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Text from the videos:
0. Introduction
The Townshend Studio at the University of West London is the home of Pete Townshend’s incredible collection of electronic musical instruments. The studio is opening this April with some official launch events in the autumn. One of those events is a conference in September focused on what we can learn from this amazing collection, and from historical commercial electronic musical instruments in general, about contemporary music making and music technology design. You can find the conference Call for Papers and information about how to apply for access to the instruments at C21MP.org in the Events section of that website. There are eight themes to the conference and you can submit a proposal for a presentation that relates to instruments we have in the collection or those we haven’t. You can incorporate one of the instruments into the presentation if you want to as we’ll be in the Townshend Studio itself. All the details are in the Call For papers or you can email me on 2024conference@c21mp.org
1. Music Technology
This conference is focused on Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments rather than the ‘one-off’ systems where composers write their own code either from the bottom up or by using modular systems like Max/MSP or SuperCollider. Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments require the composer or performer to work within the constraints set by the instrument’s designer. Of course, there is overlap between self-contained instruments like the Roland Jupiter 8 and modular Eurorack systems where the user has some autonomy to design and vary their own system. The history of instrument design has always been a trade off between being user-friendly and being expressive and beguiling. This Music Technology theme is seeking presentations that explore the types of sounds electronic instruments make and the types of interfaces both for triggering those sounds and for editing them. How are sampling and synthesis being used to create new instruments? What can we do with historic instruments that we can’t do with contemporary ones?
2. Creative Entrepreneurship
The creative entrepreneurship theme in this conference explores how developments in Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments are playing out in the economy? What products and services are being developed? Who are the consumers that these products and services are being aimed at? Is this happening differently in different parts of the world and within different styles and traditions of musical practice? Science and Technology Studies has a good deal to say about the drivers of innovation and why some things fly and others flop. What’s new because it’s possible and what’s new because it’s desirable, how do those two things intersect and what other factors might be influencing innovation? Online and in-person communities play an important part in determining demand. How are manufacturers engaging with these communities? How are music consumers engaging with electronic music in different ways to the ways they ‘normally’ engage with music? How can music makers and instrument makers work better together?
3. Composition and Song Writing
The composition and song writing theme of the conference examines how different electronic instrument technologies can have an impact on these forms of musical creativity. Are the approaches to using Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments for composing, song writing and arranging different to other approaches? How are electronic sounds different to acoustic sounds? And is that something intrinsic or just a limit to current technologies? There are many quotes from composers, from Kate Bush to Igor Stravinsky, about wanting to have total control over the sound of their compositions. Equally, many talk about the importance of creative collaboration with performers. How do the various forms of Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments offer both possibilities and impediments in either of these cases and how is it different to other instruments? How do the sounds make a difference to what is or can be written or produced? How do the interfaces and instrument design make a difference to what is or can be written or produced?
4. Diversity and Access
The diversity and access theme of the conference explores how various forms of socio-cultural and economic privilege play out differently through Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments than through other instruments? Of course, the historical exclusion of women from sectors involving technology and electronics exists here as elsewhere and yet women composers and performers like Daphne Oram, Delia Derbysire, Wendy Carlos, Pauline Oliveros and Susanne Ciani seem more present than women in the mainstream classical music world? The Townshend Studio represents a rich white man’s collection and yet a disproportionate amount of innovation in electronic popular music has come from marginalised communities and individuals. Much of that innovation flows from creative abuse: the repurposing of existing, cheap and obsolete technologies. How much of that creativity comes from the necessities of economic disadvantage and how much from more specific features of marginalisation based on race, culture, gender, sexuality and physical or neural diversity? What can we do to improve?
5. Methodology and Practice
The methodology and practice theme of the conference is concerned with what we should be doing with this collection and why. Townshend was deeply influenced by taking Roy Ascott’s Groundcourse at Ealing College of Art – one of UWL’s precursor institutions. Ascott’s cybernetic approach involved a radical and reconstructive philosophy. The Townshend Studio’s three-point manifesto relates to providing access to and sharing this technology and the users’ practices: engaging with a diverse range of communities; and exploring how the collection can have a wider cross-disciplinary impact. How can the sometimes macho and exclusive radicalism of the 1960s be reconciled with 21st century approaches to safeguarding and inclusion? And how should we be ensuring that nuance and critical thinking will trump dogma in these discussions? One of the unique selling points of the Townshend Studio is his insistence that these instruments need to be used? What are the issues for conservation that flow from this insistence and what are the wider implications of this?
6. Collaboration
The sixth theme of the conference involves exploring the creative possibilities for collaboration that commercial electronic musical instruments can offer. Control voltage, MIDI and contemporary computer systems offer a range of ways that performers, composers and producers can co-create asynchronously and over distance. Commercial electronic musical instruments also offer different ways in which multiple people can co-perform on the same instrument simultaneously. The modular nature of electronic instruments – where features such as the triggering of sounds and the shaping of their timbre are separated out – makes them different to acoustic ones. What new opportunities for collaboration does this kind of modular separation offer? Finally, there is the question of ensembles that feature multiple performers of electronic instruments. Much of the popular music that involves these types of ensemble is sequenced rather than being based on collaborative performance. Why are there so few electronic orchestras and what kind of repertoire do and/or should they be performing? And how might artists and producers be collaborating with instrument makers to develop new ones?
7. Pedagogy
The seventh conference theme is pedagogy. Music education in schools is in decline despite research about its benefits and, even where it survives, electronic music is rarely included. What can commercial electronic musical instruments offer to help with this alarming situation? Research about the general benefits of music education has focused on acoustic performance and notation. What about the types of thinking that are required to create synth patches with modular systems involving signal path, envelopes and modulation? Can electronic music education help with engaging children with logical thinking and STEM subjects? What do we know about the way that people first encounter electronic instruments has an influence on their engagement? And what about the prospects for music in higher education? Given that so many popular musicians in the 1960s and 70s were, like Townshend, educated in art schools rather than music colleges, does it make sense to try to teach creativity in general rather than technical musical skills?
8. Performance
The eighth and final theme in the 21st century music practice conference is performance. The nature of commercial synthesiser performance has changed dramatically during the past 60 years. Obviously the monophonic nature of early instruments meant that they functioned primarily as lead instruments and the rise of polyphony and keyboard control in the 1970s and 80s meant that the techniques of piano and organ performance took over. While MIDI broadened the scope of instrumental functions, it also de-skilled performance through step-time sequencing and editing. Various waves of non-keyboard control have made inroads – from Buchla to wind, guitar and pitch-to-MIDI controllers and various gestural and modular control systems – but keyboards remain the dominant form. Why is that? And why are the most popular forms of real-time timbral editing controls still broadly the same as the 1970s – rotary pots, linear faders, mod wheels, joy sticks and ribbon controllers? The growth in modular synthesis has seen an explosion in new forms of electronic music performance. What are the differences and possibilities that electronic instruments offer? What other possibilities do commercial electronic musical instruments offer in terms of control and expression?