Traveling once more, and a very good experience and entry into the US via San Francisco. Nice people, if still very busy and slightly confusing . . . Now completed the first leg of the tour, first to Lowell MA - beautiful little town north of Cambridge and Boston. Caught up with the good folks of UMass Lowell Music and their wonderful hospitality. They run some terrific degree programs in music education, sound recording technology, music business and performance. Many thanks to Alex Ruthmann and John Shirley:
[A great night out at Boston's Lennox Hotel, w/ an amazing glass of 'The Balvenie']
Then on to New York to catch up with Nora Farrell (now teaching part of the year in our Bachelor of Music Technology program) and Bill Duckworth who's also now supervising some of our QCRC PhD candidates. Thanks for a delicious Thanksgivings Day dinner (that's pumpkin pie, clementines and roasted chestnuts . .!) Or, as they also call it here – Turkey Day! Pics from the spectacular Macey's Thanksgivings Day Parade: Flying out today, onward and upward to Montreal & McGill University's Schulich School of Music. Looking forward to it.
Just about to hop on a flight for the US. Very much looking forward to seeing old friends again, making new ones, and of course engaging in the various events.
21 Nov – 23 Nov UMass Lowell, Massachusetts. www.uml.edu/College/arts_sciences/music. MOU follow-up, curriculum review. Prof Wil Moylan, Dr Alex Ruthmann, Dr Alan Williams
24 Nov – 27 Nov New York. HDR supervision development, music technology history, practice-led research, and Thanksgiving Day. Monroe Street Music, Prof Bill Duckworth, Nora Farrell, Steve Newcomb, Prof Susan-Schmidt Horning.
27 Nov – 1 Dec Montreal, McGill University www.mcgill.ca/music PentaCon benchmarking, collaboration. Prof Don McLean. CIRMMT (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology). www.cirmmt.mcgill.ca
5 Dec – 8 Dec UK, Manchester. Royal Northern College of Music. www.rncm.ac.uk Research: www.rncm.ac.uk/content/blogsection/8/52/ Staff seminars, HDR development. Prof Jonty Stockdale, Professor Richard Wistreich, Dr Jane Ginsborg.
Another new venture, this time with intercultural musicians, improvisation and a surround sound PA system from industry partners, Acoustic Technologies.
We had an interesting, fun gig recently at the Queensland Conservatorium courtyard (in the centre of the building) here in Brisbane on 3 Nov. 2010. Speakers and artists semi-obscured around the mini-rainforest here.
Lots of playing and jamming of the last six moths. Hope some might enjoy the work, but be a little warned - much is this is strictly improvisation, warts and all. A few have been edited a little to simply shorten, a couple of others have some Apple loops dropped in here and there. Still, the sounds are interesting . .
Many thanks to collaborators: Bob Peele (drums), John Stefulj (wind and percussion), Bart Stenhouse (bass and guitar), Frank Millward (keys), Peter Walters (bass).
Have been playing every Friday, my University Research Day. Jamming really, working out the guitars and chop-building with good friend, drummer Bob Peele at his recording and teaching studio here in Brisbane.
One of the instrument projects has been re-building this 1990 made-in-Nashville burgundy Les Paul Custom. [once owned and well-cared for by a elderly musician in Cairns who bought it new]. Has taken just a few late nights and much advice from My Les Paul Forums - completely re-wired internally, shielded with copper foil; Lindy Fralin 'Pure PAF' pickups, Tonepros/ Graphtech bridge and a great deal of messing with pot values and caps (tone, tone . . ).
In any case, here's one of the rather self-indulgent, but nice free-form blows . . take on Miles' All Blues giving the Les Paul & kit a workout. Some of All of the Blues.
I’m a baby boomer who grew up in Brisbane the 50s and 60s. Fresh out of school as a 18 year old guitarist, I bypassed university and joined a rock band, promptly heading off to Melbourne to find fame and fortune. Good times, cold weather, Lygon Street, Aussie Crawl, Skyhooks, Countdown, shared band houses and life in pubs and on the road.
c. 1974 – somewhat naive, but ready for the road
L-to-R: me (guitar), Tony Mockridge (vocals),
Harry Curtis (bass, sadly now passed away), Bob Peel (drums).
We never quite cracked the ‘big time’, whatever that really means in the common ‘stardom-or-bust’ vernacular. Perhaps this was to do with my attitude about money and pay-scales – somehow those record company deals never seemed to quite add up. In any case, I became increasingly interested in the idea of more strings to my bow (what they seem to be calling ‘portfolio careers’ these days) and there was no way to avoid the fact that this was based on an arsenal of high level skills.
I subsequently relocated to Sydney in the late 70s, feeling the needing a change of scene and better musical chops. Jazz fusion was emerging at the time and Sydney had a burgeoning jazz scene together with a Conservatorium of some note that offered programs led by some of the jazz stars of the time. I auditioned and enrolled, trouble was, I didn’t like it and I didn’t like what they taught. Academic content and delivery seemed to be quite disconnected to working, but moreover, the jazz was way too ‘straight’ for my liking, delivered by who I then thought of as ‘old guys’. So, I found private tuition from a number of gigging rock guys with huge chops, dropped out of the Con and for the next five years or so, practiced and played harder than I even had before in my life.
c. 1980s – some festival, somewhere
I moved back to Brisbane in the early 80s to take up a number of great recording and touring offers. This was also time of the birth of the PC, MIDI (the musical Instrument digital interface), the CD and digital sound. I jumped right in, using my experience and love of recording studios to build a facility in Brisbane, probably one of the first, affordable ‘Home studios’ here. This used emerging technologies to synchronise software and microphone recording to produce a lot of original music in the next decade or so.
c. 1987 - the first studio in a spare bedroom
It was this trajectory that first bought me to deliver an invited masterclass on film music and recording technology at the Queensland Conservatorium in 1998. The ‘technology’ moniker stuck, and I somehow became to default ‘music tech’ guy because of my work with computers primarily, but my rock, R&B, and jazz music never really got much of a look-in at a mostly traditional conservatoire at that time. Still. I loved the teaching – and the challenge of being part of a team to bring the conservatoire into the 21st century.
During the 90s, I subsequently designed and convened a range of music technology-related undergraduate, postgraduate degree programs and specializations. I also built a number of recording studios (including the staff research space IMERSD [Intermedia, Music Education & Research Design], networked facilities and computer labs.
The 2004 launch of the IMERSD recording complex.
L-to-R: Griffith Vice-Chancellor Prof Ian O’Connor, [then] Qld Govt Arts & Education Minister, Anna Bligh [now Premier of Queensland]; Mr Robyn James (CEO, Pacific Film & Television Corp.); Mr Mike Lake (Exec. VP, Warners Village Roadshow)
The design of online, variously termed ‘flexible’ or ‘blended’ learning has been a feature research interest throughout my university career. I also had to build and establish academic cred., and in 2000 I completed a Doctor of Education (EdD) entitled New Learning: The Challenge of Flexible Delivery in Higher Education. Drawing on this work, and influenced by new millennia ‘web 2.0’, I subsequently developed podcasting platforms via Radio IMERSD and our role in Griffith iTunes-U.
Given my positive EdD experiences, I also lobbied for the creation of a professional doctorate-by research in music. In 2005, QCGU introduced the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), these days bursting at seams with doctoral candidates researching aspects of their music.
Somewhat quizzically though, I sometimes reflect on the fact that while here and elsewhere in the arts higher education sector, we develop and assist some outstanding people to attaint their doctoral qualification though multi-exegetical thesis that incorporate creative products – it is much more problematic for academics to continue and be recognised for their own similar creative works. (see earlier 12 May 2010 blog entry, Monograph).
And this brings the story up to the present day: Since taking on the QCGU Deputy Director (Research) portfolio in 2009, this has most certainly allowed me considerable scope for refection(!) Steering an academic team and assuming responsibility for all QCGU RHD candidates in partnership with GGRS has provided me with a substantial ‘birds-eye view’ of complex viewpoints that I now deal with on a day-to-day basis.
This has allowed me to build on my past experience and to respond to the challenges of scaling, modifying, and/or refining my thinking. But also now, in terms of thinking about a research sabbatical (ASP, or Academic Studies Program as call it in Australia), something which I haven’t had the opportunity to engage with to date. I wonder if I can bring the musical past, the academic career and the future together in such a way that makes sense, that still serves my students and faculty well, but also allows me to rebuild some of my past music-making? A bit scary really – I have really ‘lived’ musicking for 15 years or so – that is, like a sports person needing the regular physical engagement: practicing, rehearsing, performing, composing.
We shall see. Next, I need to think about the instruments.
It all began when in my 2009 university performance evaluation rounds, a senior colleague suggested that it might be time for me to think about a ‘monograph’, (I guess considered de rigeur for someone who is a professor in the university ecology). That usually means,
. . . In order to gain respect within the academic community and tenure at a major university, an academic must publish monographs over the course of his or her life. These scholarly treatises provide evidence that the academic is carrying out research in the field and analyzing already published information. A monograph usually brings new light to the subject, and it may contain breakthrough research. It also further refines the academic specialty of the author, and establishes the author as an authority on the topic. [Wisegeek]
. . . It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself. An author may therefore declare his own work to be a monograph by intent, or a reader or critic might define a given text as a monograph for the purpose of analysis. Normally it is used for a work intended to be a complete and detailed exposition of a substantial subject at a level more advanced than that of a textbook. [Wikipedia]
However, like many ‘artists in the academy’, I once did very different professional work before joining the university later in life, transitioning from what they now call a ‘portfolio career’ in music. That is, freelancing around musical performance genres, recording sessions, teaching and composition /production commissions. It was this background that invited my first masterclass in film sound track work at an Australian music conservatorium, later to be augmented by the teaching of classes and eventually a tenured position in 1996.
After working for some 25 years in a often cut-throat industry, I was quickly taken by higher education, the idea of ‘knowledge transfer’, and the new young musicians eager to learn.
Also similar to many of my contemporaries, I found myself drifting further and further away from practicing musicianship, simply because of academic demands – the PhD, grants, administration, strategic planning, email work flow, etc. Odd too, in the light of so much talk and gathering of ‘research equivalent outputs’ right across the university sector in Australia – From the so-called Strand Report, Research in the Creative Arts of 1998, to failed Cat J & H research collections, to the Howard government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF), to the now first Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) collection in 2010 (mirroring the UK’s RAE rankings, in place for many years now).
Despite these initiatives and chasing the idea of ‘practice-based research’, many academic artists struggle to keep up the chops and/or significant ‘alternate’ research outputs (artworks, new music, films etc), given the high teaching and administration demands of the variously ever-interconnected, ‘flexible’, policy-driven, compliance-oriented, document-oriented modern university life. Perhaps easier for some (like myself) to produce and count journal articles and conference papers – in writing, and/or immerse myself in collaborations producing albums for academic colleagues. [See my publications].
Not that I’m complaining. To the contrary, working in the university sector over the last 15 years has also taught me a lot about reflection, analysis and research; about challenging my assumptions and intellect. Here then, again recalling my colleague’s suggestion to ‘think about a monograph’, I want to consider more about the shape for such an undertaking:
mon·o·graph [mon-uh-graf, -grahf] –noun 1. a treatise on a particular subject, as a biographical study or study of the works of one artist. 2. a highly detailed and thoroughly documented study or paper written about a limited area of a subject or field of inquiry: scholarly monographs on medieval pigments. 3. an account of a single thing or class of things, as of a species of organism. [Dictionary.com]
I want to flesh out some of what is emerging as a plan for the next 18 months or so. But broadly, as way to fuse and re-examine my music in the light of the intervening 15 years of experience, and to think about the project in terms of a range of practice-led research products, one end point being the production of an original album of music entitled Monograph.
Next blog entry, I think I should back up a little and give a little run-down on The Story so Far, which bought me to this point.
I haven’t had a lot of time to write on this blog recently. And one of the reasons is that a new project has emerged, but is keeping me busy outside of my university work commitments. I thought that one way that could help me to work through this musical ‘re-discovery’ project would be via my blog (inspired by examples from postgrad research students developing their research).
It may change the following of this blog, for those who may have been enjoying my ‘external reporting’, as it were. It could be a little self-indulgent I guess, but they tell me that’s what blogs are for . . . So, I though I’d start by putting up a couple of entries, then continue on in the development of this project over the next 18 months or so. What I’m calling Monograph.
monograph \ˈmä-nə-ˌgraf\ Function: noun Date: 1821 a learned treatise on a small area of learning; a written account of a single thing
Just back from Melbourne, a 1700k driving trip either way from Brisbane (!). Beautiful weather, wonderful Saab 93 cabrio, and glorious country – some pictures from the trip are available on MobileMe.
The main reason for the long drive was to show our visitors from New York, Bill Duckworth and Nora Farrell around the country – especially the outback and some wonderful towns on the slow drive back to Brisbane, including Rutherglen, Katoomba and Bellingen.
In Melbourne, we stayed in the glorious Paramount Apartments overlooking the city.
Bill Duckworth gave lectures about his work at RMIT and at VCAM (Victorian College of the Arts & Music, UniMelb). Here's a video of his lecture from VCAM's cross media workshop (to VCAM's Mark Pollard – thanks so much for the hospitality!):
We also went to SIAL (RMIT's Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory) where Bill also delivered a lecture, but also got to tour their facilities with Lawrence Harvey. Of note was their wonderful studio 'pod', a purpose-built room-within-a-room that looks incredible:
Lawrence and Bill – inside The Pod.
Bill & Nora out front
Thanks to Lawrence, Bill, Nora, Jenny, Glyn, Margaret, John, Mark, Sue, Ian – and the Saab – for a great trip and wonderful memories of Melbourne and the Australian outback.
Came across this intriguing project on Daily Dose (courtesy of Nora Farrell):
Longplayer combines an interactive sculpture and a systems-theory experiment in the service of a 1,000-year-long musical composition.
An ambitious project for anyone who ever wondered about humanity’s ability to pursue trans-generational art, Longplayer was launched in 1999 by composer (and Pogues member) Jem Finer and an advisory board that included Brian Eno. In 2000, the project was turned over to the Longplayer Trust, a compendium of experts dedicated to its preservation until the 2999 completion of its first cycle.
Just back from Melbourne, where I came across VOLUME, a fantastic installation in Federation Square.
The installation is the brain-child of the UK's United Visual Artists, known for their work with U2, Massive Attack, The Arctic Monkeys and others. With a soundtrack arranged by Neil Davidge and Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, this incredible fusion of light and sound is realized through a forest of luminous LED columns which light up Federation Square.
The columns respond spectacularly to human movement and visitors walk, crawl, jump and dance their way through this interactive installation.
VOLUME is part of a series in 'The Light in Winter', Federation Square's annual winter festival for Melbourne centred around light. Directed by Robyn Archer, The Light in Winter brings together artists, designers and communities to explore their ideas of light, enlightenment and hope.
For more 2009 Light in Winter events, see their program, here.
The Art of Interpretation A collaboration between Stephen Emmerson (pianist) and Paul Draper (sound producer), this excerpt from Schoenberg’s 3 Piano Pieces Op. 11 draws upon on various interpretive strategies including analysis, reflection, and the use of Schoenberg’s paintings to highlight certain aspects of the performance and recording. The project is based on the premise that a recording is not ‘music’ itself, rather, is a virtual artefact through which an interpretation can be manipulated and enhanced through deliberate interference in the recording and post-production processes.
The piano itself was tracked using some sixteen microphones spaced at different positions throughout the hall which enabled ‘multiple perspectives’ to be attained, then in post-production was 'vertically arranged' and through the use of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) in ways similar to that of orchestration. In contrast to the usual practice where classical piano recordings maintain a single sound and perspective, this project explores the ways in the researcher's interpretation of the music can be expanded and communicated through these manipulations of the sound recordings.
Foreign Objects This is an excerpt from the new album 'Foreign Objects' by Vanessa Tomlinson and Erik Griswold aka 'Clocked Out', presenting new compositions that pay homage to two giants of contemporary music: Terry Riley, the master of expanded space, and Morton Feldman, the master of intricate patterns.
Produced by Paul Draper, after spending a week of recording in the IMERSD studios the project then moved directly into a live concert event in the Ian Hangar Recital Hall to premier the works, and where these performances were also recorded remotely in IMERSD. The final results are arrangements, edits and integrated sound productions that combine both environments, where the musicians extend the sound landscape of the keyboard through prepared piano to the world of ‘found object’ percussion. Mixing bowls meld into cardboard preparations, roofing tiles into buzzing screws, toy piano into miniature bells.
Now completed the first leg of the tour, first to Lowell MA - beautiful little town north of Cambridge and Boston.
Caught up with the good folks of UMass Lowell Music and their wonderful hospitality. They run some terrific degree programs in music education, sound recording technology, music business and performance. Many thanks to Alex Ruthmann and John Shirley:
[A great night out at Boston's Lennox Hotel, w/ an amazing glass of 'The Balvenie']
Or, as they also call it here – Turkey Day! Pics from the spectacular Macey's Thanksgivings Day Parade:
Flying out today, onward and upward to Montreal & McGill University's Schulich School of Music. Looking forward to it.
