Music Practice Commons^™

Expanding The Practice Of Conducting Through Technologies For New Musical Aesthetics, Majella Clarke

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

For over two centuries, the practice of conducting has been founded on a relatively stable relationship: a score is written, a conductor interprets it, and an ensemble/orchestra/choir realises it in performance. More recently, contemporary music has undergone profound transformations through algorithms, sensors, live electronics, machine learning, interactive systems, and generative technologies, expanding many instrumental practices and opening composition to become interactive, immersive and multimodal. However, the practice of conducting has remained largely tied to inherited models of interpretation and musical coordination via gesture.

This presentation asks how technology might expand conducting beyond traditional techniques and scoring materialities and become a …

Future Frames: Ai Tools In Music And The Value Of Human Composers, Jeff Wragg

Staff Scholarship - New Zealand

This presentation examines the pros and cons of using AI within a film composition practice. It identifies some of the roles of music in film and provides advice on how to collaborate with human composers and how to engage effectively with AI when a human composer is not an option.

Creative Constraints And Studio Ecology: Rethinking Collaboration In Contemporary Music Practice, Sean Foran

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

Presentation at SAE New Zealand Research Seminar Series

This presentation explores how creative constraints can function not as limitations, but as methodological tools within contemporary music production and musical improvisation. In an era of near-unlimited technological possibility in the recording studio, the question of how musicians make effective creative decisions becomes increasingly significant.

Drawing on two practice-based research projects, (1) a constrained studio recording study built around the aphorism “no more than four,” and (2) an interdisciplinary improvisation project using poetry as both stimulus and constraint, this research examines how deliberately imposed limitations shape collaboration, decision-making, and musical outcomes in …

Passive Listening: Exploring Interpassivity In Ambient Music, David Chechelashvili, Alan Brown

Staff Scholarship - New Zealand

The landscape of ambient music presents unique challenges for critique and classification due to its wide range of subgenres, functions and goals. Often defined by its atmospheric and immersive qualities, ambient music is traditionally seen as providing a backdrop for relaxation or as a means to block out the harsh reality of the outside world. This dominant theory, while valuable in certain contexts, tends to oversimplify the multifaceted nature of ambient music and ignores the potential for more nuanced listening experiences. The proposed alternative theory of interpassivity challenges existing understandings of ambient music production and consumption modes. Drawing on psychoanalytic …

Reimagining Musical Improvisation Through Poetic Inspiration: A Creative Practice Investigation, Sean Foran

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This presentation explores creative practice as research through an innovative approach to musical improvisation that challenges traditional boundaries between music and literature. Working with experienced improvising musicians, this study investigates how poetic texts serve as catalysts for new creative processes and musical outcomes.

The methodology involved musicians responding improvisationally to recorded poetry narrations, followed by reflective discussion and re-improvisation, extending Hannan's concept of 'comprovisation' while maintaining complete musical agency. Significantly, the final creative works present only the improvised music, requiring audiences to read poems independently and construct their own text-music relationships.

This approach differs from established music-poetry collaborations by positioning …

Idiosyncratic Approaches To Electronic Music-Making Through Mobile Technologies, Nick E. Wilson, Martin K. Koszolko

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This paper examines the transformative impact of mobile technologies on electronic music-making, highlighting how portable apps and hardware enable idiosyncratic approaches beyond traditional live and studio setups. Drawing on the authors’ extensive experience within and beyond Clan Analogue—Australia’s longest-running electronic music collective—the research contrasts conventional configurations with innovative mobile instruments and apps. By analysing a range of tools, from budget-friendly synthesisers to advanced smartphone and tablet apps, the paper explores how mobile technologies foster new creative possibilities. Using qualitative methods, the authors integrate personal experiences and a broad examination of music equipment to investigate the setting-based mobile music creation model, …

Songs For Dead Sailors, Toby Wren

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

Songs for Dead Sailors is a psychological exploration of love and loss in the era of tall ships; a song cycle about leaving a home and loved ones, to journey with no promise of a return. The work was scored for a sextet of improvising musicians and reflects my interest in the creative process and my experiences teaching creative practice research. I consider my personal musical language to be a kind of novel amalgam of my influences, and so from the start I conducted a kind of archeology of influences, documenting my own musical choices in relation to the works …

Mus101.2 Write A Song Example 1, Sae University College

Exemplars

This project was a collaborative songwriting project.

Australian/Japanese Electropunk S.F.D.U. 11 Singles & Album, Guy A. Cooper, Jake A. Morton

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This creative work is a self-produced Electropunk album by Guy Cooper and bandmate Jake Morton, created for the band Super Fun Down Under (S.F.D.U.). Written, performed (vocals, guitar, drums, bass, synth), produced, mixed, and mastered independently, the 11-track release is an exploration of genre fusion—melding the raw, political aggression of punk with the synthetic textures and structures of electronic music. The project examines how these two sonic worlds can be merged to create a high-energy, confrontational, and culturally resonant sound that retains the DIY ethos of punk while embracing modern production tools.

A core focus of the album is the …

Aum314.1 Music For Non-Linear Narrative Example 2, Sae University College

Exemplars

HD / Exceeds Specification exemplar for AUM314.1 - Music for Non-Linear Narrative

Aum314.1 Music For Non-Linear Narrative Example 1, Sae University College

Exemplars

Exceeds Specification exemplar for AUM314.1 - Music for Non-Linear Narrative

Mus113.1 Collaborative Musicianship: Project Development And Pre-Production Example 2, Sae University College

Exemplars

Development of pre-production strategies for the creation of audio media in a collaborative context.

Mus113.1 Collaborative Musicianship: Project Development And Pre-Production Example 1, Sae University College

Exemplars

Development of pre-production strategies employed in the creation of audio media in a collaborative context.

Aum314.2 Music For Non-Linear Narrative Example 1, Sae University College

Exemplars

HD / Exceeds Specification exemplar for AUM314.2: Music for Linear Narrative

Interactive Sculpture/Audio Installation - World Tree Melody - World Science Festival (Queensland Museum), Guy A. Cooper

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

World Tree Melody is an interactive sculptural and sonic installation by Guy Cooper, exhibited at the World Science Festival Brisbane (Queensland Museum) in 2023. This work explores the fusion of creative technologies and public art through motion-activated sound, custom Arduino programming, multi-channel audio sampling, and evolving music composition. Visitors become active participants in the work, triggering a generative soundscape through physical interaction with the sculpture.

Constructed from copper pipe, hand-crafted leaves, and an organic tree core, the piece is powered by two Arduino microcontrollers, four motion sensors, and seven-channel 24-bit/48kHz audio samplers. Over 400 lines of custom code manage a …