Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds

Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds is a 8-hour composition intended for overnight listening. It features 4 performers who wear custom-designed EEG sensors. The performers rest and fall asleep as they naturally would. Over the course of one night, their brainwave activity generates a spatial audio environment. Audiences are invited to sleep or listen as they wish. Composition & concept by Gascia Ouzounian. Physiological interface and interaction design by R. Benjamin Knapp. Audio interface and interaction design by Eric Lyon.

Vaughan Williams and contemporary music: composers' forum

Like many long-lived composers, Vaughan Williams suffered a decline in his reputation immediately following his death, as the emergence in the 1960s of a younger generation of composers rendered much of his work outmoded in the eyes of many critics. In recent years, however, the reception of Vaughan Williams's music among composers has improved markedly, a combination of the ebbing of the tide of high modernism and greater pluralism in contemporary music, and a growing awareness that Vaughan Williams was perhaps more modernist (or at least progressive) than had previously been thought. In interviews with four leading British composers (two of whom were part of the 1960s generation mentioned above), I investigate the nature and extent of Vaughan Williams's legacy to his successors, both musical and social. What emerges is a near consensus on Vaughan Williams's greatest works, but a diversity of views on his compositional techniques and on his place among his European contemporaries.

Music in mind, a randomized controlled trial of music therapy for young people with behavioural and emotional problems: study protocol

Aims. This article is a report of a trial protocol to determine if improvizational music therapy leads to clinically significant improvement in communication and interaction skills for young people experiencing social, emotional or behavioural problems. Background. Music therapy is often considered an effective intervention for young people experiencing social, emotional or behavioural difficulties. However, this assumption lacks empirical evidence. Study design. Musicinmindisamulti-centredsingle-blindrandomizedcontrolledtrial involving 200 young people (aged 8–16 years) and their parents. Eligible participants willhaveaworkingdiagnosiswithintheambitofInternational ClassificationofDisease 10 Mental and Behavioural Disorders and will be recruited over 15 months from six centres within the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services of a large health and social care trust in Northern Ireland. Participants will be randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to receive standard care alone or standard care plus 12 weekly music therapy sessions delivered by the Northern Ireland Music Therapy Trust. Baseline data will be collectedfromyoungpeopleandtheirparentsusingstandardizedoutcomemeasuresfor communicative and interaction skills (primary endpoint), self-esteem, social functioning, depressionandfamilyfunctioning.Follow-updatawillbecollected1and13 weeks afterthefinalmusictherapysession.Acost-effectivenessanalysiswillalsobecarriedout. Discussion. This study will be the largest trial to date examining the effect of music therapy on young people experiencing social, emotional or behavioural difficulties and will provide empirical evidence for the use of music therapy among this population. Trial registration. This study is registered in theISRCTNRegister,ISRCTN96352204. Ethical approval was gained in October 2010.

Compost city: underground music, collapsoscapes and urban regeneration

This paper looks at the recent history of Hulme, Manchester, which during the 1980s was home to many of the most successful bands of the post-punk era. This flourishing of underground music was not planned, however. It emerged, through a complex network of urban forces, some physical, some social. The paper develops the concept of the ‘compost city’ a laissez-faire approach to the management of urban culture, which is oppositional to the current vogue for more hands-on cultural industries management.

The Sound of Becoming: Moving Towards a Virtual Music

In 1985 Jacques Attali proposed a new modality for music. He suggests that there be “not a new music, but a new way of making music... a radically new form of the insertion of music into communication” (Attali 134). What Attali foretold has become a firm reality in contemporary musical practice. One has only to look at any current musical activity to encounter work that relies heavily on real-time interaction and dynamic generation and/or modification of materials. But why is this ontologically different ‘mode of essentially interactive and transformative existence’ (Ziarek 195), this ‘new way of making music’, so attractive to contemporary artists? What is motivating artists to abandon a production model in favor of a model of real-time interactive exploration? I will argue that at the foundation of this new artistic ontology lies Deleuze’s concept of the virtual. It is a recognition of the virtual power of music, that music making can be an act of invention, a process where one can discover something never before experienced.

Portfolio of Compositions investigating ensemble improvisation, distributed and real-time scoring, and multi-nodal input and output

This output is a collection of compositions which explore issues of ensemble improvisation, ensemble management and orchestration, real-time and distributed scoring, multi-nodal inputs and outputs, and animated and graphic notation. Compositions include: Activities I; tutti, duet, trio, solo, quartet; Lewitt Notations I; Webwork I; and Sometimes I feel the space between people (voices) in terms of tempos. These compositions are presented in computer animated scores which are synchronized through the network and subject to real-time modification and control. They can be performed by ensembles distributed over large physical spaces connected by the network. The scores for these compositions include software which displays the animations to the performers, software to structure and disseminate score events, and triggering software that allows the control of a performance to be distributed. Scores can also include live electronics which are coordinated with graphic events.

Soundweaving: Writings on Improvisation

This book consists of eight chapters with writings on improvisation and an introduction by one of the most intriguing improvisers of our generation – Evan Parker.
The initial discussions for this book were carried out during the “Two Thousand + TEN” symposium, which took place on the 6th of November 2010 at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. The symposium’s theme was ‘improvisation’. Georgina Born and David Borgo gave keynote addresses, alongside many other excellent speakers, several of who are included in this book.
My contribution is a novel way of editing texts, as I have woven all chapters into an overall piece of writing, interlaced with my own contribution of around 40 pages.