Off the edge

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.Work which takes from elsewhere forms an important thread in European art music. There is a long tradition of music which variously borrows, thieves, pastiches, plagiarises, ironically ‘retakes’, hoaxes, impersonates and appropriates. The music I have written for Off the edge, while seeking to honour and add to this thread, also attempts to zoom in upon and make explicit the idea of an ultimate and irreversible composerly self-annihilation, a kind of one-way exit-gate from the world of authored musical works itself made of pieces of music, which so much of this tradition, I feel, points towards. (Of my nine pieces, it is perhaps Time to go—only, with its ‘à la suicide note’ texts and its music that seems to slide in from far beyond the frame that is ‘composer Luke Stoneham’, which manages to get closest to this.) I have chosen the title Off the edge, because all of my music tries to capture a sense of nocturnal peripheral vision: be content with catching glimpses of the composer Luke Stoneham, because as soon as you turn to look at him face-on, he disappears

Popular music education in and for itself, and for 'other' music: current research in the classroom

This article considers some ways in which the school classroom enters into, changes and complicates musical meanings, focussing particularly on the role of popular music and how it relates to classical music. I suggest that in bringing popular music into the curriculum, educators have largely ignored the informal learning practices of popular musicians. Popular music has therefore been present as curriculum content, but its presence has only recently begun to affect our teaching strategies. I examine how the adaptation of some informal popular music learning practices for classroom use can positively affect pupils’ musical meanings and experiences. This applies not only to the sphere of popular music, but also to classical music and, by implication, other musics as well. Finally, the notions of musical autonomy, personal autonomy and musical authenticity in relation to musical meaning and informal learning practices within the classroom are discussed

A history of cross-cultural exchanges in Finnish and Swedish diddling

Publisher PD

Immersive Composition for Sensory Rehabilitation: 3D Visualisation, Surround Sound, and Synthesised Music to Provoke Catharsis and Healing

There is a wide range of sensory therapies using sound, music and visual stimuli. Some focus on soothing or distracting stimuli such as natural sounds or classical music as analgesic, while other approaches emphasize the active performance of producing music as therapy. This paper proposes an immersive multi-sensory Exposure Therapy for people suffering from anxiety disorders, based on a rich, detailed surround-soundscape. This soundscape is composed to include the users’ own idiosyncratic anxiety triggers as a form of habituation, and to provoke psychological catharsis, as a non-verbal, visceral and enveloping exposure. To accurately pinpoint the most effective sounds and to optimally compose the soundscape we will monitor the participants’ physiological responses such as electroencephalography, respiration, electromyography, and heart rate during exposure. We hypothesize that such physiologically optimized sensory landscapes will aid the development of future immersive therapies for various psychological conditions, Sound is a major trigger of anxiety, and auditory hypersensitivity is an extremely problematic symptom. Exposure to stress-inducing sounds can free anxiety sufferers from entrenched avoidance behaviors, teaching physiological coping strategies and encouraging resolution of the psychological issues agitated by the sound

Debt, Imperialism, Eunuchs, and Contemporary Christian Worship

(Excerpt) There are three ways to begin a lecture such as this. The first is to ask people to turn to each other and say why they came to this particular part of the program and what they expect to hear. This approach has the advantage of giving the speaker five to ten minutes less lecturing time. Much as I\u27m tempted, I think this tactic might leave you feeling shortchanged. The second approach is to say: I don\u27t quite understand the title I\u27ve been asked to address and then waffle for twenty minutes on the semantics before ever dealing with the subject. But since I chose the title, I can hardly quibble over it. The third approach (at least for me) is to admit that the last sixty seconds have simply been an exercise in enabling your ears to be attuned to my [Scottish] accent, so that when I begin to deal with the topic, you might at least acknowledge that you can hear if not understand

“Our Angel of Salvation”- Towards an Understanding of Iranian Cyberspace as an Alternative Sphere of Musical Sociality

This article explores the emergence of the internet as an alternative sphere of musical circulation, focusing on the case of Iran and specifically certain kinds of music for which the internet has become the primary arena of musical sociality, in some cases replacing its physical public presence entirely. In particular, it asks how the spaces opened up by new media technologies have shifted the conceptual boundaries between public and private. The article begins with an overview of recent scholarly work on Iranian cyberspace and on the relationship between “public” and “private,” which provide a grounding for the case examples that follow

Transitioning Between Audience and Performer: Co-Designing Interactive Music Performances with Children

Live interactions have the potential to meaningfully engage audiences during musical performances, and modern technologies promise unique ways to facilitate these interactions. This work presents findings from three co-design sessions with children that investigated how audiences might want to interact with live music performances, including design considerations and opportunities. Findings from these sessions also formed a Spectrum of Audience Interactivity in live musical performances, outlining ways to encourage interactivity in music performances from the child perspective