation is about the guitar and technology in a creative perspective – about a change and transformation in musical direction. Dreyer's quest is to clarify how technology can help break new ground for a former session musician with ambitions to deepen and create a more distinctive personal expression. Through different angles and with an exploratory approach, Dreyer is searching for his own personal sound, using improvisation, composition and sound manipulating tools. Dreyer is an experienced session guitarist now exploring creating his own music using technology. He has participated in more than 160 released albums, and toured with numerous Norwegian and international artists. He also has released four albums with three different self-initiated music projects, two of which combine music and sound art. This text is an autoethnographic depiction of the quest for a personal change in musical direction and a need for a strengthened profile as a performer and composer. The reader can acquire an insight into Dreyer’s search for, and aim at a clearer idiom and sound, using technology.publishedVersio