My First Year..

It’s been an intensive first year as a full time doctoral student at Birmingham University. Phew! I’m now beginning to write up some of the musicologcial research I’ve been undertaking into how composers of multi channel acousmatic music think about sound movement in space, how they compose for it in their works and where they see the future of multi channel music. I’ve spoken to 25 composers so far – a few more to do yet – and they have many and varied perspectives on this topic, so there is much to write about…watch this space!

I have also recently completed a composition for surround sound in 5.1 channels (five speakers and a subwoofer) called ‘Innersense’. It is a piece that I initally had strong conceptual ideas about. With Jonty’s help I have become more adept at thinking about the sounds themselves and how they actually fit together, as opposed to overly architecting structures based on ideas about how I think they should fit together. This is a good thing, as I have found that being overly conceptual about a composition can create unnecessary limitations on the sounds and block how they might otherwise organically fall into place.

 I’m going part time this year and I think I will enjoy my doctorate that much more, as there will be greater space to reflect on and develop my composition and musicology. This also gives me time to develop ideas about running children’s sound recording workshops with Stu and Chris of Bathysphere. I’ll keep you posted!