2001 NACTMUS Conference
Byron Bay: June 30- July 2, 2001
Creating Musical Futures:
Challenges to Music Education in the 21st Century
Abstracts of papers
Byron Bay: June 30- July 2, 2001
Creating Musical Futures:
Challenges to Music Education in the 21st Century
Keynote Speaker:
Nathan Waks (Sydney Symphony; & Music Board, Australia Council)
The Symphony Orchestra of the c21-community of musicians or herd of dinosaurs?
The Symphony Orchestra as we now know it is headed for major change- in fact it is happening already.
Two paths have been chosen-one goes forward, recognising and embracing the profound changes occurring in western society, the other resolutely backwards, to the c19 from whence the bulk of the symphony repertoire emanates.
The questions facing young classically trained musicians today, and indeed about the ways they are trained, will have a major bearing on the outcomes...".
Gavin Findlay (Canberra Youth Music Incorporated)
The Map is not the Territory:Towards a cooperative approach to the future development of orchestras in Australia
These are exciting, but dangerous, times for the Australian art music/orchestral scene. The advent of Symphony Australia, the Australian National Academy of Music, and the Nugent Report have changed the landscape of our artform forever. It points to one very important, indisputable fact - that our "industry" is under regular government scrutiny and will remain so. At some point in the future, the Federal Government will ask: "this is a significant industry, which consumes significant amounts of public funding. Why is there not a peak industry body, and why is there not an industry strategy?"
Why indeed? Despite being practitioners of an artform that is founded upon working together, we have been floundering through a morass of disunity. The last decade has seen us descend even to all-out warfare between tertiary institutions, community organisations and professional bodies. We're forced to structure our enterprises competitively, so it's understandable (let's put the rest down to artistic temperament!). The tendency to territorialism may never be completely overcome, but we must try, and now.
The major state youth orchestra organisations and the Australian Youth Orchestra have established a highly successful network, Youth Orchestra Australia (YOA). One of the major concerns of the YOA membership is the lack of formal recognition its members' work by major institutions, especially the tertiary teaching institutions and the professional symphony orchestras, and the opportunities for resource sharing going begging as a result. Youth orchestras play a vital role in the development of future professional orchestral musicians and ensemble players, but the state youth orchestra organisations seem to be perceived in some quarters as annoying magpies trying to steal precious resources, or even as direct competition.
The YOA members have the potential to be the strongest allies the tertiary music schools ever had... if we're given the chance.
Ros Dunlop (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney)
The Future Musician, from the perspective of a practising musician!
Increased globalisation has resulted in reduced leisure time for most people. Attracting audiences to concerts of art music is becoming increasingly harder. When the rising cost of living (current concert prices) is compounded with the frenetic pace of modern society, "live music" outside the purely commercial realm is faced with a real problem of survival. Papering seats in an attempt to make it appear that the arts are still financially productive is a superficial and spurious policy, and such attempts in the future will surely implode.
So then: the solution for some of us (performers trained in the Western art music tradition) has been to move away from the more traditional concert venues, into spaces where people relax! Performing concerts which include a variety of genres, encompassing a variety of different aspects of our culture (either visual - eg: with sculpture or painting - performing in the midst of exhibitions, even as part of an exhibition), or as part of a wine and food festival, or with some theatrical and/or humorous elements included. For instrumental soloists, or small ensembles, performing a concert which includes electronic and computer realisations also helps to create a richer experience for their audiences.
Interaction with audiences is vital for the survival of live music.
Increasingly audiences prefer a more intimate environment to traditional concert halls. To survive in the future we may need to look to the pre-Romantic or pre-Modernist past, right back to eras where audiences were plied with good food and wine and the social ambience was of central significance. To me this is the way for the future of "live music".
Musical Interactivity
Tom Fitzgerald (University of Wollongong)
Electronic Folk Music
In an age of accelerating "future shock", music and music education must learn further from the existing electronic "folk" music. The challenge then is to create new music in order to "sing" the new digital dreamtime into an integrated physical reality. Our folk songs have been so dependent on the medium of communicating the music, (the electronic media) that, to a large extent, "the medium has become the message", as Marshall McLuhan predicted. Often, the medium is indeed dictating the content for media profit and listener perception patterns.
By the term "folk" music I include all music that forms a body of iconic pieces and styles that have had a repetitive use in the Global consciousness. It does not, in this paper, denote a "style" but rather an inclusion into contemporary culture via repetitive broadcast and/or live performance. It includes iconic music of popular song styles, classical and operatic styles, ethnic traditional styles, etc. It is a language of iconic reference that our culture has formed over the last century, and it speaks to us via the mass electronic media. Over the last five decades or so, our perceptive abilities have been reformed so that we now have a new shaped/brainwashed psycho-acoustic and psycho-visual patterning that is the reference for our reality checks. Consequently, composers and musicians face an increasing new task.
How does one communicate to this media shaped patterning. We, as a culture, hardly believe our ears without a shaped media reference icon.
This paper will examine and present how we are on the threshold of a new shaping of non-linear perceptions and concepts, via music / multi media and the NET. It will embrace the new Computer non-linear age and present some of the new Internet techniques. Artificial Intelligences, and their integration and applications & use in contemporary performance/training, and composition creation/training will be presented.
This will be a multi- media computer/audio&video projection presentation that will include elements of live music performance from midi-piano, and midi-violin. The current revolution in technology has with it a new syntax, perception and most importantly, a return of a "(global -) village" interactivity to our individual internet communications. We are finding new and old voices again, new music and songs are transforming not only cyberspace, but our empowered musical souls.
Jen Brown (Southern Cross University)
Jumping through Loops: Mouthworks as a site of online interActivities
In this presentation, I talk about a particular approach to creating soundworks for the web using electronically processed vocal sounds, looped via multimedia tools. Composing with 'electrovocal' sounds has been a strand of exploration that has run through the various phases of electronic music since the mid 19th century with the advent of the tape-recorder. MouthWorks is a contemporary response to the question of what kinds of sounds, textures and compositional approaches might emerge in the meeting place of the human voice and new music technologies. I take up themes of cyberphilosophy and articulate these into my own productive practices using Flash-based interfaces as virtual instruments that can be 'played' online. The presentation will be part talk, part short performances of several works.
Andrew Brown (Queensland University of Technology)
Composers and the interactive audience
This presentation will explore issues relating to composition for
unpredictable and non-linear reproduction media, in particular computer games and virtual reality systems. The composer has traditionally been removed from the 'performance' of their work which has been interpreted by a human performer. In the second half of the 20th century audio recording enabled the composer to become producer and to control all aspects of the sounding of their work including final 'interpretation' and timbral rendering. The composers in the 21st century who will create piece for interactive media such as computer games and virtual reality systems find
themselves again unable to control all aspect of the music as production in particular the temporal order of events. This non-linear structuring of a composition presents opportunities and challenges to the composer. In particular the ability to work in the medium, currently requiring literacy in computer programming languages, is essential to fully exploit the creative opportunities. In this presentation the emerging trends in composition for interactive systems will be explained and what I see as the implications for composer education in tertiary music institutions will be outlined.
Andrew Brown (Queensland University of Technology)
Fred Cole (Southern Cross University)
Julian Knowles (University of Western Sydney)
This forum will discuss ideas surrounding the place of electronic and computer music studies in tertiary music. As resources become increasingly scarce in Australian Universities the place of electronic and computer music is increasingly under scrutiny. Some departments react by embracing electronic and digital music making as a way of maintaining relevance, while others react by cutting non-core functions which often include minimally established electronic and computer music programs. The most violent impact on electronic and computer music education in recent times was the closure of the La Trobe University music department which had a well established reputation in this area.
The forum will hear from several speakers working in electronic and computer music education about the current issues facing students and institutions. A panel discussion will follow where conference delegates are encouraged to question, debate, refute, and present ideas on the topic.
Some of the questions to be addressed include:
Andy Arthurs (Queensland University of Technology)
Creative Industries' Impact on the Music Author
Have the grey men finally taken over? What will the musician's role be in the future? Do we overrate our status, assuming priest-like attributes when we are merely caterers of sound? Is our function to supply lengths of musical material in a raw or semi-cooked state to an entertainment and computer games industry, to be cut up, recontextualised and remixed into a saleable cake with other ingredients? Was it ever different? Are the composers of today wondering where the next meal will come from, rather than becoming more industry focussed by supplying the demand? For instance is there really any economic demand for opera and Western classical music in Australia? And as the creative industries intersect and converge, are the requirements to be an effective musician changing? At the join of two fast-moving centuries, is multiskilling the way forward or does interdisciplinary practice demand a more specialised artist? Should a Bachelor of Music comprise a few music subjects with emphasis on knowledge of copyright, technology, finance. and some cross-art practice? The rest could surely be learnt on the job. Should we just get out there and do it, bypassing a university system unsympathetic to the methods of the arts and which uses up some of our most creative years on skills such as writing referenced essays? On the other hand, given that for most people during their lives, consumption will be far greater than production, should we be teaching our children to appreciate music rather than create it? However, if we do create, should we be making music for Australians, or be a supplier for the more lucrative American and European tastes? Time is overdue to address these issues to enable the musician to find a place in a world market.
Julian Knowles (University of Western Sydney-Nepean)
Open the filter at 2K and increase the resonance
As we enter the new millennium, musicians moving through tertiary music programs are more often than not unable to define what '2K' means in relation to music. In these times, this could be seen to be the equivalent of not being able to play C on their chosen instrument. A considerable gulf appears to be widening between musical practice as presented by the academy and the ways in which music is actually composed, performed, recorded and distributed in a contemporary developed society where digital musics and, by extension, media arts are undergoing changes at an astonishing pace.
This shift has not only brought about a pressing need to redefine the 'core skills' of a musician, but has precipitated the need to significantly reshape and reorientate the 'traditional' music department so that it responds to and acknowledges these significant changes and fosters quality production and research which addresses contemporary musical practice.
Lionel Murray (Datasonics)
Future Learning Methods
The use of music software in the classroom provides the music teacher with creative tools to teach about different elements of music. The music software enhances the traditional learning methods by presenting the students with both visual and aural representations of those musical aspects being taught.
Music software is able to cover all of the functions of music including Musical Composition, Reading and Writing Musical Notation, Musical Theory, Aural Training, Musical Performance and Multi-Media Production.
Various software programs are available that cover one or more of these functions. Some provide the theory, while others provide practical experience. A framework will be presented mapping musical functions with the types of tools available, describing what these tools are, what functions they teach, and how they are used creatively in the classroom.
Example tools will be presented including the use of multi-media, understanding written notation, and musical theory using hands-on software and web-based training methodologies.
Laurence Lepherd and Phillip Gearing (University of Southern Queensland),
Musical Development at a Distance
The University of Southern Queensland has been offering music instruction by distance education for over four years and has some 100 graduates who have completed their entire course as external students. The graduates come from all Australian States, and from New Zealand and Singapore.
The courses are principally related to instrumental and vocal teaching. They were developed because it was recognised that there were many studio music teachers in both city and regional areas who, for a variety of reasons, were unable to access study programs that would enable them to obtain, or to upgrade, teaching qualifications.
Specific areas covered through this mode are:
Learning strategies include the use of:
Assessment strategies include:
The presentation will include a brief description and a demonstration of the CD ROM used in aural development. It will also address the following issues:
Pedagogical foundation of the concept of music education at a distance, with specific reference to teaching practice and aural development;
Philip Hayward (Macquarie University)
Humanitising Tertiary Music Education
This presentation will advocate a model for 21st Century Music Education which eschews the poles of Conservatorium-orientated instrumental training or industry-vocational orientation in favour of an integration of theory, practice and research which emphasises the cultural and social aspects of music and music making.
The presentation will draw on the ideas informing the establishment of the Centre for Contemporary Music Studies at Macquarie University and the research journal 'Perfect Beat' based there.
Patrick Crichton (Western Australian Conservatorium of Music, Edith Cowan University)
The Jazz Major - falling between the cracks?
While Jazz was the first 20th Century music to be taken seriously by Academia - is it's future in our education institutions under threat in Australia? The music has always struggled for a place in the music spectrum, battling for acceptance and recognition as a serious art form since the early part of this century when American shipboard musicians introduced the music to an enthusiastic Australian audience only a few years after the Original Dixieland Jazzband recorded the famous (first)recording in 1917 in the U.S. Finally accepted into Tertiary curricula offerings in the 1960's with considerable foreboding and opposition from the firmly ensconced classical genre, it wasn't very long before courses at the undergraduate level began to proliferate around the country and attract a high calibre of creative student who went on to graduate as artists accepted and successful at the international level.
However, just as the acceptance and success is well recognised and the music no longer needs to justify its standing as an art form in this country we begin to witness a technological revolution and traditional areas of employment for jazz musicians diminishing and disappearing. Big bands now largely only exist in Universities (a worldwide phenomenon) and jingles and recordings almost exclusively the domain of the electronic musician. The jazz artist does not enjoy the employment opportunities afforded classical musicians in large orchestras and many jazz performances are poorly paid and unreliable.
Music curricula in the university sector are also increasingly required to be vocationally and financially responsible, therefore is it realistic and even responsible, to prepare students for a career as a jazz artist.
The paper will explore these and other related issues in an attempt to provide answers and direction to the issues raised above.
Ron Brooker (Sydney Conservatorium of Music)
Benchmarking Music Performance in Music Education Institutions
With regard to the changing face of music education in Australia and the demands of servicing a global market, there is an increasing need for music training institutions to be transparent in their methods of establishing and verifying standards. How do Australian music schools determine the standards for progression and graduation at their institutions? Are they comparable? How do these standards match with those of the music profession? Has there been any benchmarking of music performance standards in Australian music education institutions. These questions have been the subject of an ongoing study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where it had been observed that assessment panel members could allocate a wide variety of grades for the same performances. The means of establishing benchmarks for music performance were developed
by ascertaining the processes used by various examiners, their expectations and their value systems, and their experience and training. The role of examiner training, the perceptions and beliefs of students, and the use of audio-visual recordings have all been canvassed in this attempt to establish an institution of 'best practice'.
The perceived need of developing this wide consensus on the standards at each level of a performer's has been addressed locally. Student, teacher and examiner training, together with open and regular communication, are now being advanced as the model for all tertiary music training institutions.
Diana Blom (University of Western Sydney, Nepean)
Authenticity, performance practice and other burning issues in contemporary music
This paper draws on the debate about authenticity and performance practice in early music, and seeks discussion on these issues in relation to contemporary art music. It then attempts to relate these issues to a recent performance of Annea Lockwood's Piano Burning (1968) at UWS, a spirited performance which was visually strong but aurally disappointing.
Jon Fitzgerald (Southern Cross University
Music Theory and Popular Music Education
This paper examines some practical and philosophical issues concerning the role and nature of music theory instruction within the context of popular music education. The paper begins with a brief overview of the development of "popular" musicology and examines how musicology has tended occupy "a peripheral position" (Shepherd 1991, p.190) within the broad field of popular music studies, and how traditional musicology has been criticised for its inability to deal with many important aspects of popular music styles.
The paper then discusses some specific areas (such as beat divisions and rhythmic "feels", riff structures, "power chord" progressions etc) which have proven problematic for traditional musicology, and outlines some of the practical considerations which the author faced in creating a music theory text (Fitzgerald, 1999. Popular Music Theory and Musicianship) designed specifically for students in a contemporary (popular) music program.
The final section of the paper examines how recent popular music practice tends to raise further issues about the definition of music and the nature of music theory. For example, given the fact that successful contemporary musicians may have limited "traditional" theory knowledge and yet may possess advanced compositional skills employing "cut and paste" techniques (using loops, remix techniques etc) there is a need to examine what type of theoretical training is best suited to particular areas of popular music endeavour.
Andrew B. Alter (The University of New England)
Musicianship Training in an Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Musical Environment
Perhaps of all music subdisciplines, musicianship is often considered to encompass the most necessary of skills that are required of a musician in society. Yet musicianship often remains conventionally defined according to outdated premises which focus on tasks and skills of marginal relevance to present-day musical activity. Musicianship tasks are often formulated with a bias towards grasping and developing notational skills as a key learning
strategy. Consequently, notational skills often become the "soft option" for measuring quantifiable outcomes in music education. Most, though not all, trends in present-day music technology continue to emphasise conventional notation as a prerequisite for musical advancement. Students who lack the prerequisite skills in "Western" music notation, such as those who come from "non-Western" musical traditions, are often confronted with a conventional paradigm for musicianship training based on premises not entirely valuable to their tradition.
For some years now I have been engaged in teaching musicianship at the University of New England. This paper will present a description of the teaching methods and principles I have adopted in order to cater to a more intercultural and interdisciplinary musical environment in the class room. Though the paper does not present a comprehensive set of teaching strategies to accommodate the increasingly multicultural environment of the class room, it does present my experiences from the past 11 years at UNE in an attempt to portray the issues facing musicianship teachers in tertiary institutions in Australia today.
Peter Freeman (The University of Queensland)
"Shaddap You Face": a musicological analysis
Joe Dolce's "Shaddap You Face" was one of the biggest selling Australian singles of all time. Will the study of popular musical hits be the logical extension of the economic rationalist approach to music
education? Will music educators be forced to confine their value systems and curriculum choices only to those entities that are popular and sell? Are our artistic values becoming clouded by ever-reduced funding for the arts and music education? Can we not afford to aspire to musical content above the lowest common denominator? Consider this recent scenario outlined by Norman Lebrecht, author and music columnist for London's Daily Telegraph:
"Artists are being thrown out by their record companies, they're being thrown out by their agents. Good musicians are finding it hard to get a date. Audiences are declining all over the place and education is being hit in every which way. We're suffering now the results of two generations of dereliction of music education in schools and we're continuing to cut back. What's more, the education that we give in schools is precisely the wrong sort of thing because we're in apolitically correct multicultural age; we're teaching kids in schools that the value of banging a dustbin lid is the same as playing a Brahms sonata. So everything is really equal. We have a moral and cultural equivalence. So, yes, the whole art of classical music is under pressure."
This paper examines the threat to serious musical aspirations posed by continued cutbacks in arts and education funding and the consequent changing standards and philosophical shift within educational institutions, and proposes some possible future developments.
Dick Letts (Music Council of Australia)
Music Graduates in a Globalised World
This paper will look at some of the effects of globalisation on the musical world into which the tertiary music institutions will thrust their graduates. The globalisation process has been going on for centuries. In our time, new forms of globalisation have arisen from new forms of technology. However, we should note that some uses of new technologies do not necessarily have global implications. There is sometimes confusion between the two terms.
We resent and resist some aspects of globalisation: globalisation is we/they. Others we adopt easily and fruitfully: globalisation is us.
Some of the possibilities arising from globalisation encourage action locally: e.g. in building multicultural curricula for educational institutions. Some possibilities require action internationally. For instance, there is a growing threat to local musical cultures from the operations of transnational record companies. Australia has lived with and partially succumbed to this for years. The threat is now exacerbated through the potential of international trade 'liberalisation' treaties to remove from national governments the prerogative to subsidise and otherwise support and protect their own cultures. Various counter-strategies are underway to protect cultural (including musical) diversity. We need to realise that by the time we feel the negative consequences of a free trade treaty, it probably is impossible to change it. The only useful action is action in advance.
Helen Lancaster (The International Academy of Music, Bangkok).
Going Global - The Future of Music Training
The future of music training will offer many new ways of obtaining qualifications and training experience, not all of them in one place for the duration of the degree or diploma. This talk will explore some of these options, their benefits and disadvantages.
Tertiary education is no longer restricted to obtaining a degree within the walls of an institution. The options are now diverse: on-line study, distance education, split studies between institutions, pick up a unit while you tour overseas Š. The traditional face-to-face option seems almost the minority. What is the significance of this for music training?
This paper will offer some approaches to the globalisation of music education, with references to practices which are already in operation, and others which are being developed between institutions in Australia and Asia. It will suggest strategies which need to be employed in order for institutions to tap into the Asian student market, which currently heads east or west rather than south for international studies in music.
Michael Hannan (Southern Cross University )
The sound bite culture and the future of music training.
The shape of future music will determine the agenda of future music training. Practical training for the music industry has already lagged behind what has been actually happening in the world of music. Classical music departments in universities and specialist music schools such as conservatoria have been reluctant to recognise the fact that they represent only a fraction of world music making, and a declining force in a market-driven world. As a result only a hand-full of university music training organisations worldwide have embraced popular or other relevant contemporary music making in any form (technical training organisations have a better record). However even in these training environments there is tendency towards education in music of the past. The only difference between these new organisations and their classical counterparts is that the past is measured in decades rather than centuries.
Training of musicians for the future should be based firmly on analysis of what is actually happening in the entertainment and arts industries and where these industries are heading. This paper gives an account of current research of job categories in the music, and related industries and the kinds of radical shifts in music training protocols that will be necessary to keep pace with rapid change. The research focuses on the new media world of soundbite creation, website creation, computer games and other multimedia, databases of music and music information, sound design, remixing for different markets, media, and environments, and new modes of performance. These are discussed in relation to the training infrastructure to facilitate music production competence, and career mobility and adaptability.
Stephen Ingham (University of Wollongong)
The Australian Composer: Chucking a Yewy or Beating Around the Bush? :The changing environment for art music and its impact on the teaching of composition in Australian tertiary institutions.
This paper will address the social and cultural forces influencing the collapse of Romantic/modernist paradigms of musical composition and the composer's status in Australia over the past decade, and postulate some more appropriate theoretical approaches than those underpinning many university and conservatorium curricula at the present time.
Drawing on the recent published work of Vella and Arthurs ("Musical Environments", Currency Press), it will be argued that the transformation of the discipline from elite "niche" activity to mass-participation mode is an inevitable - if not necessarily desirable - consequence of the information age. Specific problems and challenges include the devaluation of the concept of creative individualism, the insatiable thirst for the acquisition of skills perceived to be "industrially relevant", and the dumbing down which results from excess commodification and uninspired educational planning.
Michael Halliwell (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney)
Opera Training for the 21st Century
The only institute in NSW which offers specific vocational training for a career in opera is the University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The Conservatorium has recently established strong links with Opera Australia – the national opera company – and this offers the Conservatorium the opportunity to consolidate its position as the major opera training institute in Australia as well as the possibility of attracting increased numbers of international students. The University of Sydney recently decided to phase out three-year diplomas and it became imperative to construct new opera courses to replace the existing undergraduate Diploma of Opera. This necessitated a full course review and detailed assessment of objectives with the view to the introduction of a new course(s) at the beginning of 2002. This paper will examine the review process and the resulting courses which have emerged from this continuing process. Representatives from Opera Australia have been central in the development of new courses and what has emerged as one of the central issues in the current discussions is the question of capability or competency. While institutional educational objectives are aimed at developing broadly based courses, industry expectations necessitate high-level specialist qskills in particular areas.
A survey of Australian and international opera training institutes revealed a clear trend towards singers in undergraduate courses taking units in opera subjects as part of their generalist undergraduate degrees. This is useful in enabling them to decide whether this is the direction in which they wish to pursue subsequent specialised studies. It also gives students who decide against further opera studies a more useful undergraduate degree with wider options compared to a specialised opera diploma. The most common current international model for specialised opera training is a two-year postgraduate course which is very skills-specific. It is likely that the Conservatorium will offer the traditional four-year Bachelor of Music (or the three-year Bachelor of Music Studies) with an opera stream commencing in the third year. A two-year Master of Opera will be the specialised course with the possibility of a preparatory year for students to increase their skills to the appropriate entry level.
Leigh Carriage (Southern Cross University)
Vocal Education (Pedagogical Approaches) and Performance Realities: The Relevance of Institutional Vocal Education to the Requirements of the Music Industry
How can we ensure that vocal education and pedagogical approaches address performance realities? Vocal education in the future will necessitate a better understanding of the experience and needs of voice students and performers. In this paper, I consider this question by focusing on exploratory research I have conducted on the experience of contemporary Australian female vocalists. This research provides information on five key areas: career development and early influences; the role of music education; vocal problems and vocal preservation; possible barriers to participation; discrimination. Interestingly vocal education in the practice of styles, techniques and knowledge of popular music was seen by most respondents as important - even for those who themselves had had limited formal musical education. However, a majority of respondents also felt vocal education needed to do a better job of imparting an understanding of the nature of contemporary vocal practice and its industry settings. As music educators, we will need to meet this challenge, particularly within technology-intensive institutions.
Robert Constable
Newcastle Conservatorium of Music (University of Newcastle)
Musical Instrument Making in Australia: the Manufacture and Promotion of the Stuart Piano
In 1995, the Faculty of Music, University of Newcastle, acquired the Stuart
Piano project from Northern Metropolitan College of TAFE, Preston,
Victoria. What was on offer was one completed concert grand, one completed
upright, parts for other pianos, tools, timber, patterns for the iron
frames, wire and sundry hardware items. On offer also was Wayne Stuart, who
had agreed to come to Newcastle. The University also purchased the
intellectual property.
Since entering into research and development of the piano in 1995, the
University, and indeed a much wider audience in Australia and abroad, have
witnessed a roller coaster ride of interest and excitement in this project.
In addition to enjoying the publicity and the success that it helped
create, Wayne Stuart and Robert Constable have also lived through the
daily grind of decisions and problems facing the project. Solutions did not
always come in predictable ways.
This paper will give an account of the process of developing a world class
concert piano in the industrial setting of Newcastle, New South Wales. The
paper will also outline the technology that is so revolutionary in this
instrument and what this could mean for piano making, world-wide.
Mic Deacon
Southern Cross University
Equipping a Contemporary Music Program
This paper describes the development at Southern Cross University of a studio &endash;based facility for the teaching of contemporary popular music performance, composition and audio production. A brief history of the development is given, including an analysis of curriculum needs and a discussion of problems relating to building design, installation design, budget restrictions, building standards and acquisition processes. A description is given of the changing nature of the project with respect to the completion of the original plan and modifications occasioned by the appearance of new technologies, revisions to the curriculum and the ongoing process of upgrading hardware and software.
Planning for the future is also discussed within the context of changing technologies, ergonomic efficiencies and new modes of teaching and learning.
The problems and limitations of the facility are reviewed and recommendation are given which are designed to assist other training organisations with the planning and implementation of similar infrastructure developments.
Houston Dunleavy
University of Wollongong
If no man is an island, then what am I floating in? The island mentality of music technology and what we can learn from it.
It seems to me that the chief driving force behind the development and
marketing of most music technology, both hardware and software, is the
ever-present desire to make the user increasingly independent of other musical entities. With the right equipment, one can be the composer, performer, recording engineer, producer, multi-media artist, CD designer and music marketer. This simply builds on the desire of earlier composers of electronic music, who yearned for freedom from the "tyranny of the performer's needs".
There are two simple points this paper wishes to raise, after a brief
description and demonstration of the processes whereby this freedom is currently achieved. The first is the dichotomy between this independence and the dominant research paradigm of collaboration, preferably across disciplinary boundaries. The second is the metaphor such isolationism can provide for musical pedagogy in a University setting.
Annie Mitchell
Southern Cross University
A New School For An Old People
The paper "A new school for an old people" describes the experience of conducting national pilots of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific Contemporary Music programs through Tropical North Queensland Institute of TAFE, outlines the development of the ATSI Music Department in Cairns, and highlights some of its activities.
Current issues pertaining to vocational education in music are identified, in particular, the pending introduction of the Music Industry National Training Package and the needs of the music industry and community of Far North Queensland. Challenges and problems associated with ATSI tertiary education are examined.
An evaluation of the achievements and failures of ATSI tertiary music education initiatives from two divergent perspectives: academic/industry and social, is presented. The social function of enagagement in these programs is explored, with special regard to the human aspect of ATSI vocational education and its value to their communities.
The paper concludes by suggesting possible solutions to improve current practices, and ways to address gaps in tertiary music education provision for the broader community and music industry of Far North Queensland.