THE MEASURING STICK - PERPETUATING MUSICAL TIME THROUGH ANTICIPATION AND RETROSPECTIVE TEMPORAL LOCATION

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to discover fundamental subjective processes that enable the experience of musical time to be perpetuated, and to design musical tools and compositions that explore, exploit and help to train these concepts. This thesis is inspired by inquiry into how one can hear music wherever one finds oneself, which is due to the lifelong experiences of the author finding the rhythms of the natural world to be inherently musical, even when they are not organised in a traditional musical setting. The exegesis is therefore an exploration in creating an idiosyncratic framework for my own composition practice. The musical tools developed in this study consist of software and hardware configurations that explore musical time in unique ways that force the user to create and maintain their own sense of musical time in their interactions with the systems developed. The resulting musical composition The Measuring Stick aims to achieve the same outcome, through lack of direct rhythmic repetition, continuous exploration of the pitch/noise spectrum, frequent transitions between disparate states, and mimicry of the sounds and rhythms of nature. Chapters one and two provide context for establishing a compositional framework and explore musical time from a phenomenological perspective where a set of fundamental premises are described in such a way as to be universally applicable. Chapter three discusses free improvisation, the software (MIDITURDS and PJM) and hardware systems (LFOBEATS and SWUNXING), focussing on how each of these were developed, how each one informed and relates to the topic, and how they can be used for training purposes. Chapter four provides a summary of the technical details and compositional process behind the seventy minute composition The Measuring Stick.