Composing strategies and pedagogy

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to report research that sought to understand the requirements of information systems designed to support people engaged in creative intellectual activity. The research aimed to provide empirical evidence based on a case study of a particular arena of creativity, namely electro-acoustic music composition. However, it also sought to identify issues that may apply more widely to other arenas of human creativity. Design/methodology/approach -The research was based on a related series of three in-depth studies of electro-acoustic music composers at work. These studies entailed the collection of qualitative data from interviews, observations and "think aloud" protocols. These data were analysed inductively to reveal concepts and relationships that formed the basis for a model of interactions between the composers and the information systems with which they were working. Findings -The paper presents a model of relationships between information system features and use, and the resulting effects in terms of the extent to which creativity was perceived by the composers to have been facilitated and inhibited. In particular, a number of tensions were identified which suggest that conventional "best practice" in the design of data-intensive information systems may be fundamentally at odds with the requirements of such systems to support important aspects of creativity.Research limitations/implications -The limitations associated with in-depth qualitative research based on small samples is acknowledged, relating in particular to its lack of ability to generalise on the basis of statistical probability. However, such an approach arguably offers the complementary strength of being particularly suited to exploratory research aimed essentially at charting new territory and identifying rich and possibly unanticipated constructs rather than testing hypotheses based on existing theory. The resultant findings, however, must remain tentative and provisional pending further systematic investigation designed to establish the extent to which they are generalisable. Practical implications -As well as identifying limitations in conventional approaches to designing data-intensive information systems, an alternative architecture is proposed which seeks better to map onto the requirements of creativity support. It is hoped that both the criticisms of conventional approaches and the proposed novel architecture may be of practical use to those engaged in the design of data-intensive creativity support systems. Originality/value -The research reported here offers a novel perspective on the design of information systems in that it identifies a tension between conventional "best practice" in system design and the requirements of important aspects of creativity support. It has the advantage of being based on the in-depth observation of real composers in action over protracted periods of time. It also proposes a novel system architecture which seeks to avoid reduce such tensions. IntroductionThe study reported he...

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“…Emmerson, 1989;Waters 2000). However, empirical studies of composition from a software perspective have been few and limited.…”

Section: Electroacoustic Music and Creativitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Information systems and creativity: an empirical study

Eaglestone

Ford

Brown

et al. 2007

Journal of Documentation

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“…(I have argued for such a 'Sound House' in Emmerson (2001)). Then we need a community, sharing an interest, sharing ideas and sounds, giving sympathetic and supportive feedback (Emmerson 1989). This does not simply 'happen'.…”

Section: Joining Up the Digitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching electronic music – journeys through a changing landscape

Emmerson¹

2020

Self Cite

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In this essay, electronic music composer Simon Emmerson examines the development of electronic music in the UK through his own experience as composer and teacher. Based on his lifetime experiences, Emmerson talks about the changing landscape of teaching electronic music composition: 'learning by doing' as a fundamental approach for a composer to find their own expressive voice; the importance of past technologies, such as analogue equipment and synthesizers; the current tendencies of what he calls the 'age of the home studio'; the awareness of sonic perception, as opposed to the danger of visual distraction; questions of terminology in electronic music and the shift to the digital domain in studios; among other things. [note by editor].

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“…Students are given assignments to create new works early on, and the bulk of each class is spent sharing works in progress, and having students comment first on what they feel works well, and second what they feel doesn't work about the compositions presented. The importance of having outside ‘testers’ in creativity was discussed by Emmerson (1989). This is supported by more recent work in Sawyer's Explaining Creativity , where he explains that it is a particularly Western myth that people are more creative working alone (2012: 211).…”

Section: Teaching Electroacoustic Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The days in which the computer music environment greeted us with a blinking grey cursor waiting resolutely for a properly formatted Unix command are long since over, along with their programmer-centric paradigm. In 1989, few would have argued with the notion that: ‘The aim of [electroacoustic] composition pedagogy must be to give the composer a set of tools’ (Emmerson 1989: 136). But is that still the case?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Failure, Neuroscience and Success: Differentiating the pedagogies of music technology from electroacoustic composition

Keyes

2013

Org. Sound

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Although the pedagogy of music technology more closely resembles that of other academic subjects, the teaching of electroacoustic composition involves a significant degree of creativity, and thus relies on different creativity-specific parts of the brain and memory systems (Lehmann 2007). This paper reviews recent neuroscientific research that may assist differentiation between effective pedagogical approaches of these two subjects where knowledge is stored in separate, discrete and sometimes competing long-term memory locations (Cotterill 2001). It argues that, because of these differences, the learning of music technology and electroacoustic composition is best kept separate, at least in the beginning stages. These points are underscored by an example of a demonstrably failed pedagogical model for teaching electroacoustic composition contrasted with a subsequent highly successful model employed in the same university music programme; an experience that may translate well to other learning environments.

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Composing strategies and pedagogy

Cited by 21 publications

References 3 publications

Information systems and creativity: an empirical study

Information systems and creativity: an empirical study

Teaching electronic music – journeys through a changing landscape

Failure, Neuroscience and Success: Differentiating the pedagogies of music technology from electroacoustic composition

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