This project will examine the potential of interactive, digital online resources to assist teachers in introducing, increasing and/or improving music instruction in their classrooms, particularly if they are not music specialists. The research will focus on how such tools can promote student-centered, teacher-facilitated learning models, examining their capacity to meaningfully engage students, meet curricular objectives, and provide teachers with confidence-building training opportunities. The web-based software resources in question have been created by Whacky Wizards Music Inc.

Beginner music composers often face difficulty in harmonizing a melodic idea. Particularly, if they lack music theoretical knowledge. It is well-understood that chord successions follow patterns. With some limitations, artificial intelligence algorithms can capture those patterns. A melody “harmonizer” model proposes harmonizations for the user’s melodies. The suggestions are often based on learned patterns from existing musical compositions, for example, the chorales by J. S. Bach. A model may learn patterns found in Bach’s compositions, applying them in new music.

Modular synthesizers are becoming more commonplace in the studios of musicians around the globe. These instruments, first invented in the 1960s, are composed of modules, each of which performs a unique function, such as generating sounds or modifying them by applying effects such as distortion, echo and more.

OrpheusVR is a new operatic experience that immerses audiences in a virtual, mythical world and allows them to have agency over the outcome of the narrative as well as the music and orchestration that drive the storytelling. The experience uses interactive sound to enable creative gameplay that will guide audiences through a fresh new take on the ancient myth of Orpheus & Eurydice.

Our sense of touch is vital to most daily activities we engage in, but is underused by most existing computing devices. Though haptics is an active research field, the main outcomes of three decades of research are limited to cost-effective vibrotactile feedback (as in mobile phones) or expensive force-feedback devices (mainly for surgical operation simulation). Software frameworks for haptics offer comprehensive haptics and physics simulation capabilities, however require expert engineering and software development skills.

Reeds for woodwind instruments are known to be extremely variable and change significantly with time. This makes it difficult for musicians to find and maintain a reed that performs at a level suitable for their personal preference. In this project, the magnitude of these changing properties will be characterized in both natural cane reeds and synthetic alternatives, thus examining the cost-benefit of supposedly more durable synthetic reeds.

The charango is a small guitar like instrument iconic to Andean music of South America. Like many other instruments the charango has travelled to other cultural environments. However, even in these circumstances the charango has for the most part not become a significant presence in other musics. In this practice-based research project, I will introduce the charango into an international European art music context to examine the process of genre-crossing in the creation new musical spaces.

In the world of music, the warm, lo-fi response of vintage, analog electronic equipment is generally considered to deliver better sound than modern equipment. This is aptly demonstrated by guitar players who prefer vintage effect pedals, and music enthusiasts that prefer to enjoy music on vinyl records – despite the rising cost, difficult maintenance, and increasing scarcity of vintage equipment.

Music reading is a very challenging and frustrating aspect of learning music that often leads to the cessation of lessons in the early stages of music learning. Despite this, there has been very little experimental research to understand the music reading process. To address this need, we will administer a group of cognitive and music reading tests to young novice piano students. The results of this project will form groundwork for a much-needed understanding of the music reading process, which in turn will enhance our understanding the most effective approaches in teaching this skill.

The mechanisms of sound production in single-reed woodwind instruments and human voices are not yet fully understood. Numerical simulations provide a feasible way to model and better characterize their sound production systems. However, there remains a problem in simulating the movement of vibrating reeds or vocal folds (i.e. a moving boundary), especially when the channel between the reed and mouthpiece or the two vocal folds gets very narrow or completely closes.