Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Stick Strokes And Swing Ratios Of Billy Higgins, Benjamin Shelley

Research Datasets

This dataset contains a millisecond-accurate record of Billy Higgins' jazz swing ride rhythm on a selection of recordings between 1959 and 1964. Calculations have been made to also record the beat and upbeat lengths, and the swing ratio for each completion of the jazz swing ride rhythm. An overall swing ratio average for each recording is included.

The Experiential Salience Of Music In Identity For Singing Teachers, Melissa Forbes, Jason Goopy, Amanda E. Krause

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Professional musicians with strong identities in music may also have a high degree of music in their identities. Accordingly, a rigid identification with work may be problematic for musicians, particularly when forces beyond their control change their work circumstances. In this study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 singing teachers, representing a subset of professional musicians, and used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore the ways in which they enacted music in their identities. The framework of musical identities in action was used to interpret the findings, revealing the dynamic, embodied, and situated complexity of music in participants’ identities. Music …

‘Keep The Music Going’: How The Isolation Tour 2020 Maintained Community And Cultural Connectedness During The 2020 Covid-19 Lockdown In Western Australia, Brigitta Scarfe, Amy Budrikis, Clint Bracknell

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social isolation measures had a profound impact on communities worldwide. In regional and remote Western Australia, the use of online platforms has become increasingly important for maintaining social and emotional well-being. This article examines the role of ‘The Isolation Tour 2020’ Facebook page in providing a lifeline for its mostly Aboriginal audience to stay connected with culture, Country, and one another during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in Western Australia. The authors conducted an in-depth interview with one of the administrators of the page and supplemented this with a thematic analysis of publicly available Facebook data. …

Wanji-Wanji: The Past And Future Of An Aboriginal Travelling Song, Myfany Turpin, Calista Yeoh, Clint Bracknell

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Classical Aboriginal culture in Australia consists of many different kinds of ceremonies, including travelling ceremonies that are often shared across linguistic and geographical boundaries. Each of these ceremonies is made up of dozens of different verses. Perhaps the most widely known travelling ceremony is one referred to in some areas as ‘Wanji-wanji’. This was known over half the country and dates back at least 170 years, as evidenced in eleven legacy recordings and fieldwork interviewing more than 100 people across the western half of Australia. Like any oral tradition, the names of such ceremonies vary from place to place and …

The Fringe Or The Heart Of Things? Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Musics In Australian Music Institutions, Clint Bracknell, Linda Barwick

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Teetering on the fringe of Australian music scholarship and knowledge institutions, research and teaching of local Indigenous musics hold a marginal place, belying the positioning of Indigenous music-makers at the centre of international representations of Australian culture, and the dynamic local connections of Indigenous music-making to Australian landscapes and social realities. Music’s ubiquity and diversity worldwide show its potential as a tool to manage the changing world in societies of the past and present, yet this potential is largely neglected in contemporary Australia, and our theories and evidence base are limited by the narrow western focus within our knowledge institutions. …

Educative Power And The Respectful Curricular Inclusion Of Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Music, Michael Webb, Clint Bracknell

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This chapter argues for the full, respectful curricular inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music in order to promote a more balanced and equitable social and cultural vision of the nation-state in Australian schools. It challenges views that claim Indigenous cultures have been irretrievably lost or are doomed to extinction, as well as the fixation on musical authenticity. We propose that the gradual broadening of Indigenous musical expressions over time and the musical renaissance of the new millennium have created an unprecedented opportunity for current music educators to experience the educative power of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music. …

Notational Strategies For Integrating Live Performers With Complex Sounds And Environments, Lindsay Vickery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper describes strategies for integrating live performers with complex “extra-musical” sounds and environments through extended traditional and proportional notations. The subjects of the works discussed include Animals (wardang [2019], kurui [2018]) and environments (rising water [2018], willsons downfall [2018], njookenbooro [2018]) . The techniques include spectrographic transcription, audio processing, extended forms of notation and spatial audio.

To Become Wind [Full Score], Jie Hong Yang

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

No abstract provided.

No Human Ever Made A Cathedral Such As This: Scoping The Ecology Of The Carols By Candlelight Effect In Australia’S Open-Air Environments, Robin Ryan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

During Australia’s dry December, traditional and popular forms of caroling shape the sight and sound of the key Christian festival of Christmas. Creative connections between belief, place, and music are characteristically manifest in focused open-air environments of beach, bushland or park. Reasoning from gospel belief that the very first “Christmas carol” emanated from a heavenly host of angels singing to an audience of shepherds in a field, caroling alfresco is an appropriate activity. How, then, do Australian caroling venues become conducive to environmental spheres of sound and influence? While the annual mass Carols by Candlelight concerts televised from Melbourne and …

Establishing Connectivity Between The Existing Networked Music Notation Packages Quintet.Net, Decibel Scoreplayer And Maxscore, Stuart James, Cat Hope, Lindsay R. Vickery Dr, Aaron Wyatt, Ben Carey, Xiao Fu, Georg Hajdu

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In this paper we outline a collaboration where live internet-based and local collaboration between research groups/musicians from Decibel New Music Ensemble (Perth, Australia) and ZM (Hamburg, Germany), was facilitated by novel innovations in customised software solutions employed by both groups. The exchange was funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst and Universities Australia. Both groups were previously engaged in the research and performance of similar musical repertoire such as John Cage's 'Five' (1988) and 'Variations I — VIII' (1958-67) among others, the performances of which utilise graphic, animated and extended traditional Western music notation. Preliminary steps were taken to achieve communication …

Pre-Service Primary Teachers' Experiences And Self-Efficacy To Teach Music: Are They Ready?, Geoffrey M. Lowe, Geoff W. Lummis, Julia Morris

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Music is essential in developing the young brain, particularly skills relating to concentration, filtering, information retrieval, verbal competencies, mental visualisation, problem solving, empathy and personal expression. With the introduction of the Australian National Curriculum and its adoption as the basis of the Western Australian P-10 music syllabus, there is cause to reflect on the effectiveness of music provision within teacher education courses and pre-service generalist teachers' abilities to deliver the new music syllabus. Accordingly, a mixed method study was conducted with first and fourth year Bachelor of Education primary students at a Western Australian university, to investigate students' music experiences …

Rhizomatic Approaches To Screen-Based Music Notation, Lindsay R. Vickery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The rhizome concept explored by Deleuze and Guatarri has had an important influence on formal thinking in music and new media. This paper explores the development of rhizomatic musical scores that are arranged cartographically with nodal points allowing for alternate pathways to be traversed. The challenges of pre-digital exemplars of rhizomatic structure are discussed. It follows the development of concepts and technology used in the creation of five works by the author Ubahn c. 1985: the Rosenberg Variations [2012], The Last Years [2012], Sacrificial Zones [2014], detritus [2015] and trash vortex [2015]. this paper discusses the potential for the evolution …

The Possibilities Of A Line: Marking The Glissando In Music, Cat Hope, Michael Terren

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The glissando as it is deployed in Western art music notation carries with it a number of challenges to the hegemony of traditional harmony, rhythm, and notation. The glissando embodies the smooth line, unlike the striated pitch-time space of traditional Western music, which aligns the glissando to many philosophical concepts, as well as mathematical, scientific, and architectural disciplines. Select works by Iannis Xenakis, James Tenney and Giacinto Scelsi are discussed for their development of glissandi as integral formal components, especially around the glissando’s tendency to encourage stasis. Compositional attempts to combine the nature of glissandi with drone in the author’s …

Forest As Place In The Album Canopy: Culturalising Nature Or Naturalising Culture?, Robin Ryan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

No abstract available

Tectonic: A Networked, Generative And Interactive, Conducting Environment For Ipad, Lindsay R. Vickery Dr, Stuart James

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper describes the concept, implementation and context of Tectonic: Rodinia for four realtime composer-conductoors and ensemble. In this work, an addition to the reqertoire of the Decibel Scoreplayer, iPads art networked together using the bonjour protocol to manage connectivity over the network. Unlike previous Scoreplayer works, Rodinia combines "conductor view" control interfaces, "performer view" notation interfaces and an "audience view" overview interface, separately identified by manual connection and yet mutually interactive. Notation is communicated to an ensemble via scores independently generated in realtime in each "performer view" and amalgamated schematically in the :audience view" interface. Interaction in the work …

A Multi-Point 2d Interface: Audio-Rate Signals For Controlling Complex Multi-Parametric Sound Synthesis, Stuart James

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper documents a method of controlling complex sound synthesis processes such as granular synthesis, additive synthesis, timbre morphology, swarm-based spatialisation, spectral spatialisation, and timbre spatialisation via a multi-parametric 2D interface. This paper evaluates the use of audio-rate control signals for sound synthesis, and discussing approaches to de-interleaving, synchronization, and mapping. The paper also outlines a number of ways of extending the expressivity of such a control interface by coupling this with another 2D multi-parametric nodes interface and audio-rate 2D table lookup. The paper proceeds to review methods of navigating multi-parameter sets via interpolation and transformation. Some case studies are …

Headline Grabs For Music: The Development Of An Ipad Score Generator, Cat Hope, Stuart James, Aaron Wyatt

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper-demonstration provides an overview of an generative music score adapted for the iPad by the Decibel new music ensemble. The original score `Loaded (NSFW)’ (2015) is by Western Australian composer Laura Jane Lowther, and is scored for ensemble and electronics, commissioned for a performance in April 2015 at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. It engages and develops the Decibel Score Player application, a score reader and generator for the iPad as a tool for displaying an interactive score that requires performers to react to news headlines through musical means. The paper will introduce the concept for the player, …

Multi-Point Nonlinear Spatial Distribution Of Effects Across The Soundfield, Stuart James

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper outlines a method of applying non-linear processing and effects to multi-point spatial distributions of sound spectra. The technique is based on previous research by the author on non-linear spatial distributions of spectra, that is, timbre spatialisation in the frequency domain. One of the primary applications here is the further elaboration of timbre spatialisation in the frequency domain to account for distance cues incorporating loudness attenuation, reverb, and filtration. Further to this, the same approach may also give rise to more non-linear distributions of processing and effects across multi-point spatial distributions such as audio distortions and harmonic exciters, delays, …

Cruel And Usual, Cat Hope

Research Datasets

Cruel and Usual is a music composition for string quartet electronics. It is inspired by an article by the Al Jazeera news service that discusses the use of solitary confinement in US prisons as incarceration rates explode in the USA. In some cases, prisoners have remained in solitary for over 38 years., or may even be children, and the reasons for going in there are not always clear or legitimate. This kind of confinement is known as ‘no touch torture’.

Drone, glissandi and the trembling bass are features of this work, where the string players are sampled at certain small …

Archiving The New, Now, For Future Users Yet Unknown, Lelia Green, Cat Hope, Kylie J. Stevenson, Tos Mahoney

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Associate Professor Cat Hope, along with colleague and collaborator Tos Mahoney, is one of Western Australia’s leading proponents of New Music, and the instigator of the development of the Western Australian New Music Archive (WANMA), that was launched on 20 May 2015, at the State Library of Western Australia. As co - curator of WANMA, alongside Mahoney, Hope is a key determinant of its contents. Consequently, Hope’s working definitions of new music and of the role and function of an archive are critical areas of interest and key to realising the communicative vision of this project which is also sponsored …

The Decibel Scoreplayer - A Digital Tool For Reading Graphic Notation, Cat Hope, Lindsay R. Vickery Dr

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In 2009, the Decibel new music ensemble based in Perth, Western Australia was formed with an associated manifesto that stated “Decibel seek to dissolve any division between sound art, installation and music by focusing on the combination of acoustic and electronic instruments” [1]. The journey provided by this focus led to a range of investigations into different score types, resulting in a re-writing of the groups statement to “pioneering electronic score formats, incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments” [2]. This paper outlines the development of Decibel’s work with the ‘screen score’, including the different stages of the …

Toward A New, Musical Paradigm Of Place: The Port River Symphonic Of Chester Schultz, Robin Ryan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In privileging music as a focus for applied ecology, the goal of this essay is to deepen perspectives on the musical representation of land in an age of complex environmental challenge. As the metaphor driving public narration of environmental crises, the notion of Earth as our home—signified by the prefix “eco”—brings with it a critical expectation for the musical academy to retreat from bland talk about a “sense of place.” Based on the premise that damaged ecologies are a matter of concern to many people, Indigenous and Settler; and building on the late Val Plumwood’s theory of “shadow” or “denied” …

Mr Barbecue By Elena Kats-Chernin: The Raw And The Cooked, Helen K. Rusak

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This article examines the music theatre work Mr Barbecue (2002) composed by Elena Kats-Chernin, based upon a libretto by Janis Balodis. It looks at the work within the context of her two previous music -theatre works Iphis(1997) and Matricide: The Musical (1998), which I argue express a feminine aesthetic. I refer particularly to Eva Rieger’s theories on the “restricted aesthetic” outlined in her article “’I recycle Sounds’: Do Women Compose Differently?”. With the commissioning of Mr. Barbecue, Kats-Chernin was required to set a libretto which expressed the new wave of masculinist thinking that emerged in the 1990’s as a backlash …

Exploring A Visual/Sonic Representational Continuum, Lindsay Vickery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper explores the relationships between sound and its visualisation, focussing upon the issues surrounding representation and interpretation of music through both performative and machine processes. The discussion proceeds in the context of five recent works by the author exploring the representation of sound and musical notation and their relationship to and with performance: unhörbares wird hörbar (the inaudible becomes audible) [2013], EVP [2012], Lyrebird: environment player [2014], Nature Forms I [2014] and sacrificial zones [2014]. Issues examined include: re-sonification of spectrograms, visualisation of spectral analysis data, control of spatialisation and audio processing using spectral analysis data, and reading issues …

Stability And Accuracy Of Long-Term Memory For Musical Pitch [Journal Article], Alyce K. Hay, Craig P. Speelman

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Existing research gives an inconsistent picture of the nature of the cognitive processes underlying memory for musical information. A study was conducted to investigate the stability and accuracy of long-term memory for pitch amongst individuals who have not had musical training. Excerpts from well-known pop songs were used as stimuli. Participants heard one long sequence of excerpts, each of which had been raised or lowered in pitch by one semitone, or left unaltered. After hearing each excerpt, participants were asked to detect whether it was different from the original version of the song they remembered. Participants were significantly worse at …

Reflections On The Construction Of Meaning Through Immanent Visual Association, Samuel P. Gillies, Lindsay R. Vickery

Research outputs 2013

Since the advent of digital video editing and projection, multimedia presentation in the concert space is no longer exclusive to the music of stadiumsized popular music events. Increasingly, many in the field of new music are incorporating elements of mixed media presentation. Examples of this trend include performances across the spectrum of new music such as Sensorband, Nico Muhly, Leafcutter John, and more. This paper discusses the artistic and thematic accomplishments of four different approaches to audio-visual association before discussing the influences of these approaches, their incorporation or rejection, into my own work Red River. (Gillies, 2011)

Tessitura Changes In Music Theatre Repertoire For The Soprano Voice, Linda J. Barcan

Research outputs 2013

While the term tessitura is often poorly defined and loosely applied, certain statements about its application to singers and their repertoire may be made. For vocal repertoire, tessitura refers to the prevailing note or range of notes in a vocal line. For singers, it refers to the area in which the voice is most comfortably resonant. The definition most frequently used to capture the concept in relation to both singer and repertoire is the range of pitches where a voice or song “sits”. While attempts have been made to quantify tessitura, most references to this term remain largely subjective. This …

The Psychological Benefits Of Participating In Group Singing For Members Of The General Public, Marianne D. Judd, Julie Ann Pooley

Research outputs 2013

The last decade has produced a growing number of studies examining the potential psychological benefits of singing in a choir. Studies have tended to focus on the benefits for groups that might be described as marginalized or criminal. In contrast, the current study focused on members of the general public who regularly participate in choral singing. An in-depth qualitative design was utilized to explore the meaning and importance of group singing for 10 participants. Thematic analysis based on an interpretive approach was utilized to analyse the data. Psychological benefits emerged as two themes: individual and group. A third theme, mediating …

The Western Australian New Music Archive: Finding, Accessing, Remembering And Performing A Community Of Practice, Catherine A. Hope, Lelia R. Green, Tos Mahoney

Research outputs 2013

In 2009, the music composition department at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) at Edith Cowan University (ECU) and Perth organisation Tura New Music embarked upon a project to develop and establish the Western Australian New Music Archive (WANMA), a digital repository and interface of new music by Western Australian composers from 1970 to the current day. The project seeks to discover, collect, collate, digitise, store and disseminate music recordings, video documentation, scores and other evidence surrounding Western Australian new music. WANMA is now a funded Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage research project involving collaboration between the State …

Developing Social Skills Through Music: The Impact Of General Classroom Music In An Australian Lower Socio-Economic Area Primary School, John N. Heyworth

Research outputs 2013

Ideas about the physical and psychological healing effects of music date back to the classical Greek period. There is also substantial research concerning the educative influences of music on the human mind. Developmental deficiencies among low socio-economic student populations have often been associated with a reduced sense of self-esteem, responsibility, and ability to form relationships or engage in successful communication. This article describes a pro-active, constructivist approach to music education in a school largely attended by socially and economically disadvantaged students in Australia, and explores the influence of music on social learning. The strategic use of group music lessons in …