(Grinstead 128 is in the inside hallway going north from the foyer to Hart Recital Hall.)
- Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner • A Lot Has Changed in 20 Years [Yet Much Stays the Same] • Considerations for the 20th Anniversary Edition of Crossing the Line: Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States
- Gregory Taylor • Strange Attractors
- Johanna Devaney, Daniel McKemie, Alexander Morgan • pyAMPACT (Python-based Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit)
- Nickolai V Zielinski • Flattening Musical Hierarchies • You Should Be Improvising More
- Timothy W McDunn • Archinovica
- Rodrigo Cadiz • TBD
- Zeynep Özcan • TBD
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A Lot Has Changed in 20 Years [Yet Much Stays the Same]
Considerations for the 20th Anniversary Edition of Crossing the Line: Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner
In 2006 my text, Crossing the Line: Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States was published by Ashgate Press and became one of their best sellers for that year. At the time of its publication, the book was an answer to “Where are all the women?” in histories of electroacoustic music in the U.S., a question that was still very much needing to be answered. As I begin planning the 20th anniversary edition of this book, I realize that beyond simply deaths, revelations, and new pieces and persons to explore, discussions of “women in music” have expanded as far as considerations and examinations of the field have grown and transformed. This five-minute video will discuss my current thought processes and predicaments and ideas for the anniversary volume and serves as an invitation to the audience to assist me in determining the scope and range of the revised and updated work.
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner (b. 1964) received her D.M.A. from the University of Illinois in 1991 and has been on the staff of the University of North Texas for 25 years building computer labs, classrooms, and testing facilities. She is a board member of the Society for Electro-acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) and is the listserv coordinator for the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM). She is also a karate instructor and national martial arts competitor and champion and currently holds the rank of 4th-degree black belt in American Karate. Hinkle-Turner is the author of Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States (Ashgate [now Routledge], 2006) and is currently working on a twentieth-anniversary edition of this text.
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Strange Attractors
Gregory Taylor
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Curiosity and Teaching Music Technology
Jeff Kaiser
Curiosity is a fundamental human drive that encourages and optimizes learning. What ways of teaching music technology kill curiosity, and what ways encourage it?
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pyAMPACT (Python-based Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit)
Johanna Devaney, Daniel McKemie, Alexander Morgan
pyAMPACT (Python-based Automatic Music Performance Analysis and Comparison Toolkit) links symbolic and audio music representations to facilitate score-informed estimation of performance data in audio as well as general linking of symbolic and audio music representations with a variety of annotations. pyAMPACT can read a range of symbolic formats and can output note-linked audio descriptors/performance data into MEI and {Humdrum} kern files. The audio analysis uses score alignment to calculate time-frequency regions of importance for each note in the symbolic representation from which to estimate a range of parameters. These include tuning-, dynamics-, and timbre-related performance descriptors, while timing-related information is available from the score alignment. Beyond performance data estimation, pyAMPACT also facilitates multi-modal investigations through its robust infrastructure for linking symbolic representations and annotations to audio.
Daniel McKemie is a composer, percussionist, electronic musician, researcher, and arranger based in New York City. His current work includes using techniques rooted in Music Information Retrieval in analyzing the nature of timbre and using such data in creative settings. He also focuses on utilizing the internet and browser technology to realize a more accessible platform for multimedia art. Daniel is currently pursuing his MS in Computer Science and Health Informatics at Brooklyn College, where he works in Professor Johanna Devaney’s Laboaratory for Music and Audio Understanding (LUMAA) as a graduate assistant. His music has been performed in Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia; and his research on computer music and web-based audio/composition techniques has been presented and published internationally in conferences such as the Korean Electro-acoustic Music Society, the Australasian Computer Music Association, the International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, the Society of Electro-acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), and Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), among others.
Daniel also develops new ways of interfacing handmade circuitry, modular synthesizers, and embedded systems to various softwares both new and old. This recent work has allowed for complex, interactive performance environments to emerge, in which software generates compositional processes and actions in the form of analog signals sent to the hardware, and software that can analyze said signals from the hardware to determine musical behaviors.
His teachers have included Morton Subotnick, Roscoe Mitchell, William Winant, and Pauline Oliveros; and has provided music for and worked with a number of different artists and companies in various capacities including: The New York Deaf Theatre, Larry Polansky, Funsch Dance Experience, Ryan Ross Smith, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, The Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, Christian Wolff, Bob Ostertag, and Steve Schick.
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Flattening Musical Hierarchies
You Should Be Improvising More
Nickolai V Zielinski
This presentation explores how improvised music dismantles traditional hierarchies and resists co-optation by industrial forces. In contrast to conventional forms that prioritize composition, organization, and replication, improvised music thrives in the unpredictability of live performance, celebrating the ephemeral and unusual. By refusing to document, compose, or sanction specific outcomes, it disrupts the commercial demand for repeatability and control, offering a radical alternative to the commodification of sound. Improvised music allows space for unconventional aural moments to unfold, whist simultaneously subverting AND embracing the familiar by allowing such moments to exist without a mandate from above. This approach not only reclaims artistic freedom but also challenges the broader industrial and cultural systems that seek to standardize and commodify creative expression.
My music is improvised so it’s is about listening… I listen for ways to up-cycle audio artifacts into electro-acoustic sound collages which tread the line between parody and pastiche; hoping to unearth a tiny bit of meaning, self reflection, insight, fun and aesthetic pleasure along the way.
I create sounds using a combination of acoustic/analog/digital tools. My laptop holds a pseudo-cultural nostalgic junk-pile of sounds that were tattooed onto my brain during childhood (tv themes, commercial jingles, vocal snippets, etc) mixed with slightly less nostalgic sounds from my early creative work. At times I “play” the electronics by using analog-to-digital interfaces and at times the electronics play themselves using various algorithmic processes which I have created to suit my tastes. The algorithms add an aleatoric element to which I must react in the moment, lending the music improvisational unpredictability and excitement.
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Archinovica
Timothy W McDunn
N/A
Timothy W. McDunn (b. 1994) is a composer and theorist with a distinguished international profile. He specializes in just intonation and electroacoustic composition. His music and research is regularly presented and performed at major peer-reviewed conferences and festivals including NYCEMF, SEAMUS, SCI National Conference, Convergence, MOXSonic, ChimeFest, NSEME, and others. His background in classical languages and literature strongly influences his work as a composer. He holds a DMA in Composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a Biennio Degree in Composition from the Verdi Conservatory of Milan. His education also includes a Bachelor of Music in Composition and a Bachelor of Arts in Greek and Roman Studies. McDunn currently teaches music theory and composition full-time at Wheaton College. He resides in Glendale Heights with his wife, Jasmine—the most selfless, supportive, and objectively beautiful woman in the world. His music is influenced by elements of philosophy, faith, and spirituality.