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| 2. |
- Falthin, Peter, 1961-, et al.
(author)
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Creative Structures or Structured Creativity? : Investigating algorithmic composition as a pedagogical tool
- 2010
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In: The 11nth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC11). - Seattle : University of Washington Press. ; , s. 125-
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- CREATIVE STRUCTURES OR STRUCTURED CREATIVITY (Investigation algorithmic composition as a pedagogical tool) Peter Falthin, PalleDahlstedt Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Chalmers Technical University, Gothenburg peter.falthin@kmh.se palle@chalmers.seABSTRACTThis empirical study aims to depict how composers develop and structure creative resources, aided by algorithmic methods and other means of structuring material and processes. The project is not meant to be conclusive, but rather to form a point of departure and raise questions for further theoretical and empirical study in the field. Implications for teaching and learning composition and for designing interactive musical tools are expected. In specific, this paper concerns concept development within learning of music composition: if, how and to what extent this is comparable to that of language-based learning. The research project in progress sets out to study cognitive processes of composers working to integrate the outcome of composition algorithms, with the subjective compositional aim and modus operandi. However, in most cases the composer is also designer of the algorithm or at least of its specific application to the compositional problem. Consequently the strategies involved in designing and applying compositional algorithms need to be considered and discussed insofar that they too are part of the integration process. The study at hand draws from research conducted in cultural-historical psychology, cognitive psychology and linguistic theory, concerning internalization, development of concepts and syntactic and semantic aspects of musical structures.
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| 3. |
- Falthin, Peter, et al.
(author)
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Creative Structures or Structured Creativity - Examining algorithmic composition as a pedagogical tool
- 2010
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In: Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This empirical study aims to depict how composers develop and structure creative resources, aided by algorithmic methods and other means of structuring material and processes. The project is not meant to be conclusive, but rather to form a point of departure and raise questions for further theoretical and empirical study in the field. Implications for teaching and learning composition and for designing interactive musical tools are expected. In specific, this paper concerns concept development within learning of music composition: if, how and to what extent this is comparable to that of language-based learning. The research project in progress sets out to study cognitive processes of composers working to integrate the outcome of composition algorithms, with the subjective compositional aim and modus operandi. However, in most cases the composer is also designer of the algorithm or at least of its specific application to the compositional problem. Consequently the strategies involved in designing and applying compositional algorithms need to be considered and discussed insofar that they too are part of the integration process. The study at hand draws from research conducted in cultural-historical psychology, cognitive psychology and linguistic theory, concerning internalization, development of concepts and syntactic and semantic aspects of musical structures.
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| 4. |
- Falthin, Peter
(author)
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Goodbye Reason Hello Rhyme : a study of meaning making and the concept development process in music composition
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis comprises two articles based on qualitative empirical studies and a theoretical introduction. All three texts deal with the same problem area concerning musical meaning making and the concept development process in the course of composition learning. Each text could be read separately. The composition tasks in the empirical studies are both in electroacoustic music but the research problems and findings concern a broader sense of composition learning and even musical learning in general. The corpus of music education research on composition, rarely takes the body of artistic research and development literature into account, which means that contem- porary techniques and aesthetic discussions commonplace in composition education practice are not considered in music education research. This the- sis contributes to the research field of music education by acknowledging some of the fundamental research on composition, and discussing it from an education perspective. As a consequence, a contribution salient in the arti- cles is to begin to develop research methodology accordingly. The introduc- tion takes on a quest to map out the field in a new way by bringing together research in music education with artistic research on composition, writings on music philosophy, semiotics and cognitive psychology. The boundaries and interplay between semantic significance and syntactic meaning are ex- amined and discussed, as is the relation between aesthetic meaning making and learning. The articles deal with these issues in the context of composi- tion learning at a music program in upper secondary school. The one entitled Synthetic Activity is about fundamental aspects of soundgeneration and hence directed towards semiotics in the form of phonology and significance in connection to musical gesture and spectral content. The learning and meaning making processes of two composition students are studied as they engage in additive synthesis to build sounds, musical phrases and eventually a short musical composition. One of the most striking results is that the pro- ject came to be as much a listening experience as one of creative music mak- ing, and that the concept development process included rehearing and reas- sessing familiar sounds and music. The article Creative Structures or Struc- tured Creativity deals with form and syntactic structure, as the students learn to develop and apply composition algorithms to further their creative think- ing. The results show that there are several different layers to the concept development processes in this project. One layer concerns to be able to struc-7ture musical parameters on an aggregate level; to learn to plan musical de- velopments as space of possibility rather than as a determined linear se- quence of musical events. Another layer comprises problems of learning the programming environment and how to embody the musical algorithms in working computer-code. A third layer concerns letting the algorithmically generated materials influence your creative thinking. Tokens of the concept development process as described by Vygotskij (1987, 1999) in language- based learning were prominent also in the music composition learning of these studies. Implications for further research include formalizing criteria for the developmental phases of the concept development process in musical contexts.
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| 5. |
- Falthin, Peter, 1961-
(author)
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The Meaning of Making : Mapping Strategies in Music Composition
- 2016
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In: International Conference on Music Perception anc Cognition, 14th Biennial Meeting. - San Francisco : University of California Press. ; , s. 183-185
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Abstract—One way to think of creative processes is as recontextualizations of perceptions and conceptions of reality. Impressions and ideas are seen from new perspectives and connected in new ways before entered into a new context in a different form, which may or may not include shifts in modality or form of representation. This study is about how composition students give musical expression to extra-musical phenomena and how they relate their musical thinking to other forms of representation. It involves studying what mapping strategies the student composers develop in order to establish relationships between different forms of representation, but also to study the meaning making processes in both the analysis and synthesis phase of the restructuring of concepts.The how-questions imply a qualitative approach and method. Data comprise a wide variety of sketch material, as well as scores, performances and recordings of the finalized compositions, and in-depth interviews with the student composers in relation to these materials. In all the studied cases, composition process began with extramusical considerations in the form of narratives, imagery or some kind of physical phenomena (e.g. geometrical concepts, acoustical phenomena and tactile qualities). Typically there would appear several creative processes in different modalities converging into musical form along the composition process. Results suggest that these students intend their music to represent extramusical phenomena and concepts in as far as they take that as points of departure for developing compositional concepts, but also for shaping musical expression. To a varying degree, these extramusical considerations are meant to be conveyed in the music.
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