Experimental Approaches to the Composition of Interactive Video Game Music

This project explores experimental approaches and strategies to the composition of interactive music for the medium of video games. Whilst music in video games has not enjoyed the technological progress that other aspects of the software have received, budgets expand and incomes from releases grow. Music is now arguably less interactive than it was in the 1990’s, and whilst graphics occupy large amounts of resources and development time, audio does not garner the same attention. This portfolio develops strategies and audio engines, creating music using the techniques of aleatoric composition, real-time remixing of existing work, and generative synthesisers. The project created music for three ‘open-form’ games : an example of the racing genre (Kart Racing Pro); an arena-based first-person shooter (Counter-Strike : Source); and a real-time strategy title (0 A.D.). These games represent a cross-section of ‘sandbox’- type games on the market, as well as all being examples of games with open-ended or open-source code

The Long-Playing Ellington: Analyzing Composition and Collaboration in the Duke Ellington Orchestra

This dissertation examines four albums released by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra in the LP era, highlighting the intertwined roles composition and collaboration play in the realization of the sonic products. The first chapter analyzes 1951s Masterpieces by Ellington, the bands first 12-inch LP and one of the first jazz albums to explore the possibilities of the long-playing record as a medium. I balance discussion of Ellingtons compositional techniques in The Tattooed Bride, an eleven-minute concert work, with an examination of interaction as it occurs on the extended arrangements of three standards that constitute the albums remaining tracks. Chapter 2 looks at Duke Ellington, His Piano, and His Orchestra at the Bal Masque, a 1959 concept album that depicts the Ellington band in the guise of a supper-club orchestra. I look at Ellington and Billy Strayhorns arrangements of the preexisting material for insights into their creative process while also looking at the role of three other collaborators: Dick Vance, an outside arranger contracted for three arrangements on the album; Columbia records producer Irving Townsend, who splices fake applause at the beginning and end of each track to simulate a live recording; and the intended audience, who can choose whether or not to imaginatively engage with the albums simulated concert concept. In Chapter 3, I address The Ellington Suites, a 1976 posthumous release of pieces Ellington wrote to commemorate different people and places. After a detailed look at Ellingtons treatment of compositional parameters in The Queens Suite, I provide a comprehensive history and analysis of Ellingtons place-themed suites, offering a way of using place to hear these pieces as collaborations with members of his orchestra. In the final chapter, I focus on two multimedia collaborations for which Ellington provided the scores: an unfinished documentary film by Sam Shaw on Edgar Degas and a successful ballet choreographed by Alvin Ailey. The last chapter in particular reveals Ellingtons reliance on recording technology as a compositional practice, using tape as a sketchbook to work out, develop, and preserve ideas. Though composition and collaboration may seem opposed, they are reciprocal trajectories in addressing the music of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra

Composition portfolio

This portfolio includes four electronic pieces as well as three works especially devised for dance and theatre. The electronic music compositions Plastiches, Clangor, Showtime! and Ciguri investigate different approaches to the use of space and temporal structures. The works Dance studies Nos. 1 &2 were created as collaborations with choreographers and explore aspects of the relationship between music and contemporary dance. The large-scale dance-theatre work To have done with the judgment ofArtaud explores different aspects of experimental music and contemporary dance and is related to the later works of Antonin Artaud

Married, With Children and an Xbox: Compromise in Video Games Play

(First paragraph) In a home with two children under six, managing to find the time and the games that allow for play with a partner who has completely different tastes and capabilities produces compromises both inside and outside the game, as well as a hybrid form that spans the two. This last point highlights the fact that compromise remains a popularly studied topic in considerations of games, but only within very discrete boundaries that do not necessarily have anything to do with play or with players. Said another way, compromise appears in studies that foreground games as promoting aggression and competition over agreement and cooperation, with the result productive pair tend to appear in specifically oriented educational games. Likewise, compromise offers a boundary layer in economics, since it usually occurs at asymptotic locations or at points of inflection in simulations of market trends, logistics, and “war games.” However, in attempting to play in our household, we have noticed that while the compromises do revolve around an economics of scarcity produced by “resource allocation” problems and “chrono-economic stress,” they also involve a series of negotiations and concessions that determine not only the kind of game, but also what happens in that game. Further, each of these three kinds of compromises occurs in the game, outside the game, and in a “transludic” form and that this happens regardless of the game or its genre. This is important because the continuous and continual compromises reveal the ways in which such decisions become an integral part of the gaming process. Thus, our paper will document each of the three principal motives for compromise and the levels on which these register, along with the variety of games—racing, arcade, FPS, action, puzzle-solving, social, etc.—for which this happens. In fact, the variety of games is widespread and varying that we have the corollary of showing that compromise really is inseparable from play

A Violist in Nashville: The Viola’s Role in the Nashville Recording Industry

The viola, the violins larger and often overlooked sibling, is not the instrument people would typically think of when they think of Nashville. That honor would most likely go to either the fiddle or acoustic guitar. But present day Nashville is home to much more than the Country music that originally gave the city its\u27 famous moniker Music City. The recording scene now encompasses almost every genre of popular music imaginable as well as a large amount of video game, television, and movie recording. Through this project, I attempted to explore the multitude of ways in which viola can be utilized in these different areas and genres. By recording six unique songs, I was able to highlight six ways that the viola is used in the recording industry in Nashville. It is my hope that this project will pave the way for future violists to further explore their role in non- traditional genres and spaces as well as provide guidance to anyone hoping to break into this sphere of playing and recording

Breaking down the silos: tales from a jazz musician and management educator

This thesis is a critical reflection on a number of my public works in the academic arena, from my musical background and in my role as a strategic leader in two business schools. Using a combination of evocative and analytical autoethnography, I critically reflect on my roles as jazz musician and management educator and discuss how two bodies of knowledge have informed each other over the course of my career. At the core of my works as a management educator, is the application of the jazz metaphor – largely in the strategic marketing management discipline (see my published works in this space – Dennis and Macaulay (2003), Dennis and Macaulay (2007) and Dennis (2015). Over the course of my career, though, my application of the jazz metaphor has pervaded other aspects of leadership and management discourse, including entrepreneurship, general leadership and strategic management in the broadest sense. The expansion of my application of the jazz metaphor has, in part, been informed by the workshops I have delivered to organisations over the years and, of course, my students (particularly MBAs) who have brought their experience and thoughts and allowed me to broaden my thinking beyond strategic marketing discourse. Throughout this piece, I will switch lenses from my experience on the band stand, to my work in the classroom, through to my work as a senior leader. Over the course of the last twelve months, I have learned a great deal about myself and, of course my professional practice, as both a jazz musician and management educator, thanks to this Professional Doctorate. First, I have realised that I have always had a deep inherent dissonance about the nature of management education that stems back to my days as an undergraduate marketing student. It was at this point – particularly at the time of researching for my dissertation, I began to see the limitations of marketing discourse when applied to the arts, specifically jazz music. Arguably, I started experimenting with the jazz and marketing theme as an undergraduate, albeit in a superficial manner. Subsequently, then, as I developed my skills as an improviser under the guidance of jazz trumpeter - Gerard Presencer – and began playing some high-profile gigs, I began thinking about how jazz can inform (initially) marketing discourse, but as my career developed, I have broadened my outlook and indeed the application of jazz to the wider field of management. I no longer think of myself as a marketer, instead, I am a management educator – in part informed by six years in strategic leadership positions in two business schools. Throughout this thesis, I will discuss how iconic trumpeter and thought-leader – Miles Davis – has and continues to be a major influence on my professional practice. This context statement examines how his musicianship and creativity has inspired a body of my public works – from metaphor, to leadership, to challenging the art vs. commerce debate. Additionally, I will critically reflect on my work to bring the ‘art’ back into marketing through the creation of Art and the Market (formally Arts Marketing: An International Journal), which has assisted in bringing together a global community of practice for the arts marketing community. The creation of the journal is an important piece in my career to date, and although I feel I did this perhaps too early in my career, it has none the less been an important contribution to arts marketing discourse. There are a number of conclusions that I have drawn from this reflective exercise. First, I have come to learn that I have only scratched the surface of the application of the jazz metaphor in a business context and I have identified directions for future academic research that will inform my pedagogical practice and my jazz workshops. Second, and largely from my work as Associate Dean, I have broken out of the marketing silo and I now see myself as a management educator. I discuss some of the criticisms and limitations of management education in this thesis and I also reflect on the challenges in my role as Associate Dean and how these have enhanced my practice – academically and pedagogically. I better understand the interdisciplinary, the multidisciplinary and even the transdisciplinary nature of management education and I continue to champion this with my work in curriculum design – most recently developing a new MBA that is very much interdisciplinary in nature. This deep critical reflection has also enhanced my understanding of improvisation and I feel I have a deeper understanding of how I play the trumpet and my approach to improvisation. My playing, I feel, has also positively benefitted as a result. The public works connected to this context statement are eclectic and a mixture of academic publications, musical performances/recordings, video footage of my jazz workshops, examples of curriculum design I have developed, with the occasional email to Miles Davis asking for his advice on matters connected to my professional practice. His inspirational reply is the perfect conclusion to the thesis

An exploration of the co-production of performance running bodies and natures within "Running Taskscapes"

This article explores the interrelationship between particular “natural” spaces and the production of middle- and long-distance performance running bodies. It argues that running bodies and nature are actively co-produced, thus blurring the commonly made distinction between the “social” and the “natural”. In doing so, the article extends the geography of sports literature by adopting a “post-constructivist” perspective on nature as elucidated in Tim Ingold's concepts of “dwelling” and “taskscape”. This illuminates the (re)production of sporting bodies through the materiality of nature and in turn contributes to research on embodiment within sports studies that highlights the importance of space and the natural environment. The article draws on ethnographic material and textual sources to illuminate the running taskscape associated with the production of performance running bodies and highlights how three forms and functions of nature are co-produced through this mode of dwelling

“Small Has No Inside, Big Has No Outside”: Montreal’s Chinese Diaspora Breaks Out/In Music

Through ethnographic fieldwork undertaken from 2003 to 2010, discussion with local musicians, and analysis of concert programs, recordings, live performances, rehearsals, press reviews, musicians’ websites and textual sources, the author examines the means by which the Chinese diasporic community in Montreal negotiates its cultural identity and exerts its agency through musical performance. The author also explores how the tangled relationships of regionally- diverse Chinese immigrants to their birthplaces and their chosen homeland are unravelled, reflecting simultaneous positions as “insiders” and “outsiders.