Playing no solo imagination: synthesising the rhythmic emergence of sound and sign through embodied drum kit performance and writing

This practice-based PhD explores musical imagination by examining the relationships of embodied musical performance and writing. The submission comprises audio recordings of original musical material and accompanying literary output, which are contextualised through a written commentary. Through creative practice-led research based on the author’s experience as a performing musician, the thesis explores and details the generative relationship between imagination and intersubjectivity. In demonstrating musical performance as an ecologically-grounded activity animated by polyvalent real and imaginary elements, the thesis ultimately challenges the notion of an autonomous, solo subject in musical performance practice. The research context draws on music, creative writing and a range of artistic and theoretical scholarship on the subjective experience: of emotion and feeling; intersubjectivity and embodiment; semiotics and the musical imagination; histories of time and rhythm. By engaging performance and writing as situated, ecological activities, creative practice is used productively as a research methodology through the following devices: (1) The drum kit—the author’s primary performance vehicle—is treated to a broadly historical and theoretical examination of material practice. A ‘hybrid drum kit’—combining acoustic drums, cymbals, and synthetic sounds—is proposed, and used by the author as the basis for this project’s practical explorations; (2) Rhythm is conceptualised and deployed as a systematic and recursive method for musical play, in order to investigate the interrelationship of sonic, semantic and physical elements; (3) Creative writing, based on theories of embodied cognition, is used to explore and inscribe the imagination of musical play. This creative practice methodology is used to articulate and respond to the following questions: (a) What is the felt relationship between listening and inscription? (b) How do particular words, diagrams, real and imagined materials effect the sound of drum performance? (c) How do movements of the body relate to semantic and timbral conventions? The methodology is productive generating emergent structures which express embodied cognition, demonstrating the function of musical imagination. The approach serves simultaneously to expose the bias of perceptual filtering, and to challenge conventions of movement and quantification that condition musical subjectivity. The research is formally presented in a way that reflects the synthesis of real, imagined, poetic and analytic elements under scrutiny in this thesis, through a series of interconnected units: thesis, audio recordings, and attendant written outputs. Exercises generate scores, in turn performed and recorded live. Sonic and written outcomes are combined, resulting in two publications, and a speculative performance. Narrated by a number of fictional characters, through various imaginary spaces, these outputs constitute three ‘Rhythmic Figure’ studies—‘Ductus,’ ‘Nsular’ and ‘Gyri’—produced as independent documents, and presented in the central ‘Garden’ section of the thesis. ‘Anteroom’ and ‘Exits’ sections, framing the ‘Garden,’ introduce, and conclude the thesis, respectively. In its original, creative demonstration of the interconnected contribution of non-verbal, sensory, and intersubjective imagination to musical play, this creative practice research project contributes argument and evidence for the manifold ways of knowing music—listen, feel, move, write—which sit beyond discursive norms.This practice-based PhD explores musical imagination by examining the relationships of embodied musical performance and writing. The submission comprises audio recordings of original musical material and accompanying literary output, which are contextualised through a written commentary. Through creative practice-led research based on the author’s experience as a performing musician, the thesis explores and details the generative relationship between imagination and intersubjectivity. In demonstrating musical performance as an ecologically-grounded activity animated by polyvalent real and imaginary elements, the thesis ultimately challenges the notion of an autonomous, solo subject in musical performance practice. The research context draws on music, creative writing and a range of artistic and theoretical scholarship on the subjective experience: of emotion and feeling; intersubjectivity and embodiment; semiotics and the musical imagination; histories of time and rhythm. By engaging performance and writing as situated, ecological activities, creative practice is used productively as a research methodology through the following devices: (1) The drum kit—the author’s primary performance vehicle—is treated to a broadly historical and theoretical examination of material practice. A ‘hybrid drum kit’—combining acoustic drums, cymbals, and synthetic sounds—is proposed, and used by the author as the basis for this project’s practical explorations; (2) Rhythm is conceptualised and deployed as a systematic and recursive method for musical play, in order to investigate the interrelationship of sonic, semantic and physical elements; (3) Creative writing, based on theories of embodied cognition, is used to explore and inscribe the imagination of musical play. This creative practice methodology is used to articulate and respond to the following questions: (a) What is the felt relationship between listening and inscription? (b) How do particular words, diagrams, real and imagined materials effect the sound of drum performance? (c) How do movements of the body relate to semantic and timbral conventions? The methodology is productive generating emergent structures which express embodied cognition, demonstrating the function of musical imagination. The approach serves simultaneously to expose the bias of perceptual filtering, and to challenge conventions of movement and quantification that condition musical subjectivity. The research is formally presented in a way that reflects the synthesis of real, imagined, poetic and analytic elements under scrutiny in this thesis, through a series of interconnected units: thesis, audio recordings, and attendant written outputs. Exercises generate scores, in turn performed and recorded live. Sonic and written outcomes are combined, resulting in two publications, and a speculative performance. Narrated by a number of fictional characters, through various imaginary spaces, these outputs constitute three ‘Rhythmic Figure’ studies—‘Ductus,’ ‘Nsular’ and ‘Gyri’—produced as independent documents, and presented in the central ‘Garden’ section of the thesis. ‘Anteroom’ and ‘Exits’ sections, framing the ‘Garden,’ introduce, and conclude the thesis, respectively. In its original, creative demonstration of the interconnected contribution of non-verbal, sensory, and intersubjective imagination to musical play, this creative practice research project contributes argument and evidence for the manifold ways of knowing music—listen, feel, move, write—which sit beyond discursive norms