Methods Fellows Series | Digital Design of Musical Scores

New

These workshops will offer participants the ability to re-think the graphic design of a musical score and will work with a novel set of principles to modify the spacing, layout, and position of its notes and signs for intelligibility purposes and/or artistic purposes.

In previous experimental research, Arild has found that musical scores with modified engraving, spacing, and layout rules can —at least in certain practices and for certain repertoires— elicit more fluent and precise readings than conventional scores. The abstraction of informational units and of discourse structure from a score seems to be enhanced by his approach of separating and redistributing notation symbols and other visual materials using a digital (quantifiable, taxonomic) hierarchy of divisions comparable to what is nowadays conventionally applied in (Western) language texts. This seems to be facilitating the decoding and apprehension of information, affecting the conversion of notation into performance; it is also being investigated at present in terms of academic and artistic impact.

Participants will be able to use the flexibility and manageability of digital production to introduce a radically new conception of the visual structuring of a musical score: Arild proposes to go beyond the mere reproduction of analogical models with digital tools; for that, participants will be experimenting with novel flexible spacing, layout and visual structuring cues that could be enhancing, in music reading, the integrative and abstractive processes that fluent readers already use in language (we do not read sequentially letter by letter; good readers group, prioritise and predict the symbols presented to them). This approach is intrinsically digital, as it is based on being able to use the symbols of a score in a modular, movable, and experimental manner —and in this context 'experimental' would naturally include heuristic or intuitive manipulations by the score users. Arild's view is that a novel conception of music notation should include the possibility of re-organising the materials, allowing the user at either end (creator or reader) to group, separate, highlight and grade visually the symbols present in a score.

We welcome Post-doctoral and other academic researchers, Choir Directors, Music Directors, Music Teachers, Composers, and Graduate students of the University of Cambridge.

Fair knowledge of AVID's 'Sibelius' Music Notation Software. Completion of a short questionnaire is required to complete your booking, which will share your experience and requirement for a workstation for this workshop. You can access this by logging onto your University Google account.

Number of sessions: 5

Each participant will produce a short score or music fragment following the novel design principles as well as, importantly, his/her personal conception of the musical discourse.

Hands-on group sessions: Tuesday 21, Wednesday 22 and Thursday, 23 June from 11:00 to 12:30.

Individual consultations and feedback: Tuesday, 21 and Wed 22 June from 14:00 to 16:30.

We will have 12 workstations available at the Computer Room in the faculty, all running an up-to-date version of the music notation software required ('Sibelius Ultimate v. 2021') on a 27 iMac. For participants that prefer to use their own laptop for the workshop, pre-installation of Sibelius Ultimate will be assumed; unfortunately, we will not be able to offer extra licenses.