Projects

This idea arose from the participants seed idea presented during the CORE Ensemble Project 2021-2022. While one was interested in timbral imitation and emergent timbre, the other used the inflections of Cantonese language to derive musical material. The proposed project aims at combining these two ideas into one, using a more science-supported approach this time.

Compositions for a solo Chinese instrument with the Western orchestra require the composer to consider ways in which orchestration techniques might function in different ways so as to either bring out the solo instrument or to have it blend with the orchestra.

By exploring the relationship between spatial distance and choral blend, this project aims to be the initial step in creating a body of research within ACTOR to evaluate choral blend from the perspectives of both singers and listeners.The results of these studies could be compared in order to understand similarities and differences between two types of sectional performers.

There exists an abyss on the subject of the history of orchestration pedagogy, and this project proposes a first step in approaching this topic through the orchestration exams from initiation and end-of-curriculum classes at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP). Many student orchestration exams have been destroyed at the National Archives since the orchestration classes were introduced at the Conservatory in 1977. However, a significant number of scores remain to be collected. The recordings of these scores by the Conservatory orchestra have largely been preserved on various supports according to the audiovisual service at the Conservatory.

On a fundamental level, we ask what differentiated a “French” from a “Viennese” sound; but taking into account the skills of both builder and player, along with the complex affordances of a particular type of instrument, we also ask what made Beethoven a “fast learner” on a new instrument and his Paris-based rival Steibelt an “expert” of a familiar one—one that lent itself well to what in France was known as son continu, or the skill of sustaining or “spinning” sound.

This project develops a streamlined resource for emerging composers seeking to introduce live electronics into their instrumental orchestration practice. It focuses on two topics. 1. Accessible and stable performance frameworks 2. Straightforward strategies for orchestrating with electronics in chamber and orchestral context.

Timbre is an important stylistic and structural parameter in popular music, yet its specific functional roles in this repertoire have not yet been theorized. Most music-analytical scholarship on timbre in popular music to date consists of case studies of individual artists, bands, studios, or genres. There have been no broad corpus studies establishing timbral norms for genres or eras of popular music.

Brightness is among the most studied aspects of music perception, and arguably among the most important timbral cues actively shaped by performers, composers, and audio engineers.

Creation of an internet-based guide for musicians that describes in layman terms the fundamentals of acoustic features of musical instruments, stages, performance and rehearsal rooms using visual and auditory examples

The historical Chapelle du Grand Séminaire de Montréal presents the acoustical canvas for a choral recording. 32 microphones will be placed strategically, 18 spot microphones, one for each singer, 8 highly positioned ambient microphones in varying distances, and 6 height microphones will capture the immersive sound above the choir.

We propose to create an advanced 3D audio and video recording of Jason Noble’s fantaisie harmonique for two guitar orchestras which was premiered at the inaugural 21st Century Guitar Conference (August 2019, Ottawa, ON) with 3D projection art by Kurt Laurenz Theinert.

A large scale, online study of timbre semantics is being planned in which participants will be presented with sound stimuli and asked (a) to identify the sound source, (b) to rate it on a battery of semantic scales (e.g., warm, hollow), and (c) to list any additional semantic associations they wish to report.

An interdisciplinary symphonic recording for the study of orchestral sound. With the aim to study orchestral blending effects, a joint music production and evaluation of an orchestral recording was realized. Excerpts of the work were recorded in the full orchestral setting or in variable combinations of single instruments, partial or complete orchestral sections performing together, which illustrated timbre blending between the groups.

Evoking the human voice through instrumental music has been a perennial goal for composers, appearing in traditional performance instructions such as cantabile and contemporary practices such as formant modeling. Performers also make extensive use of vocal metaphors in their discourse. But do general listeners perceive instrumental music in terms of vocal qualities or metaphors? We will address this question by asking listeners to rate their perceptions of vocality in music intended to emulate it, followed by a proof-of-concept composition and performance.

The purpose of the Space As Timbre (SAT) project, is to collect qualitative data in order to analyze and understand the perceptual effect of timbre in composing new spaces for an acoustic ensemble, thereby creating the opportunity to treat space as a form bearing element in music.

Computer-assisted orchestration can be thought of as the process of searching for the best combinations of orchestral sounds to match a target sound under specified metrics and constraints. Although a solution to this problem has been a long-standing request from many composers, it remains relatively unexplored because of its high complexity, requiring knowledge and understanding of both mathematical formalization and musical writing.

We propose an album of music for guitar and electronics composed by Noble and performed by Cowan, culminating their longstanding collaboration which has been presented in many contexts. Traube and de Francisco will oversee the project, Martin will be the recording engineer, and Rouhier will be the multimedia artist.

This project is a special composition for a place, or rather the sound composition of a particular place, in the sense that it is the place that physically composes the piece. The place is the Ariana Museum, Swiss Museum of Ceramics and Glass, in Geneva. The composition is that of the place and its objects. It reveals the space of the building, its geometries, its volumes, it is sensitive to the objects that are placed there because they will influence the listening as much as the walls of the rooms.

The central pillar of our research questions traditional relationships between acoustic instruments and the electronic. Through the use of transduction technologies including precisely tactile exciters and bass shaker transducers, we incorporate a third actor into the acoustic-electronic relationship.

The term "orchestration" is rarely used in reference to the string quartet, but when we define it broadly (after Stephen McAdams) as "the choice, combination, and/or juxtaposition of timbres in a musical context," it becomes clear that the quartet is a rich and highly flexible vehicle for the exploration of orchestrational ideas.

Recording a string ensemble which plays certain musical excerpts composed by project members for a blended sound impression under the ODESSA framework, and analyzing the resulting ensemble sound by introducing variations in room acoustic parameters.