"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

Modular composition environment: A tool for improvisation of conventional electronic music.

This production thesis sets out to create a tool for live improvisation of music that allows musicians to create and modulate musical patterns in real-time and reduces the need for pre-recorded or pre-sequenced material. It starts by defining the scope of *conventional electronic music* and then explores the shortcomings of current tools in relation to the divergency of music making. The project is based on the author's previous experiences in the live improvisation of conventional electronic music, and thus it starts by surveying the currently existing tools. After that, it focuses on the iterative design process of modular environment, taking the modular synthesizer as a conceptual starting point. These processes led to the development of composition devices which are expressed through a hardware user interface, in a modular environment. This project finds that the shortcomings in divergency of current music improvisation tools come from the fact that musical modulations in an improvisation tool are inherently limited by the available procedures of any given system. While composition tools such as modular synthesizers lack this limitation they do not have the discrete musical abstractions required for conventional electronic music. The production project thus focuses on the design of a modular environment that could permit re-purposing of procedures that process discrete musical events. The outcome of this project is a new performance environment that can be used to generate more diverse improvisations of conventional electronic music

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Live Coding

Open Access peer reviewed papers on live coding published at the 1st International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) in Leeds

Attention Restraint, Working Memory Capacity, and Mind Wandering: Do Emotional Valence or Intentionality Matter?

Attention restraint appears to mediate the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and mind wandering (Kane et al., 2016). Prior work has identifed two dimensions of mind wandering—emotional valence and intentionality. However, less is known about how WMC and attention restraint correlate with these dimensions. Te current study examined the relationship between WMC, attention restraint, and mind wandering by emotional valence and intentionality. A confrmatory factor analysis demonstrated that WMC and attention restraint were strongly correlated, but only attention restraint was related to overall mind wandering, consistent with prior fndings. However, when examining the emotional valence of mind wandering, attention restraint and WMC were related to negatively and positively valenced, but not neutral, mind wandering. Attention restraint was also related to intentional but not unintentional mind wandering. Tese results suggest that WMC and attention restraint predict some, but not all, types of mind wandering